The Honest Healing Journey with Kristi

Part 3: Trauma & Awareness

Triggers, CPTSD, nervous system realizations, and the patterns I couldn’t see until I became healthy

Part 1 of my healing was silence.

Not the cold kind of silence—more like solitude. Space. Safety.

Part 2 was the mindset shift that changed everything:

There are only two states in this world—healthy and unhealthy.

That applies to physical health.

And it applies to mental health.

And once I understood that, I stopped trying to “fix what happened to me” and started learning what trauma was actually doing inside my body and mind.

This is Part 3: Trauma & Awareness—the stage where things finally started to make sense.

Trauma isn’t always one moment

For some people, trauma is one devastating event.

For others, trauma is repetition—harm that happens over and over without repair, accountability, or safety.

That’s where PTSD and complex PTSD (CPTSD) can look different.

PTSD (for me) came from devastating events

I experienced PTSD from two separate, life-altering events.

One was my parents’ divorce—anything but civil.

I wasn’t protected from the devastation. I was in it. And I found out the truth in a way no child should.

I found notes and sticky notes from another woman to my dad—

not by snooping, not by trying to “catch” anyone—

but doing what I always did: going with my mom to the office while she volunteered and made copies for school projects.

My mom found out soon after. She confronted him. He didn’t deny it… he just left. And never returned.

And when evidence showed up later—items from her in his new apartment—he still didn’t come clean. He lied and said it must have been from the previous tenant.

That kind of betrayal doesn’t just hurt the adults involved.

It changes the child’s nervous system.

It changes what “safety” feels like.

The other PTSD event was death—before I was even in sixth grade.

My sister was in third.

I ran home excited one day because I thought stickers I ordered might be in the mail. I wanted to put them in my sticker book.

My sister came home later screaming words I’ll never forget:

“He killed the baby too.”

Her friend had been murdered by her own father. He killed the family, then himself.

I wasn’t allowed to talk about it.

Even when counselors were available at school, I asked my mom if I could see one, and she said they were too busy helping people who “knew her more than I did.”

But that wasn’t the point.

It wasn’t about knowing her “better.”

It was about the fear I felt.

The terror.

The shock.

The fact that no one helped my nervous system make sense of what I had just learned about the world.

CPTSD came from repetition without repair

CPTSD, for me, came from all the other unhealthy patterns that were normal in my family and in my life.

And I want to be clear about something:

Trauma is not being told “no.”

Being disciplined, corrected, or taught right from wrong is part of being raised.

The trauma I’m talking about is different.

It’s the kind that happens when a child is emotionally shut down over and over—

and there is no repair afterward.

Here’s what I mean

It’s running into the house after school, excited to show your parent a paper you didn’t think you’d pass—but you did.

You’re proud. You’re lit up.

And you get brushed off:

“Quit interrupting.”

“I’m busy.”

“I don’t have time.”

So you walk away hurt.

And here’s the part that matters:

In a healthy environment, a parent comes back later and says:

“I’m sorry I snapped. I didn’t mean to take my stress out on you. I should have handled that differently. Now show me your paper.”

That moment repairs the wound.

It teaches the child both:

boundaries (don’t interrupt), and
safety (you’re still loved, seen, and important)

But when the repair never comes… the child learns something else:

Even good things are unsafe.

Even excitement is unsafe.

Even being proud is unsafe.

And when that happens repeatedly, the brain adapts.

Not into confidence.

Into survival mode.

Triggers are not choices

Once I became healthier, I stopped trying to “control” triggers and started learning from them.

A trigger is not something you choose.

It’s your nervous system reacting before your mind can catch up.

For me, triggers often show up as anger.

That anger doesn’t come out of nowhere for no reason—

it’s my nervous system saying:

“This feels like something that hurt you before. This isn’t safe.”

And when you’ve lived through repeated unhealthy dynamics—especially with authority figures—your body learns to recognize tone, energy, dismissal, condescension, passive aggression… instantly.

Even before you can explain it.

The damage wasn’t only what happened — it was what never happened afterward

This is one of the clearest realizations of my healing:

I wasn’t only hurt by what was said or done.

I was hurt by what never came afterward.

No calming down.

No apology.

No accountability.

No repair.

If a child only ever sees “wrong,” but never sees “right,” they don’t learn growth.

They learn confusion.

They learn self-blame.

They learn that relationships are unsafe… even when nothing “big” is happening.

And that kind of programming rewires the brain over time.

When I became healthy, I could finally see what was unhealthy

This is what trauma awareness did for me:

It helped me understand why I reacted the way I did.

Why I carried anger.

Why I overthought everything.

Why I stayed on edge.

Because when you’ve lived in patterns where things explode and never get repaired, your nervous system learns to expect harm.

You don’t rest.

You don’t sleep well.

You wake up exhausted.

And eventually trauma stops living only in the mind.

It moves into the body.

Sweeping it under the rug is not resolution

In my family, conflict was never resolved in a healthy way.

We’d fight.

It would get ugly.

Then everyone would separate, cool off, and later act like nothing happened.

That isn’t healing. That’s avoidance.

And avoidance doesn’t erase trauma.

It stores it.

So the pain stays, unprocessed, until something small ignites it—

and then it comes pouring out.

That’s where trauma dumping can happen.

Not because someone wants to be chaotic—

but because they’ve been carrying too much for too long with nowhere safe to put it.

The truth I had to accept

This is hard, but it’s honest:

You cannot heal while staying in unhealthy environments.

Unhealthy patterns don’t support healing—they sabotage it.

Because unhealthy people deny.

They deflect.

They blame.

They minimize.

They attack when confronted.

And if you keep trying to heal while staying in those dynamics, your nervous system never gets the one thing it needs most:

safety.

shared from lived experience, not professional advice

Silence & Solitude — Part II

The Clarity It Brings

After healing, silence and solitude stop being something you enter — and start becoming something you live from.

The noise doesn’t disappear overnight. What changes is how your body responds to it.

I started noticing clarity first in my reactions. Things that once sent me into panic, over-explaining, or shutdown no longer had the same power. My nervous system no longer treated every moment as a threat.

I used to believe my irritability and agitation were flaws in me — hormones, personality, “just how I am.” Healing showed me the truth: I wasn’t angry, I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t difficult, I was living on edge.

Silence gave me the space to notice that.

Instead of spiraling, I began to pause.

Instead of assuming the worst, I waited.

Instead of forcing myself to fit, I chose alignment.

Silence and solitude after healing are where you learn the difference between a trigger and a truth.

You begin to recognize unhealthy dynamics without needing to name them out loud or prove them to anyone. You see patterns clearly — not with judgment, but with discernment. And that discernment naturally creates boundaries.

Not walls.

Not ultimatums.

But clarity.

People-pleasing starts to lose its grip once you understand the cost. Keeping the peace by allowing behavior that shouldn’t be allowed stops feeling noble and starts feeling dishonest.

Survival mode trained me to prepare for disasters that rarely happened. Healing taught me trust — trust in myself, trust in timing, and trust that not everything needs to be controlled to be safe.

Now the smallest moments feel different.

Speaking honestly no longer feels dangerous. Asking questions doesn’t come with dread. Silence no longer means punishment or abandonment — it means space.

Space to respond instead of react.

Space to listen instead of defend.

Space to choose peace without guilt.

Silence and solitude after healing aren’t about sitting in pain anymore. They’re about sitting with truth — sometimes heavy, often clarifying, always grounding.

Healing taught me that trials and conflict aren’t punishments. They’re teachers. And instead of asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” I now ask, “What is this showing me?”

And in that shift, peace settles in.

Triggers soften. Overthinking quiets. Patience replaces urgency. Waiting becomes trust instead of fear.

I also learned this: healing doesn’t mean abandoning yourself for others anymore. If someone is consciously choosing healthy, you meet them with honesty and care. If they aren’t, you don’t sacrifice your healing to accommodate their dysfunction.

After healing, authenticity matters more than approval.

Truth matters more than comfort.

Presence matters more than performance.

I look around now and realize many of the things I once prayed for are already here. And for the things still unfolding — purpose, direction, calling — I listen quietly.

Silence and solitude didn’t remove me from life.

They taught me how to live it — honestly, healthfully, and without fear.

Sharing from lived experience, not professional advice

Healthy Comes Before Healing

A Sunday Reflection

For a long time, I believed healing meant I had to be “fixed” before I could move forward—before a new relationship, a new job, or a new chapter of life.

But healing doesn’t start there.

Healing begins with becoming healthy.

When you are unhealthy—mentally, emotionally, or spiritually—you don’t heal. You stay stuck. You repeat patterns. You give your power away. You take advice over intuition. You override your gut to keep the peace, to be good, to do what others think is best for you.

And when it doesn’t work out, you blame yourself.

That was my story.

My trauma-shaped brain didn’t think negatively on purpose. It was wired that way by words spoken to me, things done to me, and environments that were never healthy long enough for me to see another way. I gravitated not toward what was truly meant for me, but toward what felt familiar—even when it hurt.

I confused endurance with faith.

Silence with strength.

Staying with being godly.

I believed that if something didn’t work out, it meant God was punishing me. That I didn’t deserve good things. So I layered that belief on top of trauma, on top of survival mode, until my own voice disappeared.

But God never stopped listening.

The shift didn’t come gently. It came through a mental health crash—through isolation, triggers, and finally enough quiet to hear something different. My voice. And God’s.

What I began to understand is this:

Healthy people make choices, not sacrifices of self.

They listen to their gut.

They learn from outcomes without self-destruction.

They walk away from what is unhealthy instead of trying to fix it.

I wasn’t failing because I wasn’t strong enough.

I was stuck because I was trying to heal without first becoming healthy.

I believed it was my responsibility to be the peacekeeper, the fixer, the understanding one. When I named what was unhealthy, I was labeled difficult, dramatic, insubordinate. And when I stepped away, I assumed I was no better—because everyone else seemed so certain I was wrong.

At 53, it finally clicked:

It was never my job to fix anyone else.

Healthy would have said: This isn’t aligned with me.

Healthy would have explained why and walked away.

Healing would have followed.

But empathy, love, and the belief that “family is everything” kept me staying far longer than was safe for my soul. And when you are not healthy, empathy without boundaries will always result in harm.

You cannot force growth on people who don’t see it for themselves.

But you are allowed to say: I love you, and unhealthy is not for me.

Realizing that God was guiding me—not punishing me—changed everything. He was listening the whole time, steering me away from what was never meant for me, even when I fought to stay.

Healthy led me to healing.

And healing finally led me home to myself.

sharing from lived experience, not professional advice.

If you’re in a place so dark…you don’t believe you will ever heal…

I was there once too in survival mode 🩹 and where i discovered that stepping out of survival mode, was my journey to healing ❤️‍🩹

Healing from trauma was never something I believed I could do.

I thought trauma—complex PTSD, triggers, painful memories—was so deeply embedded in my nervous system that healing wasn’t possible. I believed the best I could do was learn to live with it.

And learning to live with it almost ended me.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide, I’m done.

It wasn’t my mind that told me something had to change.

It was my nervous system.

For years, I allowed trauma to sit inside me unhealed. I treated symptoms when they surfaced, hoping that would be enough. But every symptom came from massive triggers—old trauma breaking through the surface after being buried for decades. One small moment could set everything off.

And when it did, I was labeled the problem.

The unstable one.

The one who “needed help.”

The one society looks at sideways, as if mental illness is contagious.

But here’s the truth.

Trauma is like a wound that never healed. Pressure builds underneath it. It becomes painful to the touch. Every time it bursts, there’s temporary relief—everything leaks out, all the infection, all the rot. Then you clean it, cover it, and hope it heals this time.

That’s what survival looked like for me.

I kept reopening the wound.

Exploding.

Slapping on Neosporin and a Band-Aid.

Praying it would finally close.

It never did.

Healing meant going far beneath the surface—digging into places that were painful, ugly, and terrifying. I realized I hadn’t been healing at all. I had only been cleaning the surface and covering it back up.

Nothing was going to heal it except me.

Most of the people who caused my trauma didn’t even realize they did. It started in childhood and rolled forward—like a giant rubber-band ball—collecting every negative belief, every unhealed pattern, every harmful message along the way. My mind had been rewired to believe it all.

Eventually, that wound began leaking into everything—my health, my weight, my heart, my cholesterol, my body. Trauma wasn’t just living in my mind anymore. It was living in me.

Until one day, it blew wide open.

And the only way forward was to go back—to the root—to face each trauma one by one. To walk back into the hell my mind had tried to forget.

What I discovered was devastating and clarifying: in many ways, nothing around me had changed. The environment that made me sick was still there. And you cannot heal while surrounded by infection. Being around unhealed systems while trying to heal only makes the wound worse.

Isolation wasn’t selfish.

It wasn’t punishment.

It was survival.

I reached a point where there was no one left—but if I didn’t fix me, there wouldn’t be a me left at all. I was physically and mentally exhausted. My body was shutting down. I truly believed my time was running out.

At 53 years old, I finally put down the Band-Aid.

I stopped reaching for the Neosporin.

And I faced it head-on.

Some days, the pain was so intense I wanted to quit. I wanted peace now, even if that meant going back to numbing and surviving. But something kept me going.

Healing is becoming healthy.

And once you become healthy, you can finally see clearly—what belongs in your life and what doesn’t. Who belongs—and who never did. You realize it wasn’t just one person. It was a system. A pattern. A lifetime of learned survival.

What I wanted most was truth.

And healing taught me that truth is no longer optional—it’s required.

No more hiding.

No more pretending.

No more facades.

Healing doesn’t end when you become healthy—it continues. And yes, it takes time. A lifetime of trauma doesn’t dissolve overnight. But healing in a healthy body, a healthy mind, a regulated nervous system—that is a gift beyond anything I imagined.

It wasn’t easy.

Healing tore me apart before it rebuilt me.

But once you walk through that fire, you understand why you’ll never return to what was unhealthy. And you realize the hardest truth of all:

It was never you.

The only part that was you… was the version that believed this suffering was your destiny.

That lie kept me angry for a long time—grieving what I lost, the choices that weren’t mine, the life I lived for everyone else. I had to rebuild myself from a place I should have started decades ago.

But healing taught me this:

You cannot change the past.

You can change everything from here forward.

Age doesn’t matter.

Timing doesn’t matter.

Alignment does.

And when you align with your soul—when you choose peace over anxiety—you finally become who you were always meant to be.

And it is more beautiful than you ever imagined. ❤️

Shared from lived experience, not professional advice.

Silence & Solitude

After Healing

Silence and solitude after healing are very different than the silence that comes before it.

This kind of solitude didn’t arrive because I collapsed or gave up.

It came after healing — when I slowly stepped back into the world with new awareness, healthy boundaries, and a nervous system that was no longer living in survival mode.

And those boundaries were tested almost immediately.

Silence and solitude after healing aren’t about stepping away because you think you’re better than anyone, or because family feels “too much,” or because you’re avoiding responsibility. They aren’t rooted in regret, neglect, or isolation.

They are a necessity.

Because healing opens your eyes — not just to your own trauma, but to truths that are painful to see. You begin to understand things about others, about yourself, and about the dynamics you lived inside for so long.

What I realized about myself was this:

I carried so much empathy that I was willing to exhaust myself trying to make sure everyone around me was okay. I believed that if I just explained things better, loved harder, stayed quieter, or gave more, eventually everyone would reach a place of peace and health.

That was never possible — and it was never my job.

Healing shows you that clearly.

You begin to see how rejection, not being heard, and not being included shaped how you reacted — not because you were wrong, but because you were human and hurting. You see how much pain you carried that you never asked for and never deserved. And you realize how few people ever truly sat down to listen, not to fix you or correct you, but simply to understand.

Healing can feel lonely — not because you’re doing it alone, but because you begin to recognize how many people in your life are unhealthy and choosing not to heal.

You notice how many people prefer to avoid uncomfortable truths rather than face them. How easily “moving on” gets labeled as healing, even when nothing has been acknowledged or resolved. You start to recognize unhealthy coping mechanisms in others — the same ones you once used — and you understand why people cling to them.

Staying silent is easier.

Keeping the unhealthy happy is easier.

I don’t judge that — I lived there once too.

But from this side, I can tell you the truth: either way hurts.

The difference is that healing leads to health. Silence without healing only leaves unhealed trauma and deeper dysfunction.

After healing, silence and solitude become places of clarity, not fear.

I used to think my irritability, overreactions, and constant agitation were hormonal or something inherently wrong with me. I believed the narrative that women simply “snap.” But healing showed me something different.

I wasn’t angry — I was overwhelmed.

I wasn’t difficult — I was living on edge.

Survival mode had trained me to prepare for everything, to anticipate problems before they happened, to focus on what went wrong instead of what was happening. Letting my guard down felt dangerous because, in the past, it always had been.

Healing taught me another way.

I learned to focus on the lesson instead of the spiral.

To pause instead of react.

To recognize that fitting into places I no longer belonged didn’t make me loyal — it made me exhausted.

Once you step into health, you can’t unsee unhealthy dynamics. You still care. You still pray. But your time, energy, and access become limited — sometimes nonexistent. Not out of bitterness, but out of self-respect.

People-pleasing looks very different once you understand the cost. Keeping the peace by allowing things that shouldn’t be allowed isn’t peace — it’s chaos disguised as harmony.

Survival mode kept me constantly preparing for disasters that rarely happened. Healing taught me that living fully requires trust — trust in myself, trust in timing, and trust that not everything needs to be controlled.

Now, I notice the difference in the smallest moments.

Situations that once sent me into panic no longer do. Asking questions, sending emails, speaking honestly — none of it carries the same weight. I no longer assume I’ll be misunderstood or punished for existing.

Silence and solitude after healing aren’t about crying alone anymore.

They’re about sitting with the weight of truth — heavy, yes, but beautiful.

Because awakening must be lived, not explained.

Healing teaches you that trials, conflict, loss, and difficulty are part of life — not punishments, but teachers. Instead of asking, “What did I do to deserve this?” you begin to ask, “What is this teaching me?”

And in that shift, peace settles in.

Healing taught me that trauma can be healed. Complex PTSD can soften. Triggers can lose their power. Overthinking fades when patience replaces fear. You learn to wait for what is meant to unfold instead of forcing outcomes.

You also learn that healing doesn’t mean abandoning yourself for others anymore. If someone is on a conscious path toward health, you meet them with kindness and honesty. If they aren’t, you don’t sacrifice your healing to accommodate their dysfunction.

After healing, authenticity matters more than approval.

Truth matters more than appearances.

Presence matters more than performance.

Material things don’t impress me anymore.

Being seen doesn’t drive me anymore.

Living consciously, honestly, and peacefully does.

I look around now and realize that many of the things I prayed for during my darkest days are already here. And for the things I’m still discerning — purpose, direction, calling — I listen quietly. I trust that God speaks through discernment, through peace, through alignment.

Healing taught me that becoming whole means caring for the mind, body, and soul together. And once you live from that place, the world no longer feels like something you must survive.

It becomes something you can live in — honestly, healthfully, and without fear.

And I’m not sure there’s anything more beautiful than that.

shared from lived experience, not professional advice

From Healing Layers to Silence & Solitude

There comes a point in healing where you stop digging.

Not because there’s nothing left to uncover,

but because you’ve uncovered enough to finally rest.

Healing helped me understand what happened,

why it shaped me,

and how I survived it.

Silence and solitude came after—not as isolation,

but as integration.

As space to let everything settle.

As room to breathe without explaining.

As peace without performance.

This is where healing stopped being work

and started becoming a way of living.

Shared as lived experience, not professional advice.

Healing Layers — Part Four

From Survival to Living

When I was in survival mode, I don’t know that I consciously thought about it this way at the time. But looking back, survival looked like constant planning, rigid structure, and never truly resting. Everything had to be done by a certain time—usually by Sunday evening—so I could finally “relax.” Saturdays were spent racing to finish tasks so I could sit down by five or six o’clock, exhausted.

My life had to be in a very specific order just for me to function. Any slight disruption could send me completely over the edge.

People called it controlling. OCD. Needing things my way.

Maybe all of that was true. But what they didn’t see was this: I wasn’t being demanding or selfish—I was being literal. I knew, deep down, that if I didn’t do things this way, I wouldn’t survive the week. And I meant that.

Most weeks, I didn’t.

If work had been heavy and I didn’t get things done at home—if I chose to go out, or drank too much like I used to, or simply rested when I “shouldn’t have”—the following week I would unravel. Sometimes so badly that I had to take a sick day just to get my life back in order. I needed mental health days long before I knew what that even meant.

That was survival.

And for a long time, it was the only way I knew how to live.

Now, I’m sitting here on a Sunday evening around 5:30. One dog is sleeping in my lap. The other is curled up behind my head on the pillow. My husband is finishing painting in the other room, and I’m watching the fish swim quietly in their tanks.

I didn’t get nearly everything done that I planned this weekend—and I’m okay with that.

Yesterday was a full, productive day. We worked around the house, realized we had skipped both breakfast and lunch, took a break around three to eat and watch a couple episodes of a show, then turned the TV off and kept going until almost eight. Today, I did what I could. The rest will wait until next week.

And that’s the difference.

This isn’t new—it’s been happening for a while now. Some nights I do a little. Some nights I’m tired and don’t. None of it feels urgent. None of it feels like a threat.

When that old feeling of I have to get this done right now creeps in, I stop and ask myself why. I’m not talking about real responsibilities—bills, deadlines, things that truly matter. I’m talking about the pressure that used to keep me from living. The things I always said I would do “someday,” but never did because survival didn’t leave room for joy.

Survival taught me how to plan endlessly without ever fully living.

How to talk about things instead of doing them.

How to chase change just to escape the moment—we’ll move, we’ll go, we’ll start over—and then never actually do it.

Not intentionally sabotaging myself, but staying stuck all the same.

Healing brought an awakening.

I hear things now without immediately reacting. I can talk to kind people without assuming there’s something hidden underneath. I understand unhealthy dynamics without being pulled into them. I see that not everyone in an unhealthy environment is unhealthy—but most people will stay quiet to keep the peace.

They’re right. It is easier to do that.

I just couldn’t keep up the façade anymore. Who I am wouldn’t let me.

So now, I step away quietly when I need to. I don’t participate in conversations that only lead to gossip or negativity. Not out of anger or superiority—but because I finally know what alignment feels like.

This has nothing to do with being better, smarter, or chosen. It’s simply about living my life in truth—listening to myself instead of bending into shapes I was never meant to fit.

I notice a softness in myself now. Still structured, still grounded—but not sharp, not frantic. Mornings no longer begin with dread or instant agitation. Instead, I gently organize my thoughts: what truly needs to be done today, and what can wait.

It’s calling my daughter instead of sending a text when something heavy is on my heart. It’s recognizing that there are some people I can’t have those conversations with—and letting that be okay.

Not out of resentment.

Out of growth.

I remove myself from people and places not because I’m above them, but because I can finally see clearly. The fog has lifted. The unhealthy coping mechanisms and dynamics no longer trigger panic or fear—they bring a quiet knowing.

I chose healthy.

And I no longer believe it’s my job to fix anyone else, or to pretend to be someone I’m not just to keep a family dynamic intact. I pray for them. I wish them well. And I choose peace.

Survival taught me survival skills.

Drone mode. Constant planning. Endless lists. Trying to build a perfect world around me just so I could breathe.

It taught me to live in my head—in fantasies and future scenarios that gave me hope when the present felt unbearable.

Healing taught me something else entirely.

To take each moment as it comes.

To stop forcing outcomes.

To trust that when something doesn’t work out, there’s a reason—and that reason doesn’t require punishment or control.

Healing taught me how to have honest conversations with the few people in my life who listen to understand, not to judge or change me.

It taught me how to enjoy the little things—because I finally allowed myself to.

And no matter how things happened, I know this:

When I make a choice now, I’m okay with it.

Because I’m no longer surviving life.

I am finally living it.

Shared as lived experience, not professional advice.

Healing Layers – Part 3: Waiting, Boundaries & Integration

Integration was the part of healing I didn’t expect.

After the unraveling…

after the awareness…

after the realization that so much of my life had been lived in survival…

There came a quiet.

At first, it felt unfamiliar — almost unsettling — because for so long my body had only known chaos, anxiety, and constant internal noise. But slowly, I began to notice something shifting.

My body felt lighter.

My mind felt clearer.

Peace began to replace the constant tension I had lived with for years.

I noticed it most in moments that used to overwhelm me — conversations, disagreements, even conflict. I no longer reacted from panic or spilled everything I had ever carried just to be understood. I could make my point calmly, without over-explaining, without trauma dumping, without losing myself in the process.

That’s when I realized:

Healing had moved from my mind into my body.

Integration is when everything you’ve learned starts to live inside you naturally. You don’t have to think about it anymore — it shows up in how you respond, how you choose, how you pause.

It’s also when you begin to see the weight you carried for so long.

Not just what was done to you —

but what you did to yourself while trying to survive.

The times you stayed quiet to keep the peace.

The moments you went along with things that didn’t align with you.

The belief that doing “the right thing” would somehow make everything calm.

Instead, it created more chaos — just a quieter kind.

Understanding this didn’t bring shame.

It brought relief.

Everything I did made sense at the time. It was survival. It was not healthy — but it was understandable.

Boundaries didn’t come easily at first. I knew what they were almost immediately, but practicing them felt terrifying. I worried about hurting people. I worried about being misunderstood. I worried that if I didn’t explain myself perfectly, I would lose connection altogether.

So I tried to explain — and it only made things worse.

What I eventually learned was this:

Boundaries aren’t something you force.

They are something that emerge when you finally trust yourself.

Now, I don’t have to think about them. They happen naturally. I say “no” without guilt. I choose peace without remorse. And instead of anxiety, I feel calm.

I see it in how I show up in my marriage — choosing together instead of forcing.

I see it in how I support my daughter — without guilt, pressure, or obligation.

I see it in how I move through life — slower, softer, more present.

A healthy environment doesn’t need to be defended or explained.

You don’t have to convince anyone to belong in it.

People are drawn to it naturally — or they aren’t.

One of the greatest gifts of healing has been the quiet.

Slow mornings.

Simple routines.

Time with God.

Stillness that no longer feels like avoidance, but restoration.

This is where the phrase “time heals all wounds” finally makes sense to me — not because time alone does the work, but because once the wounds are opened, understood, and cleaned, time is what allows them to heal.

I don’t know how long this part lasts.

I’m still integrating.

I’m still healing old wounds while allowing new ones to close.

All I know is this:

The waiting isn’t empty.

It’s sacred.

And time will tell.

Shared as lived experience, not professional advice.

Healing layers part 2:

Survival vs Healing: The Difference Changed My Whole Life

Healing isn’t linear, and this reflection comes from a real moment in my journey. I share it as lived experience—honest, unfiltered, and still unfolding.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned this past year is the difference between surviving and healing.

It wasn’t obvious to me at first. I used to think surviving meant I was strong—and in many ways, it did. Surviving got me through. It helped me function. It helped me keep going.

But surviving also kept me living in patterns that were unhealthy.

The simplest way I can describe it now is this:

Healing means living with intention—becoming healthy, layer by layer.

Surviving means continuing to live unhealthy, because it’s all you know.

And there’s no shame in survival. Survival is what you do when you don’t feel safe. When you’re not supported. When your nervous system is trained to brace for the next blow—whether that blow is words, rejection, silence, or emotional unpredictability.

I used to think there was an “in between.” Like maybe I was partly healthy and partly unhealthy depending on the day. But I see it differently now:

There’s healthy and there’s unhealthy—and when you’re intentionally healing, you’re on the road toward healthy. Once you become aware, you can’t unknow what you know. Healing becomes its own kind of spiral—one that doesn’t lead to perfection, but does lead to peace.

Growing up, I was taught that silence mattered more than truth.

That speaking honestly was “making someone look bad.”

That my emotions were inconvenient.

And when a child learns that their voice is unsafe, they don’t stop having feelings… they just learn to bury them.

That’s how survival begins.

When you don’t get to process pain in a safe way, your nervous system stores it. Your mind may forget parts of it, but your body doesn’t. The tension, the fear, the hypervigilance, the shutdown, the overthinking… those become normal.

And eventually, survival starts to look like coping mechanisms.

For me, that often looked like this:

I would try to speak up.

I would get shut down or dismissed.

So I would go quiet.

And I’d hold everything in until something small tipped the scale—then everything would come out at once.

That’s not because I was “crazy.”

That’s what happens when pain has nowhere safe to go.

Healing taught me something different:

Healthy communication is steady.

Unhealed pain becomes an explosion.

And the more we heal, the more we learn to speak with clarity instead of crisis.

People often say, “Nobody’s perfect.” And I agree.

But I also believe something important:

This isn’t about perfection.

It’s about whether something is healthy or unhealthy.

Healthy people still make mistakes. Healthy families still have conflict. Healthy relationships still have hard conversations. The difference is that healthy people repair. They reflect. They take accountability. They care about impact. They don’t require silence to keep the peace.

One of the most misunderstood parts of healing is distance.

I didn’t step away to punish anyone.

I stepped away because I needed space to heal my nervous system—to finally feel what I had spent a lifetime avoiding.

Some people call that isolation. I call it recovery.

Because after you stop surviving, you enter a phase I call the waiting or feeling it period. The part where your body starts releasing what it’s carried for years. The part where you need rest. The part where you need quiet. The part where you stop performing okayness and start becoming real.

And I’m still in that phase.

I don’t know how long it takes.

But I do know this: surviving was easier than healing… and it cost me more.

Healing is harder—but it gives everything back.

I still love my family. I still hope for healing for them in their own time. But I also understand now that I can’t keep returning to unhealthy patterns just because they’re familiar.

I’m choosing peace.

I’m choosing health.

I’m choosing the version of me I missed for so long.

And for the first time, she’s back—she is me. 💛

Healing happens in layers, and this is one moment along the way. If this reflection resonated with you, take what feels supportive and leave the rest. There is no rush here—only permission to move at your own pace.

🌿 HEALING LAYERS – PART 1

Where My Healing Truly Began: January 2024

Healing isn’t linear, and this reflection comes from a real moment in my journey. I share it as lived experience—honest, unfiltered, and still unfolding.

January 2024 was the moment everything inside me began to overflow.

What I thought was a mental spiral was actually my nervous system reaching its limit. Years of suppression, silence, and pretending I was okay had built up to a point where nothing could be pushed down anymore. This time, it wasn’t an interruption I could survive and then move past. This time, it was an eruption—and there was no putting it back together the way it had been before.

At the time, I truly believed I was going crazy. My thoughts were racing, my body felt overwhelmed, and the pain I had ignored for so long began surfacing all at once. But what I understand now is that I wasn’t breaking—I was waking up.

I was awakening to the pain.

Awakening to the trauma.

Awakening to the truth that what hurt me in the past was still happening in the present.

And something inside me was done holding it quietly.

That’s when I entered what I now call my “I am done” era. I stopped pretending things were okay. I started speaking up—even when my voice was shaking, even when I was quiet, even when it made things harder for everyone involved. At the time, it felt like everything got worse. And in many ways, it did.

But healing often disrupts what depends on your silence.

For most of my life, my pain was allowed to exist only as a story—something sad, unfair, unfortunate. People could hear it, acknowledge it, even sympathize. But when I started connecting the dots—when I tried to show that what had been done to me was still being done to me—that’s when discomfort entered the room.

Healing isn’t about presenting two sides of a story like a courtroom.

It’s about telling your story.

What happened.

How it made you feel.

And what it took to survive—and eventually overcome it.

Before I could step into who I was always meant to be, I completely unraveled. And in that unraveling, I hurt people.

I want to say this clearly and honestly: I did not hurt people with lies. I hurt people by sharing truths that should have been held with more care. They were valid. They were real. But they were spoken from a breaking point, when I didn’t yet have the tools to contain the depth of what I was carrying.

To those I hurt in that season, I am truly sorry.

I spent my entire life surviving—staying quiet, enduring pain and treatment I never deserved. But what I never did was heal. Instead, I buried it all so deeply that only my nervous system remembered it. My mind forgot much of it. My body did not.

And when you begin unwrapping trauma layer by layer, there are days when the pain becomes so intense you can’t function. All you can do is cry, breathe, and survive the moment. Until one day, you begin to see how those experiences shaped traits within you that were never meant to be permanent. They were survival responses—not identity.

This is why so many people choose silence.

Why they protect the toxic.

Why they pretend things are fine.

Because healing is harder than surviving.

But survival builds a dangerous nervous system. One that stays hyper-vigilant, reactive, exhausted. One that eventually collapses under the weight of everything it was forced to hold.

I know this because I lived it.

Healing, on the other hand, changes everything. Your mindset changes. Your body changes. Your health changes. Some things take time to repair. Some damage may linger longer. But the direction is different. The intention is different. And the peace that begins to settle in is unlike anything survival ever offered.

After awareness comes what I call the waiting or feeling it period. The space where you step away—not out of anger, but out of necessity. Where you finally allow yourself to take in what was done to you, without minimizing it or explaining it away.

Forgiveness came easier for me than proximity. Because forgiveness doesn’t require continued exposure to unhealthy behavior. And healing requires discernment.

There is no such thing as perfect—only healthy and unhealthy. Healthy people can engage with unhealthy environments briefly, but they don’t stay long. Because environments shape us. I learned that the hard way.

January 2024 was the moment I unknowingly chose healing.

I chose it messily. Imperfectly. Uncomfortably.

But I chose it.

And this is where my healing journey truly began.

Shared as lived experience, not professional advice.