There was a winter that would not end.
Ice in the veins.
Silence in the bones.
A heart beating, but not living.
She thought herself useless
because pain had wrapped her hands in frost
and told her she was nothing
but the echo of her own mistakes.
But God does not waste winter.
Beneath the frozen ground,
roots were strengthening.
Beneath the wreckage,
a lighthouse was being framed
from splintered wood.
Six years ago
she struck a match in the dark
and chose not to burn —
but to see.
One trembling day at a time
the thaw began.
The river moved.
The pulse returned.
And now —
she stands in rooms heavy with sorrow
and her voice is a door.
She looks into shaking eyes
and says,
“I have been where you are.
Come with me.
There is a way out.”
What once froze her
now fuels her.
What once buried her
now blooms.
Six years sober.
Six years alive.
Six years of turning pain
into passage.
The girl who thought herself useless
became a bridge
for the broken.
And she wonders
how many are walking across
because she lived.
