Never condemn the way someone has survived their pain. You don’t know what lies behind their silence, their escape, or their apparent coldness. Everyone finds their own way to keep breathing when life hurts. Not everyone has the same tools, or the same emotional strength to endure what they’ve been given. What feels like a stumble to some can be an endless fall to others.

Some hide in work, others isolate themselves, and some simply stop fighting. They’re not weak or cowardly, they’re just doing what they can with what they have. Judging how someone survives is a subtle form of cruelty. Empathy begins when we stop looking at other people’s wounds through our own eyes and start seeing them through theirs.