Conversations with Leaders: Toni Collier on Brave Enough to be Broken
How to Embrace Your Pain and Discover Hope and Healing
Toni Collier is a Hope Coach, author of Brave Enough to Be Broken and the founder of Broken Crayons Still Color, an international women’s ministry that helps women process their brokenness and reclaim hope. She is a popular speaker and consultant who helps organizations with creative marketing, leadership, student ministry, and strategic planning. It’s her passion to show women that they can be both broken and beautiful as they work out their healing at the feet of Jesus. Toni also teaches regularly at Story Church Atlanta, founded by her husband, Sam Collier. Toni and Sam live in Atlanta with their daughter, Dylan, and new baby boy, Sam Jr.
You’ve been very open about the trauma you’ve experienced in your life. How did you stop trauma from being the boss of you and start the healing process?
The first step was to believe that wholeness and healing were available to me. It took me a while to realize that I was still worthy of a good life after all of the abuse and pain I’d been through. I had to believe that peace and comfort and witness were all things I could still access. Once I built up that confidence, I would stop at nothing to do my work to get to healthier. I chose not to ever lose to it—and we all have that choice. Also my daughter was another driving force behind my healing process. I wanted to be a to be healthy mom for her I wanted her to see my life and believe that she also can overcome hard things. Lastly, community is important in the moments when the healing process gets excruciating. Sometimes trauma does feels like the boss of us and we need people stronger than us in the moments to remind us that it’s not.
In the introduction to your book, Brave Enough to Be Broken, you write, “The greatest gift I’ve ever given myself was the bravery to press into pain and the freedom to heal from it.” Pain is something that’s usually avoided at all costs—how did you find the strength to lean into your pain? What would you tell anyone who is afraid of how much healing may hurt?
We are willing to experience pain and loss for results in lots of areas of our lives. When we go to the gym, we put our bodies in physical pain for results. We lose money shopping for things that make us feel and look great. But when it comes to our mental and emotional health, we hesitate on believing that the pain we have to endure to revisit painful memories, put up boundaries and leave toxic relationships is worth it or not. I decided that it was worth it. I didn’t want to become the toxic people that I needed saving from. And you don’t have to either. Do your work, press through the pain, and watch Hope and healing fill your veins.
You begin chapter one with a raw description of your rock bottom, feeling like a complete failure. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice or truth, what would it be?
I’d say, “Toni, stop choosing agony over loneliness. It’s not worth it. The feeling of loneliness is something you can ultimately overcome. But the agony you’re allowing your soul to experience by staying in painful and abusive relationships will be much harder to heal. You can be lonely, but you’re never alone. Leave.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to One Little Word to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.