It's easy for someone to joke about scars if they've never been cut." (William Shakespeare)
Not everyone will understand the weight you carry—and that’s okay. Some will laugh at what they’ve never lived through, dismiss what they cannot see, or speak carelessly about wounds they’ve never had to tend.
It’s easy to minimize someone else's pain when you’ve never sat awake with your own. True empathy doesn’t come from observation; it rises from experience—those quiet, raw places where life has broken us open and taught us how fragile the human heart can be. Only then do we learn to approach others not with judgment, but with gentleness. To see someone's scars and not flinch. To offer kindness, not critique.
Because once you’ve been there, you don’t forget how much it meant when someone offered you understanding instead of advice.