I Though I Was Writing My Story-But My Story Was Healing Me

I started writing my book more than twenty years ago.

Back then, I thought I was ready to tell my story. But when I look back at what I wrote, I realize I was still stuck in blame. I could tell you what happened to me. I could tell you who hurt me and what they did. But I hadn't healed enough to understand how those experiences had shaped me, or how I continued carrying them into my own life.

Over the next twenty years, life took me down paths I never could have imagined.

There were divorces.

Bad relationships. Losses.

Heartbreak.

Moments that brought me to my knees and others that forced me to stop and look at myself.

For years, I thought I was moving forward. In many ways, I was. But I eventually realized I was also circling the same old wounds.

The people changed.

The circumstances changed.

The pain wore different faces.

But underneath it all were many of the same wounds asking to be seen.

It wasn't until I became quiet enough to really look at the patterns in my life that I began to see the places within myself that still needed healing.

Vulnerability Was Never Safe

One of the hardest parts of my healing journey has been learning how to be vulnerable.

As a child, vulnerability wasn't safe.

Crying could mean being given something more to cry about. Showing emotion could make things worse. Needing someone meant depending on people who might not be there when I needed them.

So I learned to protect myself.

I learned to be strong. Independent.

Capable.

I learned how to lock my heart away beneath heavy chains and an ironclad lock and convince myself that I didn't need anyone to help me carry what was inside.

For a long time, I believed vulnerability meant weakness.

Shadow work helped me understand something completely different.

Vulnerability can be strength.

There is strength in allowing someone to see the real you.

There is strength in giving someone access to a heart you've spent years protecting.

There is strength in allowing someone to help you without believing it means you're helpless.

And there is incredible strength in allowing yourself to love even though you know love can sometimes hurt.

Little by little, I began unlocking the places within me I had spent a lifetime protecting.

Then I Started Writing Again

When I returned to my book all these years later, I wasn't the same woman who had started it.

And neither was the story.

With every chapter I wrote, I learned something more about myself and the life I had lived.

I began seeing the people in my story differently, too.

I started recognizing that everyone carries wounds.

Sometimes those wounds spill into the lives of other people.

Anger can grow from pain.

Control can grow from fear.

Manipulation can develop from someone's desperate attempt to feel safe, loved, worthy, or in control of a life that once made them feel powerless.

People can spend their entire lives trying to survive wounds they don't even realize they have.

Understanding that changed the way I looked at my own story.

It didn't suddenly make the things that happened to me okay.

Understanding someone's wounds does not excuse the wounds they gave you.

Abuse is still abuse.

Neglect is still neglect.

Manipulation is still manipulation.

We are still responsible for the ways our unhealed wounds affect other people.

But I began to realize there is a difference between excusing someone's behavior and understanding where it began.

That understanding helped me loosen my grip on some of the anger I had carried for years.

The Question Changed

For much of my life, I asked:

Why did they do this to me?

Healing eventually taught me to ask different questions.

What happened to them?

What happened to me?

What did I learn because of it?

What did I have to become in order to survive it?

And maybe most importantly:

Do I still need to be that person today?

Those questions changed everything.

Because survival creates patterns.

The little girl who learns not to cry may become the woman who struggles to ask for help.

The child who learns that love isn't safe may become the adult who keeps people at a distance, or desperately tries to keep them close.

The child who learns to anticipate everyone's moods may become the adult who spends her life trying to keep everyone happy.

We do what we need to do to survive.

But sometimes we carry those survival skills long after the danger has passed.

Healing has been learning which parts of me protected me then but were hurting me now.

Twenty Years Later

If I had finished my book twenty years ago, it would have been a very different story.

It would have told you what happened to me.

The book I wrote today helped me understand what happened within me because of it.

That is the story I wasn't ready to tell twenty years ago.

Writing each chapter became another mirror. Sometimes I didn't like what I saw. Sometimes I had to walk away from the computer and cry. Sometimes I needed time to process what I had just realized.

And sometimes I looked back at a younger version of myself and, instead of judging her, finally understood her.

I thought I was writing about the woman I used to be. Instead, page by page, I began meeting her.

The scared little girl.

The angry teenager.

The woman desperate to be loved.

The woman who made mistakes.

The woman who survived.

And eventually, the woman who decided she wanted to understand why.

Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts writing this book has given me.

I didn't just get to tell my story.

I finally learned how to witness it.

And somewhere between the woman who started writing twenty years ago and the woman who finally finished the last chapter, I realized something:

The shadows I spent so much of my life running from weren't there to destroy me.

They were showing me where I still needed light.