I always hated when people told me that adversity would make me stronger.
I tried to believe it at first- that all the bad things that happened to me in my childhood and early adult years would make me a better person but it didn’t. A childhood full of poverty, abuse, and constant uprooting didn’t make give me strength and fortitude. It gave me anxiety and trauma. I was good at playing the part; I made good grades, babysat my little brothers, and didn’t cause trouble. from the outside looking in, I was a well-adjusted adult. But, I wasn’t. I was always either having a mental breakdown, or on the edge of one. I was emotionally stunted; prone to self-sabotaging my health and well-being because I was more afraid of being happy than I was of being miserable.
It wasn’t “experiences” that helped me grow, it was stability.
I’ve grown the most in the last few years, when my life has been the most stable. I got a job that paid me enough to relieve many of my financial anxieties. I stopped moving every few months, and built myself in an apartment I truly love. I stopped trying to find love, and focused on building my relationship with myself. It was during the period of time when the least was happening that I had the time and space to grow.
Experiences are just part of who we are.
Two people can have the exact same life, but grow into completely different people. Think about how some siblings who share the same parents, childhood, and education can be so different. There’s a reason there is so much debate in the scientific community about Nature v Nurture. Most agree that there is a combination of factors that influence our personalities. The conclusion I’ve come to over the years is that it’s not the experience itself that shapes you the most, but how you’ve interpreted it. Over time, you may see the same event in a very different light. In that way, you may learn many different (sometimes opposing) lessons from the same experience as your perspective changes. That’s the strange and wonderful thing about the human mind, it’s always changing.
New experiences aren’t a bad thing.
I’m not advocating that we are live in a bubble. I think we should try new things, meet new people, and learn as much as we can. Just like plants need both sunshine and water to grow, I think we need a combination of new experiences, and the rest to digest them to grow.
Bringing Mae Flowers 
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