My struggles are opportunities to grow.

The second time something bad happens, you know where the paperwork is. That's a small, unglamorous kind of growth, and it's the sort that turns out to be reliable.

Nobody would order a struggle from a menu. The value isn't in the difficulty, which is often just expensive. It's in what you're forced to build while inside it — a tolerance, a skill, a much shorter list of things that genuinely frighten you.

Some of it only shows up years later, when you find yourself calm in a situation that would once have flattened you.

Today it won't feel like growth. It will feel like coping, which is what growth looks like from inside.