There are stories I’ve carried my entire life that didn’t start as memories — they started as sensations. Fear living in my chest. Hyper-vigilance in my bones. The quiet understanding that love could be withdrawn at any moment, and safety was never guaranteed. Before I ever had words for trauma, my body learned it.

This series exists because pretending I’m “over it” no longer serves anyone — not me, not my children, and not the women who see themselves in the cracks of my story. My relationship with my father shaped the way I learned to survive. It taught me obedience before trust, silence before safety, and perfection before love. It taught me that anger could be explosive and unpredictable, and that my job was to stay small enough not to set it off.

For a long time, I thought what happened back then stayed back then. But trauma doesn’t respect timelines. It follows you into adulthood. It shows up in your relationships, your self-talk, your nervous system, your faith. It shows up when you become a mother and realize you’re responsible for protecting the very innocence no one protected in you.

This is not a series written from bitterness. It’s written from clarity. I can honor the truth of my pain without living inside resentment. I can grieve the father I needed without rewriting the harm I endured. Both can exist at the same time.

I also need to be honest about this: the coping mechanisms I used later in life did not come out of nowhere. Addiction, numbness, dissociation — those were learned responses to years of fear, control, and unprocessed grief. They were not moral failures. They were survival strategies that eventually stopped working. This series will not tell the addiction story yet, but it will tell the truth about where the pain began.

God has been present in my healing in ways I couldn’t recognize as a child. He was not absent — I just didn’t have language for Him then. Looking back, I can see how He preserved me when I was fragile, how He carried me through seasons I should not have survived, and how He is now inviting me to heal at the root instead of managing symptoms.

I am writing this for my children, so they never have to unlearn fear the way I did. I am writing this for the woman I used to be, who thought endurance was the same as strength. And I am writing this for anyone who has ever wondered why certain wounds still ache long after the events are over.

This is not a story about blame. It’s a story about impact. It’s a story about healing. It’s a story about breaking cycles.

If you choose to walk through this series with me, know this: some posts will be heavy. Some will be tender. All of them will be honest. And through it all, the goal is not exposure — it is restoration.

This is where I begin telling the truth, not to reopen wounds, but to finally let them heal.

XOXO, THE HEALING WILDFLOWER