Like many, I have struggled with suppressed childhood trauma and have been working hard to move through it.

I have recently found that writing about the pain from my past is another tool for healing. I am going back in time and healing my child self and the memories that haunt her still. I need to go back and comfort the little girl while she is in her pain and tell her what she needed to hear back then.

She needed to know that she matters, that she is worthy, and that she is loved. That she is not disposable. And that the pain inflicted on her was not hers.

My mission in life has always been peace. My own inner peace first so that I can share and help bring peace to others.

I submitted my first article a few weeks ago and it felt so good to be seen. It felt so good to know I wasn’t alone in my pain. It woke up so many words inside me that have been tied down.

I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to share. So, I started to write and write. Waking up at 3 a.m. with thoughts and words wanting to be heard.

I would be walking or driving, and a memory would pop up, so I would verbally dictate it in my notes. The note folder on my phone is full of bits and parts of my life waiting to be completed.

Last week, I took one of the notes and poured my pain into another article. I so wanted to share not only my pain but the pain of my mother’s.

“You and me against the world,

Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world

And for all the times we’ve cried, I always felt that

God was on our side.” ~ Helen Reddy

This is the song that my mother said was our song. I was the first of five children whom she would have and we lived and breathed trauma together. I know it hurts my mother that I have no memory of her when I was little, and I don’t want her to hurt.

I have no memory of being a child except for flashes of terror dropped in here and there.

Along with all the broken pieces of my life, I have spent much of the past 10 years trying to figure out how and why I couldn’t remember something so important.

She is my mother. She brought me to life.

She wanted me and I know with all my heart that she tried to protect me, but she could not protect herself.

There was a battle that she just couldn’t win.

I had submitted this article recently, and it was rejected. Deleted. When I saw the subject of the email, my heart dropped into my stomach, and, immediately without reading the email, I became the little girl again whom nobody could see or hear.

The little girl who was trapped in her pain.

I started to sink into the couch and began ruminating. All the words that have kept me prisoner rolled through my mind in big, bold letters. In big loud voices.

I began to feel the familiar heavy and sick feeling that would envelop me like tar and keep me stuck. My head started pounding in sync with my heart. My body started to sweat; I started to leave.

But then, something happened.

Without a thought, I started to take deep breaths into myself. I noticed how my breath came in through my nose and filled my chest. And I noticed how with each exhale the headache started to dissipate.

My body started to relax my heart slowed down. And just like that, I realized that the healing is happening.

The healing is happening day by day with the lessons each day brings.

I finally pulled myself together and read the body of the email that was sent about my deleted article.

It was a beautiful and kind explanation from the editor as to why it was deleted. As I read, and then re-read my submission, I began to understand the power of my words.

I will use my words in a way that doesn’t paint my picture of despair and violence, but one that proves that from the darkness I have been in, I will stand in the light.

I will share this transformation of a trapped little girl in a woman’s body with the abundant light God has always surrounded me in.