Surviving the Shards: Healing After Self-Sabotage, Fear, and Broken Promises

They tell you to reach for the ceiling, break the glass — but no one tells you how to manage, heal, and survive the sharded glass pieces that pierce your flesh as you break through.

For so long, I thought breaking through meant simply “making it.” Achieving. Checking the boxes. Becoming the person everyone else believed I could be. But no one talks about the emotional bruises and invisible wounds that come from pushing past limits while carrying the weight of self-sabotage, fear, broken promises, and false hope.

I am a woman of many talents — a self-taught cake artist, a self-publishing author, a licensed real estate agent, and just three classes away from being eligible to sit for my RN exam. I’ve hosted events that uplift and connect people. I’ve built things from nothing but faith, grit, and late nights fueled by vision.

Yet, despite it all, I still find myself settling for entry-level positions. I still play the background. I’ve told myself that watching others succeed was enough — that my success wasn’t as important, that my purpose could wait. I’ve dimmed my own light to make others comfortable, and somewhere in that silence, I lost sight of what I deserve.

That realization hit hard — the cost of playing small is expensive. It’s been detrimental to my future, my health, and my goals. Every time I chose “safe” over “soar,” I was betraying myself. Every time I let fear disguise itself as humility, I was shrinking in places I was meant to expand.

Self-sabotage is sneaky like that. It convinces you that you’re being selfless, when really, you’re abandoning yourself. It tells you you’re being patient, when you’re really just afraid. It feels noble to cheer for others from the sidelines — until you realize you were born to be on the field, too.

Fear and broken promises — especially the ones you make to yourself — leave scars that don’t always show. And false hope? It’ll keep you waiting in spaces that were never designed for your kind of greatness.

But here’s the truth I’ve come to stand on: you can’t heal what you refuse to face. And you can’t thrive in the same spaces that benefit from your silence.

Healing isn’t pretty. It’s the sound of breaking patterns, of setting boundaries, of choosing yourself even when it feels selfish. It’s looking at the glass pieces around you — the failed attempts, the missed chances, the “almosts” — and realizing they’re not reminders of your failures, but reflections of your courage. Because you did break through. And yes, it cut deep, but you survived the shattering.

Now, I’m learning that it’s not enough to survive — I have to live. Not halfway, not humbly hiding, but fully. Loudly. Boldly. Because every gift God gave me deserves to be used, not shelved. Every dream I deferred deserves to be revived. And every scar I carry deserves to be honored — proof that I made it through the breaking, and I’m still becoming.

So, to anyone who feels stuck between potential and fear — this is your reminder: you can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t build your dreams while standing in the rubble of old ones. Heal. Rise. Shine. The glass ceiling isn’t the enemy — your silence is.

And this time, when you break through, make sure you also heal through.