This can definitely be a vehicle. Just avoid driving the vehicle on a predictable road. The whole “adversity made me the person I am today” idea can be conveyed subtly along the way, but try to tell a story that is more fresh and surprising. Tell a colorful story about a particular vignette within your larger experience, and embed the background in that story in a way that avoids a chronological, formulaic retelling of the adversity → growth → insight trope. Make that stuff implicit rather than explicit.