Clawing Through Life Like a Honey Badger

All Risk. No Payoff.

I have always identified with the honey badger, not because it’s fearless, but because it never knows when to stop.

Externally, I portrayed myself as the lost lamb without a teat to nourish a thriving brain. Internally, I was a cornered-and-feral alley cat, who was constantly in survival mode—ready for combat or evasion.

Maybe you know this dilemma: the version of you people see versus the one perpetually braced for impact, an exit plan already indexed moments after you enter the room.

There were no self-preservation instincts in the first half of my life, only vigilance. I wasted prime opportunities by staying incessantly on guard. The “mundane” and “boring” held no value in my world. School was my only outlet beyond a traumatic household, but I never allowed learning to take hold—because participation would have led to reflection, and reflection to self-awareness.

Some of us enter the adult world too young, not by choice but by necessity.
And when that happens, survival mode evolves into masquerading as our identity.

Attack mode becomes a reflex, only for pain and self-pity to dominate the world we live in. When we find ourselves continually refusing the inner work to heal—it then becomes second nature, quietly sabotaging no one but ourselves.

And maybe—just maybe—you understand the feeling of being “too” far gone.

Those betrayals that altered perspectives and sense of trust so deeply there feels like no way forward, with only enough strength and mental reserves to make it through the very second at hand. When persevering through the present feels daunting and impossible, how can you even contemplate the future?

Until tiny wins start to trickle in, and you begin to see progress born of your commitment to loving and respecting yourself and your life. And yes, even when you get cut up along the way, each wound carries a new lesson to test the spirit.

There comes a time where you start to realize things are actually working out, albeit at a slow and agonizing pace. That’s when my inner self began to blossom into the heart of a lion: curious, not frantic. Playful while learning my strengths through positivity. Wise enough to conserve energy by acting only when appropriate, holding a healthy alertness that defends through stillness until an opposer crosses the line.

While outwardly resembling more of a horse: graceful in stillness, commanding in presence. Noble enough to carry “riders” through life, yet free to roam the open fields before me. Soft-eyed and watchful, immense in strength, and deadly when threatened—a controlled force to be reckoned with.

There is no need to look back or reopen old wounds—these honey-badger claws are retracted. Life’s silver linings have come full circle into view, offering the wisdom needed for the next go around.

Reborn. Elevated. Unbound.

Time to ascend through our soul’s passions, as we polish the traumas of life by transforming pain-into-purpose.