"I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive."
— Frida Kahlo
Photo by Pipe Vasquez on Pexels
Frida Kahlo was eighteen when a bus collided with a streetcar in Mexico City. The accident broke her spinal column, her collarbone, her ribs, and her pelvis. A steel handrail impaled her. Doctors didn't expect her to walk again.
She painted through thirty-five surgeries. She worked flat on her back with a mirror mounted above her bed so she could see herself — the only subject she could access. She became one of the most important artists of the twentieth century not despite her suffering but, in some way, through it.
She never pretended it was easy. She never said the pain would pass. What she actually believed was smaller and steadier than that — that little by little, she'd find her way through it. Not all at once. Not with some final breakthrough. Just one problem, then the next one, for as long as it took.
Most of us get through the hard years the same way.
Not in one triumphant moment,
but in a hundred small, unremarkable ones nobody else sees.
What's one problem you're solving little by little right now — not all at once, just steadily?
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