#resilientaf

I hope this post reaches someone who needs it. Here’s me, being vulnerable—no filters, no bows.

Healing doesn’t follow a calendar. It shows up when it shows up—and we either meet it or we don’t.

Since 2020, I’ve been struggling with my mental health. Not because of COVID or politics. Just… life. Life happened. And then it kept happening.

I had my son Max in high school. Becoming a teen mom defined so much of who I am. From the moment he was born, I made a silent vow: I would fight like hell to give him the kind of life I saw other kids have—the kind that looked safe, whole, and normal.

So I pushed myself hard. I graduated college in 2022. I stopped working two jobs. I bought a house. I hit every goal I had set for myself. I did everything that I thought would make me feel proud, secure, and happy.

But somewhere in all that “success,” I started to feel worse. Emptier. Like I had reached the end of a checklist that wasn’t even mine. Max was older and more independent. My fiancé had his passions. My stepson had his world. And me? I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I didn’t even know who I was outside of surviving.

It felt like I had been speeding through life on a high-speed train—driven by pressure, fueled by survival, focused on achievement—and then all of a sudden, the train slammed into a wall. There were no more goals to chase. No chaos to distract me. Just silence… and the deafening crash of all the emotions I had been avoiding for years, hitting me all at once.

So last year, I made a decision. Quietly. Internally. Something had to change.

While I was deep in this mental health journey, I started reading What Happened to You by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah. There was a part of the book that stopped me in my tracks—one of those moments where everything clicks.

It talked about how, as kids, we develop survival strategies to cope with trauma. These defense mechanisms help us get through what we couldn't understand or control. But as adults, those same coping skills can start to hold us back. What once kept us safe might now be what’s keeping us stuck.

That idea made me take a long, honest look at my own story. I wasn’t just reacting randomly to life—I was still operating from a nervous system shaped by old pain. Still trying to survive, even when I was finally safe.

I started looking at my patterns—the ones I’d repeated for twenty years. I wasn’t just “bad” at life. I wasn’t a mess. I was surviving the only way I knew how. I was trying to hold it all together with ingredients that never quite seemed to fit.

For so long, I thought I was broken:

Unorganized.

Hyper-emotional.

Constantly slipping in and out of depression.

But God doesn’t create broken things. People break things.

And I am not broken.

I’m fucking tough. I am resilient and smart. I had all the right ingredients—I always have. Somewhere along the way, some asshole came into my life and replaced the sugar with salt, and the people who were supposed to protect me simply blundered.

But that’s okay. Because I wouldn’t be who I am today if that hadn’t happened.

And the person I am today?

She’s a badass.

So if you’re still here—still reading—I want you to know this: You are not too far gone. You are not too broken.

You are worth love, peace, and joy. You deserve to feel whole. You can feel whole.

It’s not going to happen overnight. Healing takes time. It takes truth. It takes guts.

I’m still in it. Still doing the work. Still unlearning and rebuilding. But I promise you, it’s worth every hard, messy, beautiful step.