Somewhere Along the Way, I Lost Myself

This is going to be a very vulnerable post.

Complex trauma is incredibly hard to navigate. Growing up in an emotionally or physically unstable environment doesn't stay in childhood. It follows you into adulthood, shaping the way you see yourself, your relationships, your parenting, and the world around you.

But here's something I've learned...

It doesn't have to define you.

Having complex trauma doesn't mean you'll become your parents or repeat the cycles you grew up in. What you choose to do with your emotions, your actions, and your healing determines the outcome.

I grew up in a home where I never knew when everything could change. Addiction, emotional abuse, and instability became normal, and I learned very early to pay attention to everything around me.

That survival instinct stayed with me long after childhood. In many ways, it's how I survived. It also taught me to trust myself & my gut instinct.

Unfortunately, the trauma didn't stop when I became an adult. If anything, it became harder, bigger, and more complex... but that's a story for another day.

Part of that is because I'm not the only one carrying complex trauma. My husband is too.

We've had to navigate marriage, raising children, running businesses, and the everyday challenges of life while carrying the weight of our pasts. Two people trying to build a healthy life while healing from unhealthy beginnings, determined not to pass our childhood trauma on to our children. 

After more than a decade of marriage, we found ourselves at one of the hardest crossroads we've ever faced. We've survived some incredibly difficult seasons together, but looking back, I think the way we coped with those seasons is part of what we're still untangling today. We did the best we could with what we knew at the time.

Truthfully, we're still trying to figure it out.

There were moments when I felt like I had been transported back into my childhood. The instability. The uncertainty. The fear. I found myself slipping back into the same survival patterns I'd learned as a little girl.

As my husband returned to therapy to begin working through his own healing, I returned to something that has always helped me... my journal.

And somewhere in those pages, I realized something I wasn't expecting.

A piece of what I was grieving wasn’t just because of our marriage. It was the realization that within our marriage, I had completely lost myself.

It's okay to look back and acknowledge your childhood. In fact, I think we have to. But what isn’t okay is to live back in your childhood home. 

For so long, I had been trying to comfort little me. Not that I lived in the past, but I wanted to reassure her that she was safe, that none of it was her fault, and that she didn't deserve what happened to her.

But somewhere along the way…

I forgot about someone.

I forgot about adult me.

The woman who needed to be told she was safe, none of it was her fault & she didn’t deserve what happened to her.

The woman who had spent her entire life trying to save everyone else. I've always been the person willing to swim out into the middle of the ocean to rescue someone else, even if it meant I was the one drowning.

Without even realizing it, I had been trying to rescue the little girl inside of me while completely neglecting the woman she became. I had been so strong for everyone else I lost sight of the fact I needed someone to be strong for me.

The question I couldn't stop asking myself was...

Who is saving adult me?

Who is making sure she's okay?

Who is sitting with her pain?

Who is reminding her that her feelings matter too?

This season of trauma felt different because it was a trauma I had never experienced before: betrayal within my marriage. It hurt differently because it came from the one place I believed was safe. I've walked through illness, loss, grief, family members with addiction, and more challenges than I can count, but this was different.

Then one day it hit me.

Somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

I stopped trusting myself.

I stopped listening to myself. 

Instead, I questioned myself.

I explained away the things that didn't make sense.

I convinced myself I was overreacting because I didn't want my past to control my present.

But ignoring my intuition wasn't healing.

I was abandoning myself.

I had disconnected from the very part of me that had kept me safe for so many years.

What I'm learning now is that healing isn't about choosing between little me and adult me.

They both deserve compassion. They both deserve to be heard. they both deserve to be healed.

My past shaped me, but it doesn't get to decide who I become.

My past can be a guide, but it doesn't get to be my identity.

Somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

But I'm slowly finding my way back.