Seeing Her Clearly

 This morning, I saw something I had never fully understood before.

I saw how sensitive I was as a child.

Not weak.

Not broken.

Just deeply sensitive.

As the realization washed over me, all I could do was weep.

I spent much of my life trying to protect that tender little girl. I hid her behind control, behind relationships, behind the belief that someone else could keep me safe.

Especially men.

For years, boyfriends and partners became my shelter from fears I didn’t yet understand. Being alone felt frightening because the child inside me felt frightened.

Then my partner died.

A few months later, the bladder pain arrived.

The knee pain was already there, but this new pain brought something else with it—a wave of fear so deep it seemed to touch every part of me.

I began to see how much strength I had borrowed from others, especially from the man I loved.

And for the last two years, I have been learning to walk through fear without him.

I handed myself over to doctor after doctor, searching for someone to save me. But nothing they offered brought the relief.

Now, I find myself facing something that feels terrifying to that little girl:

Learning to trust myself.

Learning to trust my body.

Learning to trust God.

The fear is still here.

The pain is still here.

But so am I.

And each day, I sit beside that sensitive little girl and remind her of something she has needed to hear all her life:

You are not alone.

Looking for Safety

 I did not feel safe in the home I grew up in.

Without realizing it, I spent much of my life looking for that missing sense of safety in other people.

Sometimes I found it.

Often, I did not.

Because what is familiar can easily disguise itself as what is comfortable, I was drawn to relationships that echoed parts of my childhood. Not all of them, but enough that the pattern became impossible to ignore.

I confused connection with loyalty.

Proximity with trust.

Hope with reality.

Some friendships carried the same confusion I had known with my sister—mixed messages, disappointments, and truths that lived beneath the surface but were rarely spoken aloud.

I don’t blame them.

And I don’t blame myself.

We can only love from the level of understanding we have at the time.

The truth is, I didn’t know what genuine friendship felt like.

Not yet.

But life has been a patient teacher.

Over the years, many relationships have fallen away. A few have remained.

The women who are still in my life today offer something I once searched for but could not name:

Honesty.

Loyalty.

Safety.

The kind of love that does not require me to ignore my instincts or abandon myself.

It took me many years to recognize the difference.

But I know it now.

And knowing it has changed everything.

Breaking the Rules

 For most of my life, I have been a rule follower.

As a child, rules were tied to survival. If I was good enough, careful enough, obedient enough, perhaps I could avoid punishment.

That belief followed me into adulthood.

When fear appeared, I looked for the rules.

And I followed them faithfully.

This past year, fear led me into a world of bladder rules—restrictive diets, canceled plans, avoided activities, treatments, procedures, and endless attempts to fix what felt broken.

I did everything I was told to do.

Including invasive bladder instillations.

I followed the rules the best I could.

Yet nothing truly changed.

A few days ago, something inside me shifted.

I decided I was no longer willing to organize my life around fear.

I began eating foods I had avoided for months. I started drinking coffee again. I returned to my yoga mat. I met friends for coffee. I took evening walks.

In short, I started living again.

And almost immediately, my bladder grew louder.

The old fear whispered, See what happens when you break the rules?

But another voice—the wiser one—asked a different question:

Am I being punished?

The answer that rises from deep within me is no.

I think there is still a frightened little girl inside me who expects consequences whenever she steps outside the lines.

A little girl who learned that freedom could be dangerous.

Today, I sit with her gently.

I remind her that the rules are not God.

The doctors are not God.

Fear is not God.

And punishment is no longer her story.

Learning to Grieve What I Loved

 My first experience of unconditional love came on four legs.

As a little girl, I did not feel safe in my home, but I felt safe with my dog. She was my companion, my comfort, my refuge from a world that often felt frightening.

When I left home after high school, I was told she could not come with me.

I had to let her go.

I don’t know that I ever truly grieved that loss.

Years later, life brought me another beloved dog. By then, I had spent years caring for my grandmother with Alzheimer’s and walking beside my daughter through her addiction. I was exhausted in ways I didn’t yet understand.

When it came time to move, I made the painful decision to rehome my beloved friend.

At the time, I had many reasons.

I told myself I was doing what was practical.

What was necessary.

But years later, a deeper truth surfaced.

I had done to myself what had been done to me as a child.

I had taken away something I loved.

Something that brought me comfort.

Something that made me feel safe.

Not out of cruelty, but out of a lifetime of believing that love was something to be sacrificed.

The grief of that decision still lives in me.

Not because I made the best decision I could with what I knew then, but because I never allowed myself to mourn what was lost.

Perhaps that is what is asking for my attention now.

Not judgment.

Not guilt.

Grief.

A grief that has been waiting patiently for many years to finally be felt.

And maybe healing begins by letting my heart break for what it loved.

The Vortex

 About eleven years ago, while talking to God as I often did, words came out of my mouth that surprised me.

“God, if this is all there is to life, I’m ready to come home.”

The moment I said it, I stopped.

At that time, my life was full. I had recovery, friendships, creativity, women I sponsored, and a partner I loved deeply.

There was nothing wrong.

And yet, beneath the life I had built, I felt a longing I could not name.

Not for something different.

For something deeper.

So I opened my hands.

And surrendered.

Not knowing that everything was about to change.

What followed was not a dramatic event.

It was a slow unraveling.

The life that had once felt solid began to shift beneath my feet. Relationships changed. Certainties dissolved. Doors I expected to remain open quietly closed.

Again and again, I found myself standing in unfamiliar territory.

At first, I resisted.

I searched for answers, explanations, and certainty.

But the deeper invitation was not to understand.

It was to trust.

Looking back, I can see that I had entered what I now call the vortex.

A space between what was and what would be.

A place where old identities fall away before new ones are formed.

A place that feels like loss while something sacred is quietly being born.

I did not know it then.

I only knew that God had answered the prayer I never meant to pray.

The years that followed carried me deeper into that unknown space.

Things I once depended on no longer held the same meaning.

Roles I had identified with began to loosen their grip.

Even my understanding of God was being transformed.

There were seasons when I felt suspended between worlds—

no longer who I had been,

not yet who I was becoming.

It was uncomfortable.

Sometimes lonely.

Often confusing.

Yet beneath it all, something steady remained.

A quiet presence.

A gentle knowing that even when I could not see the path, I was not walking it alone.

Over time, I began to understand that the vortex was not a punishment.

It was an invitation.

An invitation to release what could no longer carry me.

An invitation to trust what could not yet be seen.

An invitation to come home to a deeper relationship with God, with myself, and with life itself.

The transformation was not happening around me.

It was happening within me.

And perhaps that was the answer to my prayer all along.