The Truth Still Lives

 Today the pain is loud.

It reaches beyond my body and touches places that have been waiting a lifetime to be seen. Physical pain has a way of opening doors I didn’t even know were still locked. Behind them lives a little girl who learned far too early that her body was not entirely her own.

As I sit with the pain, memories do not always arrive as photographs. Sometimes they arrive as sensations, as fear, as a story written in my nervous system rather than in my mind.

My rights as a child were violated.

I was not allowed to have a voice. I was not allowed to have needs. Feelings were dangerous. Even tears could invite punishment. Fear became my first language, and silence became the safest place I knew.

I believe something happened to me when I was very young. I cannot point to a memory or prove it with certainty. What I know is what my body has carried for decades—the fear, the shame, the feeling of being disconnected from my own body. Those sensations have spoken long before words ever could.

For years I wondered why I felt ashamed of something I could not name.

Now I understand that children often carry emotions that never belonged to them.

I also spent much of my life believing I had failed my sister.

I carried guilt that was never mine to carry. Yet when I look back with gentler eyes, I can see that my trust was broken. She lied to get me into trouble. She took things that belonged to me. She often positioned herself as the victim, and somehow I accepted the role of the one who had failed.

That burden followed me into adulthood.

It is only now that I am beginning to lay it down.

My brother never left me with that same confusion. I never knew him to intentionally cause harm to me or to anyone else. His presence reminds me that not every relationship was built on fear.

I also remember believing I was selfish because that was the message I absorbed from my mother.

But how can a child be selfish when she never asks for anything?

The contradictions have taken years to untangle.

Slowly, patiently, the scattered pieces of my life are finding one another. The picture is becoming clearer, even when it hurts to see.

The deepest truth is not that I was broken.

The deepest truth is that I adapted in order to survive.

I grew to love my sister.

I grew to love my parents.

In time, I forgave them all.

But love does not rewrite history.

Forgiveness does not ask me to deny what happened.

The truth still lives.

And finally…

So do I.

The Little Girl Still Waiting

 Today I could see, more clearly than ever, how the pain in my body is woven together with the pain of my childhood.

When the pain flares, it isn’t only my body that reacts. Something much older awakens. Helplessness. Fear. The feeling that something bad could happen at any moment.

As a child, I walked on eggshells. Every room carried the possibility of danger. I learned to read moods before I learned to trust my own. Home was never a place where my nervous system could truly rest.

Some days, I realize I am still walking on eggshells—only now it is around the pain in my body. I listen for every sensation. I brace for the next flare. I wait for the next wave of suffering, just as I once waited for the next emotional storm.

The body remembers what the mind wishes it could forget.

I have spent years talking to the little girl inside me. I tell her that she is loved. I tell her that I will never leave her. I promise that I will stand beside her, no matter what tomorrow brings.

And yet, if I am completely honest, the words do not always reach her.

Not because they are untrue.

But because what she needed was never simply reassurance.

She needed safety.

Even my grandparents, who loved me with all their hearts, could not give her that. Their love was real, but they could not change the world she had to return to. Love could soothe her for a little while, but it could not remove the fear that lived inside the walls of home.

The little girl discovered safety only when she was away from the house. Outside, she could breathe. Outside, her body softened. Outside, she could simply be a child.

But the little girl who felt trapped inside that house never truly left.

She is still there.

Not trapped in the past, but carried forward in the nervous system that learned to survive instead of relax.

Perhaps healing is not about convincing her she is safe with words.

Perhaps healing is patiently sitting beside the place where she is still frozen in time.

No rushing.

No fixing.

No asking her to move before she is ready.

Only staying.

Only loving.

Only becoming the steady presence she searched for all those years ago.

Maybe one day she will believe that the danger has passed.

Until then, I will remain beside her.

Bringing Up Old Trauma

This has been a painful week.

First, my beloved cat became very sick. I held my breath for days, afraid I might lose him. Thankfully, he pulled through.

Then, the very next day, my little bird Lucy became ill.

As I write this, I am waiting for the veterinarian to call. Deep inside, I already know what is coming. I know have to let her go.

It is bringing more than today’s grief.

It is stirring every goodbye my heart has ever known.

My thoughts return to my daughter, Jody. For eight years I watched addiction slowly pull her away from me. There were moments no mother ever forgets—moments of fear, helplessness, and heartbreak that still live quietly inside me.

Jody has been gone for twenty years, yet I wonder if my body is still carrying pieces of that trauma.

Perhaps that is little Lucy’s unexpected gift to me.

Not to create more pain, but to gently uncover the places that are still waiting to be held with love.

Learning to Validate Myself

 Whenever I was punished as a child, my feelings were never acknowledged.

My father would take out the belt and, in his rage, strike out at us children. No one talked about what had happened afterward. No one asked how we felt. No one offered comfort.

My mother often initiated the punishments, then disappeared. Her explanation was always the same: It was done out of love.

But there was never any acknowledgment that my father had lost control. There was never an apology. Never a soft place to land.

I realize now that something in me has been searching for that comfort ever since.

These years of living with chronic pain have brought that little girl to the surface once again. She has wanted others to understand how hard it is. She has longed for validation from doctors, friends, and anyone who might finally say, I see your suffering.

And yet, no amount of reassurance from outside ever seemed to ease what she was truly searching for.

Perhaps because what she needed was never simply validation of her pain.

She needed comfort.

She needed tenderness.

She needed someone to say, What happened to you mattered. Your feelings matter. You did not deserve to suffer alone.

Today, I am learning to give her what she never received.

I sit with her gently. I listen. I validate her feelings. I remind her that she is safe, loved, and no longer alone.

My language around pain is beginning to soften.

There have not yet been physical changes, but something inside me is changing.

And perhaps that is where healing begins.

Living in Survival

 It is becoming clearer to me just how deeply my childhood shaped my life.

For so many years, I lived from fear and survival. It was not a choice I consciously made; it was something I learned as a child. I was conditioned to live that way. Fear became as natural as breathing.

From the outside, much of my life looked beautiful. There were homes, relationships, children, creativity, and accomplishments. But beneath it all, I can see now how often the wounded child within me was running the show.

She was always searching for safety.

Sometimes she tried to find it through relationships. Sometimes through control. Sometimes through staying busy, helping others, creating, or carefully managing her surroundings. She did the best she could with what she knew.

Looking back, I can see how fear shaped many of my choices. Some of those choices brought pain—to myself and to others. I take responsibility for that. Recovery taught me the importance of honesty and accountability.

But it also taught me something equally important: grace.

Today, I no longer judge myself or the wounded child. She was not broken. She was surviving.

And survival, while necessary for a season, is not the same as living.

Perhaps that is the work before me now—not simply to survive, but to live. To move beyond fear and into trust. To let love, rather than fear, guide the rest of my story.

Facing Fear

 Because of the physical abuse I experienced as a child, the sensitive little girl inside me grew up afraid of physical pain.

I didn’t realize until a few years ago that I was still carrying that fear.

And then, almost as if my body was asking to be heard, the nerve pain arrived—first in my knees, and years later, in my bladder.

For a long time, I believed the pain was something to fix.

Today, I see something different.

I see a child who is thrashing because of fear.

I have faced fear before. I faced it when I entered recovery. I faced it when I began inner child work. I faced it when I allowed myself to grieve the losses that shaped my life.

And each time, I learned the same lesson:

The only way through fear is to face it.

I won’t pretend this is easy.

It isn’t.

This is a deep challenge. Perhaps my second deepest.

But somewhere inside, I know that the frightened little girl who has spent a lifetime bracing for pain can learn something new.

She can learn that pain is not punishment.

She can learn that fear does not have to lead.

And she can learn that she is safe.

I believe it is time.

Time to stop running.

Time to trust.

Time to walk through fear and discover what waits on the other side.