When I was 20, I thought I knew what it meant to struggle.

I had survived a combat deployment to Afghanistan as a soldier in the Canadian Forces. I was newly married. I was a new police officer. I was also dealing with the effects of PTSD.

At the time, I knew hardship and adversity. I had witnessed the traumas of war, come close to dying numerous times, and still felt the pain and grief of loss. As I moved forward with my life, I worked hard to overcome my past traumas, integrating those experiences into my new identity as someone more than my past.

My early twenties represented a time of massive challenges and subsequent growth. Although I had experienced struggle, I still didn’t know what it meant to struggle. I believed that struggle was simply a byproduct of trauma, something that didn’t hold any value other than being an obstacle between where I was and where I wanted to go.

When I became a widower at the age of 35 after my wife died of cancer, I learned the true meaning of struggle. I was balancing the trauma and grief of losing my life partner, losing my identity and future, and becoming a solo father to two young kids. It eclipsed my previous experiences of overcoming adversity and was an event of monumental proportions.

It forced me to completely reevaluate my beliefs around what it really means to struggle. This time, there was no ability to avoid my struggles. There was no “obstacle” to overcome because struggle was now my life. Every moment of every day was pain, and there was no respite. My previous experiences, although helpful, were not enough to prepare me for the true challenges.

It was no longer something I could shove into the trunk shamefully, opening the lid when I was in the right frame of mind to confront it. So what could I do?

I had to develop a new mental model because I couldn’t avoid it, and it wasn’t something that therapy alone would be able to remove. I knew that every time I felt pain, every moment that I felt the heavy tears of grief, and every time I didn’t know how I could go on, I was presented with an opportunity—an opportunity to demonstrate my potential, my strength, and my tenacity.

I could respond to the struggle by holding myself a pity party. I could let those feelings overwhelm me and put me into a spiral of self-pity and self-sorrow. I could withdraw from them and try to keep them hidden, shoving them back down whenever they spilled over.

But I knew that life. I remembered what it was like to suppress my PTSD and keep it buried until I was ready to deal with the intense emotions. I could do that then because I had the space and opportunities to work through things on my own time and with the help of therapy and my supports.

However, this time, there was no space. I couldn’t escape, and I couldn’t bury those feelings for longer than a moment or two. Instead, I learned how to embrace the struggle. I gave it a passenger seat in my life. I acknowledged it, gave it a space to live with me, and learned how to develop a relationship with it. I learned that through the struggle comes growth, and I began to value my struggle more.

I know that the healing is in the feelings, and rather than label my feelings as negative, I adopted a neutral mindset. When I felt sadness and shed tears, I embraced the grief and let it wash over me and out of me. When I felt the hopelessness, I sat with the pain for a while and let myself feel. When I felt discouraged and incapable, I acknowledged the feeling and set small, achievable goals to earn some daily wins.

Once I learned how to view the struggle as a positive, it didn’t remove the pain. It didn’t make it easy. What it did was allow me to have gratitude for my pain because I knew that it was propelling my growth. Every time I felt the sting and hurt, the depression and despair, and the fear and anxiety, I knew my mind was building new mental models for my life that would allow for a new and better version of myself to emerge. Now, I view struggle as an essential part of growth.

Whether you are overcoming trauma and adversity or simply dealing with the challenges of everyday life, there is beauty in that struggle. Every time we face resistance, whether internal or external, we are granted an opportunity to adapt and grow. Although struggle is never easy, it can be a gift. And it all starts with how you label that struggle in your mind.