Raw and Real: Where the Silence Ends (Week 1 Reflection)

Raw & Real: Week 1 Reflection

I never thought I’d share my story this loudly — but here I am.

It’s not pretty.

It’s not tidy.

It’s raw, painful, and sometimes damn near impossible to read, let alone write.

But I’m doing it because my healing demands it.

I’m no longer held hostage by my trauma like I used to be. Healing isn’t a straight line — it’s messy, hard, and unpredictable.

But I’ve leveled up.

And that next level? It’s asking for more truth.

I’m staring my abusers in the face now — something “me” just months ago never thought possible.

And you know what? It’s freeing.

Breaking the silence is the kind of courage I hope every survivor finds within themselves someday.

This past week, I shared two posts that stopped me in my tracks — not because of how they were received, but because of what they made me realize. I launched this series a little later than planned, after losing both my aunt and uncle within a day of each other — a grief I’m still quietly holding. But maybe that delay wasn’t just a setback. Maybe it was what I needed to sit with things a little longer, to process more deeply, to be honest in a way I wasn’t quite ready for until now.

In “I Hate Anxiety - More Than The Trauma That Caused It,” I looked my own history in the face — the abuse, the loss, the mortality, the aftershocks — and for the first time, I saw it objectively. It wasn’t just something that happened to me. It was something I survived. And that distinction? It matters. It was the first time I was able to say to myself, without minimizing or deflecting: “I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been hurt. I’ve been broken.” But now, I’m standing here not as someone still living in it — but as someone actively learning how to live after it. That shift is subtle, but it’s monumental.

That realization led to my second post: “How I’m Still Learning To Love After Being Broken.” Because once I acknowledged the hurt, the question hit fast: how do I still believe in people? How do I still trust in goodness, in love, in connection — after everything I’ve been through? And the honest answer is: I don’t fully know. Maybe it’s a trauma response. Maybe it’s resilience. Maybe it’s a refusal to let the people who tried to destroy me win. Maybe it’s just who I’ve always been — someone who feels deeply, who loves hard, who doesn’t know how to give halfway.

I’m Autistic, and that means I’m always searching for the root of things. I want reason. I want structure. I want something solid to stand on. But healing and trauma don’t offer that kind of certainty. There’s no formula, no clean path. There’s just this strange paradox: that the places where I was broken are the same places where love keeps trying to root itself.

And maybe that’s what this season of healing is teaching me — that I can be both hurt and hopeful, cracked and compassionate. That I can still be loud about my story without letting it define me. That I don’t owe anyone a tidy narrative.

Just the truth.

The loud, complicated, messy truth.