trauma
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Childhood was a house where I learned the weight of footsteps. I knew who was coming by the complaint of the floor. I knew when to become small. The wallpaper kept its little flowers. Morning arrived, offensively ordinary. I was sexually abused. I write it plainly because I spent years making a thicket of language…
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Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”Anyone who has tried to heal a family wound knows how inconveniently alive the past can be. We bury it, and it comes down to breakfast. We forbid it to speak, and discover that our children have learned its language.Long before we had scientific names…
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There is a strange thing that happens when you have spent most of your life surviving. You become very good at it. You learn to read the room before anyone speaks. You learn which footsteps mean trouble. You learn to anticipate moods, swallow needs, stay useful, stay busy, stay alert. You become capable. Independent. Productive.…
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I used to think I knew what fulfillment felt like. That is almost funny now. I had experienced pleasure. Obsession. Attention. Novelty. Desire. The electric little religions of being admired, wanted, entertained, stimulated. I had mistaken intensity for depth so many times that I thought the two were synonymous. I thought I was full. I…
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‘You weren’t born to be anything you want; you were born to be something quite specific.’ —Martin Shaw, Smokehole Somewhere along the way I was taught that freedom meant becoming anything I wanted. Build yourself. Reinvent yourself. Curate yourself. Keep every door open until life itself becomes one long hallway of mirrors. But God has…
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When I was a little girl, I learned that silence could become a second skin. It wrapped itself around what had been done to me. It taught me to smile while my spirit folded itself into smaller and smaller corners. It whispered that survival was the same thing as peace. It wasn’t. Silence did not…
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Times of reflection are the best way to start a week. Ask yourself this question: “Do I believe that help is coming? A life without hope is a very bleak existence. Today’s world seems to offer hope as a gift of denial. Hope is not denial. Hope knows that help is always coming because when…
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I spent years trying not to feel. Not just pain. Joy, too. Longing. Grief. Love. Wonder. The whole unruly mess of being human. I learned early that some feelings seemed too dangerous to touch. Trauma teaches you that. Addiction reinforces it. Before I ever put a needle in my arm, I was already looking for…
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If you’re grieving, you’re not failing at anything. You’re just human in the rawest possible state, stripped down to what can’t be argued with or managed or optimized. There are days when the heart doesn’t feel “broken” so much as shattered early and quietly, like something cracked in childhood and you only learn later how…
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We answer anonymous messages received at BitsnB1218@gmail.com and through comments we receive. On a global level, the World Health Organization (2022) estimates that around 1 billion children are affected by sexual violence each year. The real number of victims is staggering and we are here to support you! Here is an anonymous post that came…