strength
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Introspection — what better way to start a week. Question: Does my past abuse, and the actions of survival and sin I’ve done since, make me too bad for a relationship with God? Children have a hard time making a distinction between themselves and thier parents. God does not. The actions and sins of another…
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The ghosts linger, don’t they? They nestle in the marrow, whispering their truths through the bloodline. Trauma isn’t just a word; it’s a tide that laps at the edge of every generation, rewriting our stories with ink invisible yet indelible. It hides in the small gestures: in the sighs between sentences, in the silences that…
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Once, my voice was a thief’s prize. Silenced, stifled, taken in the dead of night—an offering to someone else’s story, not mine. I became a hollow woman, a puppet on their stage, lips moving but soundless, thoughts shriveled into whispers I dared not hear. I was nothing but a shadow stretched long over years, my…
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Introspection — what better way to start a week. Question: Don’t we all want to be a good son or daugther? What happens when that means I need to be disobedient to my parents’ rules to survive? What if my speaking up goes against everything they taught me? What if my needs now must surface…
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I have always thought that pruning the soul is like cutting away dead branches in the heart’s garden—those twisted limbs, heavy with lies and betrayal, the ones that choke the light, the truth. I once believed in people the way the morning believes in the sun. But when they let me down, when they tore…
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I stood there, small and brittle, in the shadow of your rage. You, the goliath of my nightmares, towering over me with fists clenched—not always in your hands, but in your words, in the way you crushed me with a look, a silence. I learned the art of shrinking early, back when I was just…
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There’s a delicate moment, almost invisible, that stretches between the end of tragedy and the beginning of something new. I have lived there, in that thin, gray space where everything feels raw, unmade, like a wound that hasn’t yet decided if it will scar or heal. How do we begin again when the world as…
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Mine is a story woven with threads of detestation, betrayal, haunting memories, and a soul that was nearly destroyed. But it is also a story of redemption, learning to trust again, hope, and feeling truly alive. For years, I lived with a sense of hatred towards myself and my body. The abuse I suffered at…
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I still get stuck in the belief that my parents weren’t that bad. I was raped before I turned four and my mother was an active participant. But a child has to believe that the person put in charge of taking care of them is good, right? What else can a child believe. So, day…
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On this journey I’ve had to cast the courage to care so many times. I’ve wanted to quit, give up, stay with inappropriate people and just stop caring. The more I cared, the more I had to work at discovering the hidden evils around me. I remember telling Redmond, my counselor of many years, “Can…