You Are Not Special – And That’s Liberating

Today may feel sharp — and it’s supposed to. I hope it lands the way a trusted friend would. Not cruel. Not a judgment on your situation. Just honest, and offered with love.

You Are Not Special

One of the biggest things that changed the trajectory of my life was realizing that no one was going to save me — which I wrote about in Responsibility Without Shame. And the harder truth underneath it: I am not special.

This does not mean I am not unique. Each of us is the only version of ourselves that will ever exist in this exact space and time. No one thinks like you. Feels like you. Has lived the exact circumstances you have. No one. You are unique.

But your situation isn’t special either.

Over the course of one life, this is what can accumulate: an autoimmune disease, a child’s illness, depression, divorce, loss, three funeral homes in a single month, two people I love facing difficult diagnoses within months of each other. Some occur simultaneously, and others have been layered in over years, sometimes overlapping in ways that took my breath away.

If you have parents, you will likely lose them. If you have children, the goal is that one day they leave. Marriages end — by death, by choice, or by slow drift. Bodies change. Careers shift. The life you planned rarely looks like the one you’re living.

As a nurse, I have witnessed it on a different scale entirely. People praying for healing that never came. Life-changing diagnoses delivered in ordinary rooms. Patients who lost limbs and went on to function beautifully in the world — and others who received far less and gave up entirely.

I’m not saying the playing field is level. One of my favorite sayings used to be: we are not in the same boat — some are on a yacht and some are on a life raft. Resources, privilege, support systems — they matter. But I’ve watched wealthy patients receive every advantage medicine could offer and grow bitter, angry, impossible to be around — taking their fear out on everyone beneath them. And I’ve watched patients with nothing find a way to rise above in a way that evoked pure awe.

What I saw over and over was that the difference rarely came down to what happened or what someone had. It came down to how they chose to meet it.

The person sitting next to you right now has their own version of this list. You just don’t know it because they’re not telling you either.

The details of our struggles are not the same. My child’s illness did not look like yours. My chronic pain does not carry your diagnosis. My divorce did not mirror your loss. But the grief that comes with all of it? The mental steps required to get through it? Those are remarkably similar regardless of the specifics.

What separates the people who thrive from the people who stay stuck is rarely the circumstances. It’s how they think about them.

When we isolate ourselves and decide our situation is unique — special — we don’t just suffer alone. We cut ourselves off from every person who has already walked through something similar and found a way. Their path through chronic illness, grief, loss, or fear has something to teach us. But only if we’re open enough to see it. Only if we stop being so special that no one else’s experience could possibly apply to ours.

What It Costs to Stay Closed

I was a mom, physically present, mentally strained, and emotionally checked out. I woke up. I fed them. I drove them where they needed to go. Every box checked. But I was tired, angry, easily triggered, no fun to be around — present in body, absent everywhere else. I was in a miserable, toxic marriage. I had a sick child in and out of the hospital. I didn’t know how to communicate what I was carrying, so I didn’t. I just carried it, and let it leak out onto the people who didn’t deserve it.

As long as I pointed fingers, I stayed stuck. As long as I made excuses and thought about how terrible my life was, I was my own prisoner.

The Room Where It Cracked Open

During the two hardest years of my life — the slow awakening before my divorce finally came — I sat in an Al-Anon room. I don’t remember the exact day or what my life looked like in that moment. I just know most of the worst were all happening during that time. What I do remember is a room full of people who hadn’t come because life was great — and one sentence that stopped me cold.           

“We are all just humans trying to get through this life the best we can.”

That was it. The lightbulb.

I could feel the release of judgment on them and myself, like a deep breath and a relieved sigh. I could see me in them and them in me.

Surrender

I had learned how to blame and point fingers, so I didn’t have to feel the weight or pain of my choices. But if I wanted to get better, it was going to hurt. I was going to have to see all of me — the good, the bad, and the ugly — not from the eyes of the victim, but from the accountable.

I realized we all have choices, and people have different outcomes based on those choices. Yes, we all have different circumstances — some very horrible and unfortunate — but we are the only ones who can make choices that lift us out.

Where I Live Now

Through Al-Anon and therapy I have realized that life ebbs and flows, and I have chosen to enjoy the ride. It still took me a few more years after that meeting to get to my Breaking Point, but the awakening had begun. You cannot have joy without pain. You cannot live this life without pain — but you can live it joyless. I chose to find my way. To find my joy. To take responsibility for what I could control. One small choice, one small step, and one day at a time.

Because I chose to recognize that I am not special. I started to reach out for help. I read books, listened to podcasts, and followed people on social media that helped me grow — not kept me stuck.

Panic rarely runs my life anymore. I’ve learned to meet those parts of myself in therapy, where I have more control and my therapist is a buffer — instead of being ambushed by them in the middle of my actual life. They still show up sometimes. I still have bouts of depression or what I refer to as “struggling.” But it’s not so intense, and not for so long. I can feel all the emotions without being consumed by them. And I can struggle for a few days, knowing tomorrow or next week will be better.

I have become free. I dance. I pivot. I live. I experience life. I participate with my kids, my partner.

I don’t navigate them. I participate with them.