And Maybe Neither Are We
Last November, I dropped my phone. Not dramatically, like into a lake or off a rooftop.
Just one of those everyday parenting moments. My toddler was reaching for it, I reacted quickly, and the phone slipped from my hand onto the floor. The kind of moment that makes your stomach drop before the phone does. When I picked my phone up, I saw a crack along the edge of the screen. My heart sank.
Years ago, when I worked at Apple, I spent plenty of time around the Genius Bar. I saw people walk in devastated over cracked screens, lost photos, broken devices, and expensive repairs.
One lesson I learned back then was simple: Always use a screen protector. Thankfully, I had one this time too. But this crack looked different.
It seemed to hit the edge of the phone itself, not just the protector. I checked repair costs. I sighed. I considered fixing it. Then life happened. As it often does.
There were groceries to buy, a toddler to raise, work to do, and a hundred other priorities that felt more urgent. So, the cracked screen stayed.
Weeks turned into months, and months turned into almost half a year.
And every time I looked at that crack, I assumed I knew the truth: The screen was broken. End of story.
Until recently.
I was taking my phone case off to clean it and decided to take a closer look. That’s when I realized something surprising. The phone screen wasn’t cracked at all. Only the screen protector was. The entire time, the actual screen underneath had been perfectly fine. Protected, intact, and whole. I smiled. Not because of the money I didn’t spend. But because of how often we do exactly the same thing with ourselves.
What If You’re Not As Broken As You Think?
Many of us walk through life carrying cracks from a difficult childhood, a painful breakup, the loss of a loved one, financial struggles, health challenges, rejection, and disappointment. You know what I mean.
We look at the visible damage and conclude: “I am broken.” We mistake what happened to us for who we are. We see the cracks and assume they go all the way through. But what if they don’t?
What if some of the damage we’re seeing is real, but only on the surface? What if, beneath the protective layers we’ve developed over the years, there is something inside us that remains untouched?
Family Constellation work has taught me something powerful:
The soul is often far more resilient than the mind believes. People come into sessions convinced they are damaged beyond repair. They tell stories about being abandoned, rejected, bullied, neglected, or misunderstood. And while those experiences absolutely leave marks, what I often witness is that their essence remains intact. Buried, perhaps. Protected and covered by layers of survival. But not broken.
The Difference Between Being Wounded and Being Broken
A wound is not the same thing as being broken. A wound can heal, can be acknowledged, and can teach us something. Being broken suggests there is no way back. That something essential has been permanently lost. I don’t believe that. I’ve met too many people who have rebuilt their lives. Many parents who choose to parent differently than they were parented, many individuals who transformed pain into wisdom, and many people who discovered strength they didn’t know they had.
The cracks were real. The suffering was real, but their essence remained untouched.
Much like my phone screen hidden beneath that damaged protector.
Maybe The Cracks Served A Purpose
The funny thing is that the screen protector did exactly what it was designed to do. It absorbed the impact. It took the hit so that something more valuable underneath could remain safe.
In many ways, our coping mechanisms work like that too. Coping mechanisms like: people-pleasing, perfectionism, overworking, avoidance, being the strong one, the helper, the (over) achiever. These patterns aren’t always flaws. Often, they were intelligent survival strategies. They protected us in times when we needed protection the most.
The problem comes when we mistake the protector for who we are. When we see the cracks in our coping mechanisms and assume our true self is damaged too.
A Gentle Reminder
If life has felt heavy lately, if you’ve been questioning yourself, if you’ve been carrying old stories about being damaged, flawed, or broken…
I want to offer a different possibility. Maybe the crack you’re seeing isn’t the whole story. Maybe what took the impact was never your essence. Maybe underneath the disappointments, mistakes, losses, and challenges, there is still something fundamentally whole.
Something wise, resilient, and something worth trusting. Just because life cracked the surface doesn’t mean it cracked your soul. And sometimes, all it takes is looking a little closer to discover that what we thought was broken was protecting something beautiful all along.
