Ten years ago, I was preparing for a trail race on a very demanding mountain. It was not an ordinary mountain, nor an ordinary race. It was one of those moments of realization… I had been preparing for this giant my entire life. Such power, strength, force, and me, so small before it in every possible way.
Like at the beginning of every race, my body needed warming up. It, of course, did not. It coldly watched my agony from the very start. While I thought I was conquering it, climbing toward the summit, it was slowly conquering me in the most brutal way possible. It peeled away layer after layer of my arrogance, pride, and everything it did not like. Until it finally brought me to my knees. Not once. Ten times. Fifty times. Who even counts anymore? And I… I became humble. Smaller than a poppy seed. Whimpering and silently begging God to make that helplessness, misery, and pain disappear. Pain in every possible form. Transparent in every possible way.
And then you pull out tiny crumbs of something from within yourself - something you do not even recognize as your own anymore. You hold onto it and refuse to let go. And you begin again, step by step, walking forward, no longer even knowing toward what, or why, because in the end, it no longer matters. And after that, you are never the same again. That moment when you come back down, look into the distance and up at the height, and think: “Hey, I was up there. With my own legs and hands. With my own mind.” Pride beyond words.
There are moments in life that mark you forever. Moments that, without you even realizing it at the time, slowly shape you for everything that is yet to come. I did not know that until life sent me something far heavier than a mountain.
When people hear that I lost my husband in my twenties and raised three children on my own, the reaction is almost always the same - disbelief, followed by the familiar sentence: “That must have been so hard for you.” And I usually answer: “Not really.” Not because it did not hurt, but because in moments like that, life does not leave you much space to think. You simply switch into survival mode. Into getting-through-it mode. With three children, you do not have the luxury of falling apart. You do not have time to sit for hours with your thoughts and emotions. It is easier to escape into work, responsibilities, and endless lists of things that need to be done. Because while you work, solve problems, and keep running, you do not have to think about yourself. That is how I spent my twenties.
And today, when I look back on them, I realize there was still more light than darkness in those years. In the middle of all that horror, life somehow turns on a light that belongs only to you, a light only you can see. That hope and faith that you are protected and that everything will somehow be okay, those are the thoughts that keep pushing you forward. Even after the greatest losses, life somehow always finds its way through tiny cracks and reminds you that beauty still exists.
And to return to the beginning of the story… because all those mountains, the real one and the one I climbed in my twenties - taught me one thing: how to shed layers. How to keep walking when you no longer know why.
Today, while working through my notice period, after I have already peeled everything away and there is not a single layer of anger and disappointment left… all of that was stripped away long ago, in silence and solitude behind closed doors. My colleagues ask me how I can be so calm. I can because that is all that is left. And sadness. Because one chapter has ended. And when we close chapters, we only choose how we will close them, and with what kind of energy we will enter the next ones.
I always choose peace. For myself. But also for others. My battle with windmills is over. And for the first time, I do not feel defeated. Some battles simply need to be abandoned. Because peace is not giving up. Peace is the moment when you stop trying to save everything around you and finally decide to save yourself.
Peace is within me. And I am finally within it. At the top of my mountain.
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