What the Heck Is in This Satchel?
We inherit burdens.
Some personal.
Some familial.
Some generational.
Sometimes I imagine human suffering as a satchel filled with many different kinds of weight.
For years, we often approached mental health as though every rock inside the satchel belonged to the same category. A single diagnosis. A fixed identity. A permanent condition believed to explain the whole person.
But what if some of those burdens are trauma?
What if some come from years of chronic stress, from grief or fear, or from environments that never truly fit us?
And what if some are neurodivergence, mental health conditions, or other biological realities that deserve understanding, support, and accommodation?
Not everything we carry has the same origin, and not everything requires the same response.
Some things may soften through healing.
Some may need practical support.
Some may need medication.
Sometimes healing finds us through unexpected places and people.
In a church.
In a jungle.
In a friendship.
Through a mentor.
Through the kindness of a stranger.
Through an animal.
On a journey we almost didn't take.
Maybe part of this comes from how naturally human beings try to categorize and simplify things.
We label.
We group.
We try to connect the dots.
We look for patterns, even when there isn’t one.
And sometimes those frameworks genuinely help.
But I also wonder how many people have spent years believing they were broken, when perhaps there were layers of their experience that had never been understood separately.
Our understanding of mental health and healing continues to evolve.
There was a time when trauma itself was barely understood, and many of the approaches now helping people heal had not yet emerged.
And it makes me wonder what else we may come to understand in the next 10 or 20 years.
Science continues to evolve. Healing continues to evolve.
What feels fixed and final today may one day be understood differently, more fully, or with far greater nuance.
I sometimes think about older generations with tenderness when I reflect on this.
People found ways to cope with whatever was available to them, often in ways that helped them survive but also created pain.
Not because they were incapable of love or goodness, but because many were carrying pain they did not yet have the language, support, or tools to understand.
I think it is important to leave room for continued curiosity.
To ask:
What else might be possible here?
What if some struggles are not signs of defectiveness?
And what if some parts of us remain exactly as they are, but become easier to live with?
Maybe human beings are not as fixed as many of us once believed.
