When the Hiding Place Disappeared

 There is a connection between the sensitive little girl I once was and the fear I still feel today.

She grew up in a world where punishment and fear were constant companions. To survive, she learned to look for safety wherever she could find it.

For much of my life, that safety lived inside relationships.

What looked like love was often something deeper—a longing to feel protected. A longing to know that someone stronger was standing between me and the things I feared.

Then Jack died.

For the first time in my adult life, the hiding place was gone.

The rug was pulled out from beneath me.

A few months later, the bladder pain arrived.

Perhaps that was a coincidence.

Perhaps not.

What I do know is that the little girl inside me suddenly felt exposed. The safety she had borrowed from someone else was no longer there.

And there was nowhere left to hide.

Not behind a relationship.

Not behind another person.

Not behind the illusion that someone else could rescue her.

For the last two years, I have been sitting beside that frightened child, helping her learn something entirely new:

That safety does not live outside of her.

It never did.

It lives within her.

Within me.

And though the fear still visits, I no longer feel the need to run from it or cover it up.

I am learning to stay.

To comfort the child.

To trust God.

And to discover that the strength I once searched for in others has been quietly waiting inside me all along.

What if the Pain was Never the Problem

 Sometimes I sit back and wonder about the odds.

Fibromyalgia.

Chronic nerve pain in both knees.

Bladder pain.

Three different conditions. Three different chapters of my life. And despite countless doctors, tests, supplements, treatments, diets, and procedures, none of them were truly healed by anything outside of me.

I spent years chasing answers.

Thousands of dollars.

Countless appointments.

Endless hope followed by disappointment.

Fibromyalgia disappeared when I stopped worrying about it.

The knee pain never fully left, but I learned to live beside it.

And then came the bladder.

Once again, I followed every recommendation. I endured invasive treatments and restrictive diets. I did everything I was told to do.

Nothing changed.

Then something unexpected happened.

One treatment left me in excruciating pain for three days. By the fourth day, the pain was quiet. No sign of it..

Not reduced.

Gone.

For nearly a month.

I’ve often wondered what happened.

Was it the treatment?

Maybe.

But deep down, I suspect something else occurred.

The pain became so intense that I finally surrendered.

Not to the doctors.

Not to the treatments.

To life itself.

For a brief moment, I stopped fighting.

And when I stopped fighting, the pain disappeared.

Thirty days later, I watched fear slowly return. I watched my mind begin searching, monitoring, worrying, and trying to control the outcome.

And little by little, the pain returned too.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what this means.

I only know that after all these years, I am less interested in fixing my body and more interested in understanding what it has been trying to teach me.

Perhaps the greatest healing is not found in control.

Perhaps it is found in surrender.

The Protector

 I am learning more about my little girl and the many ways she has tried to protect me.

For years, she whispered stories born of fear: You can’t trust people. You can’t trust yourself. You are not enough.

Those stories held me hostage for much of my life. None of them were true, but I didn’t know that then. I believed them.

Recovery changed that. Slowly, those emotional wounds began to heal, and my relationship with myself transformed. I learned self-compassion. I learned trust. I learned love for myself and others.

But my clever little girl found another way to protect me.

She moved into my body.

When pain arrived, she filled my mind with frightening stories. She kept me searching, fixing, trying harder. Doctor after doctor. Treatment after treatment. Yet nothing seemed to help.

Today, I see it more clearly.

It was never about my body.

It was about a frightened child and a nervous system that had been once again, trying to keep me safe.

How does a little girl protect herself?

She makes her world smaller.

When pain comes, she wants to pull inward. Stay home. Stay focused on her body. Figure out how to make the pain go away.

Just as she once taught me not to trust others, she now tries to protect me by keeping me confined.

But I see her now.

And I understand.

Fear does not get to decide the size of my life.

My little girl no longer gets to be my protector.

She gets to be what she always was—a sweet, sensitive child who deserves love, safety, and freedom.

My protector is no longer fear.

My protector is intuition.

And intuition always leads me toward life.

The Many Hiding Places

 For most of my life, the little girl inside me was looking for somewhere to hide.

Sometimes she hid behind relationships. Sometimes behind motherhood. Sometimes behind the hope that another person could make her feel safe.

But those were not her only hiding places.

She hid in creativity, disappearing for hours into projects, art, and imagination. Creating gave her relief from a world that often felt too harsh and overwhelming.

She hid in helping others too.

That began when I was young and eventually became part of my identity. Nearly every path I chose involved service, healing, teaching, or caring for others. There was genuine love in that, but there was also a frightened child who felt safer focusing on someone else’s needs than her own.

Over the years, there were other hiding places.

Food.

Alcohol.

Drugs.

Busyness.

Chaos.

Anything that could soften fear or pull attention away from what lived underneath.

None of these things were wrong. They were simply the ways I learned to survive.

But one by one, life has removed them.

The relationships.

The distractions.

The attachments.

Even much of the creativity that once filled my days has gone quiet.

And now she stands exposed.

The little girl who spent a lifetime searching for safety outside herself.

For a long time, that exposure felt terrifying.

Today, it feels different.

Today, I wonder if what I call exposure is really an invitation.

An invitation to stop hiding.

To stop running.

To stop looking outside myself for what has always been waiting within.

Perhaps this is not the end of her hiding places.

Perhaps it is the beginning of her freedom.