The Life Preserver

 My first introduction to God came just before I entered recovery.

I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening.

I won’t even try to explain it.

Words could never do it justice.

What I received was something I had searched for my entire life without knowing it.

Faith.

For the first time, I experienced a love and a presence that reached places inside me no person ever had.

It felt as though God had thrown me a life preserver at the exact moment I was drowning.

And I held on with everything I had.

Because I was drowning.

I was drowning in pain.

In shame.

In guilt.

In self-hatred.

God became my closest companion.

I talked with Him every day as though we were dear friends walking through life together.

I trusted Him.

That trust carried me through some of the darkest chapters of my life.

Even after I entered recovery, there were devastating losses.

My daughter’s death.

The many griefs that followed.

Yet through it all, I felt God’s presence beside me.

I never felt abandoned.

It was as though He held me up whenever I no longer had the strength to stand.

Looking back, I realize that my relationship with God became the safest relationship I had ever known.

He didn’t shame me.

He didn’t punish me.

He didn’t ask me to earn His love.

He simply met me where I was.

For a woman who had spent so much of her life searching for safety, it was the greatest gift I had ever received.

Neuroplastic- What does This Mean?

 A few months ago, I was introduced to a word I had never heard before.

Neuroplasticity.

At first, it sounded complicated.

But as I began learning about it, something clicked.

I came to understand that sometimes the brain and nervous system can continue producing pain signals in an effort to protect us, even when that protection is no longer helpful.

In some strange way, my brain seems to believe it is helping me.

It has learned to stay on high alert.

To protect.

To brace.

To prepare for danger.

The heartbreaking part is that what may have begun as protection now feels like suffering.

I won’t pretend this has been easy.

It has been one of the greatest challenges of my life.

Every day I wake up hoping my brain and nervous system will begin to learn a new story.

A story of safety.

A story that doesn’t require pain to keep me protected.

I am incredibly grateful for the people walking beside me.

My doctors.

My support team.

My dear friends.

Their love has carried me through some very dark days.

But love alone has not made the pain disappear.

That has been difficult to accept.

Healing, it seems, cannot be rushed.

It cannot be forced.p

And it cannot happen simply because I want it badly enough.

So I find myself returning to the same place again and again.

Patience.

Compassion.

Faith.

Perhaps neuroplasticity also offers hope.

If the brain can learn patterns that keep it stuck in protection, maybe it can also learn new patterns that lead toward safety.

I don’t know how long that journey will take.

But today, I choose to believe that my brain is not my enemy.

It has been trying, in its own imperfect way, to protect me.

Now, little by little, I hope to teach it something new.

That the danger has passed.

That my body is worthy of peace.

And that healing, however slowly it comes, is still possible.

Protection Isn’t Intimacy

 I have been wondering how long I have been afraid of my own body.

As I sit quietly with that question, it feels as though the answer reaches back to my earliest years.

Perhaps even to the time when I was two years old.

I can’t say with certainty what happened.

My mind holds no clear memories.

But my body has carried a story for as long as I can remember.

For many years, I lived in protection mode.

Without realizing it, I learned to guard myself.

To stay alert.

To brace.

To disconnect from the places that felt too vulnerable.

When I came into recovery, something beautiful began to change.

I slowly became kinder to my body.

I stopped pushing it quite so relentlessly.

I learned to offer it more compassion than criticism.

But looking back now, I realize something was still missing.

I had learned kindness.

I had not yet learned intimacy.

There is a difference.

Kindness is treating my body gently.

Intimacy is feeling at home within it.

Protection creates distance.

Intimacy invites closeness.

For much of my life, protection was exactly what I needed.

It helped me survive.

It carried me through experiences that felt overwhelming.

I am grateful for the wisdom of a body that did everything it could to keep me going.

But perhaps my body is asking something different of me now.

Not to abandon protection overnight.

Not to force trust before it is ready.

But to slowly, gently become a friend to the body that has carried me through every season of my life.

To listen instead of defend.

To soften instead of brace.

To come home instead of stand guard.

Perhaps this is the next step in my healing.

Not fighting my body.

Not fixing my body.

But building a relationship with it.

One breath.

One gentle touch.

One act of trust at a time.

Maybe that is what intimacy feels like.

Finally coming home to the body that has been waiting so patiently for me all along.