Strong at the Broken Places: Lessons from Hemingway for Work and Life

Ernest Hemingway once wrote in A Farewell to Arms:
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

Hemingway was a brilliant yet deeply flawed human being. His personal life was marked by contradictions, struggles, and failings that remind us that even great artists are not immune to imperfection. Yet despite this, his words endure because they reveal something profoundly true about the human condition.

The world will break us all at some point, whether through loss, failure, betrayal, or unforeseen change. No one is spared. Some, through time and healing, grow stronger in the places they were once wounded. But Hemingway also reminds us of the harder truth: not everyone survives their breaking. For some, the weight of suffering is too much, and it can extinguish parts of the spirit such as hope, innocence, or trust, and in the harshest sense, life itself.

To acknowledge this is not to surrender to despair, but to honor the reality of pain while holding on to the possibility of resilience. Strength does not come from denying the break. It comes from choosing to heal in the aftermath of it.

The Universality of Breaking

In professional life, “breaking” moments are everywhere. A project fails despite long nights of work. A career path takes an unexpected turn. A trusted system collapses, leaving uncertainty in its wake. For leaders, there is also the responsibility of guiding teams through those same fractures. These experiences may bend us, or in some cases, nearly undo us.

The Power of Healing and Growth

Hemingway’s line offers more than fatalism. It highlights a possibility: strength formed through scars. Recovery and resilience do not erase the break. They build upon it. The healed place carries memory, wisdom, and fortitude.

In workplaces, this translates into adaptive leadership. When teams endure setbacks, they have the chance to emerge stronger, with sharper processes, deeper empathy, and renewed determination. Resilient leaders do not ignore the cracks. They acknowledge them, learn from them, and weave them into the foundation for what comes next.

My Own Reflection

There was a season in my career when I faced harassment that shook me deeply. It was not only the daily stress of the situation, but also the way it made me question my worth, my voice, and even my place in the workplace. For a time, I felt broken in confidence, in spirit, and in trust.

The healing did not come overnight. It came through the courage to speak up, through leaning on mentors and allies who reminded me of my value, and through the quiet work of rebuilding my own confidence piece by piece. There were days I felt small, and yet every time I stood back up, I became stronger at the very points where I had once felt most fragile.

That painful experience shaped me into the leader I am today, giving me a deeper empathy for others who feel unseen or unsafe. It taught me that resilience is not about ignoring the break. It is about choosing to heal with honesty, dignity, and strength. It also showed me that healing is not the absence of scars, but the strength that grows around them. Even in brokenness, we can rise with a deeper kind of wholeness.

Why It Matters Today

In our current world, full of uncertainty, change, and disruption, Hemingway’s words resonate more than ever. We cannot prevent life from breaking us. What we can do is choose how we heal. Strength does not come from pretending the fracture never happened. It comes from acknowledging it, working through it, and allowing it to become part of who we are.

Closing Thought

When Hemingway wrote those words, he was not promising easy triumph. He was reminding us of the raw resilience that lives in human beings. The question is not if we will break, but how we will rebuild.

So perhaps the next time you face a challenge, you might ask yourself:
Where will I be strong at the broken places?