My Journey of Resilience and Healing
Some childhoods are filled with laughter, warmth, and safety. Mine was filled with fear. My father was drowning in alcohol and mental illness, and my mother’s love came with raised fists and cutting words. It wasn’t just the physical blows that hurt, but the constant emotional neglect, the feeling that I wasn’t worth protecting, wasn’t worth loving. It felt like walking a tightrope every day, knowing that one wrong step could send everything crashing down.
If you’ve been there, you know. The pain doesn’t stay in the past. It follows you like a shadow, shaping your self-worth, your relationships, and how you see the world. Trauma isn’t something you just “get over.” It leaves scars so deep that even when no one else can see them, you feel them every single day.
This is my story. It’s a story of breaking free from that cycle, from the trauma that tried to define me. I didn’t escape because it was easy. I escaped because I learned to fight for myself, to hold on to hope even when hope seemed impossible, and to build resilience when it felt like life was trying to break me.
The Weight of Childhood Trauma
When you grow up in chaos, you learn quickly how to survive. I survived by shrinking into the background, trying to be invisible so I wouldn’t become a target. I survived by excelling in school, hoping that maybe being “good enough” in some way would make me worth loving. But survival comes at a cost. When you spend your childhood trying to avoid being hurt, you also avoid being seen, being known.
Trauma isn’t just the things that happen to you—it’s the things you internalize because of them. I grew up believing I wasn’t worthy of love, that I wasn’t enough. That’s the legacy of trauma. It tells you lies about who you are, and those lies are hard to shake.
Research shows that children exposed to abuse or neglect often struggle with emotional regulation, self-esteem, and trust issues well into adulthood (Kliethermes et al., 2014). I didn’t need a study to tell me that. I lived it. The doubt, the fear, the self-hatred—they followed me like ghosts, shaping every decision, every relationship, every dream I didn’t allow myself to have.
The Military: My Escape, My Lifeline
Joining the military wasn’t a decision born out of a desire for glory or patriotism. I was running—running from the pain, the chaos, the feelings of being less-than. The military gave me something I’d never had before: structure, stability, and a sense that maybe, just maybe, I could be more than the broken girl I felt like.
But even the discipline and rigor of the military couldn’t erase my past. I would lie awake at night, haunted by memories, wondering if I could ever truly outrun the shadows. But the military gave me something important: a foundation. It gave me the belief that I could fight for myself, that I could push through the darkness. But it was only the beginning. The military didn’t heal me, but it taught me that I had the strength to start healing.
Research supports the idea that structured environments like the military can offer a sense of control and purpose for those with trauma histories, serving as a corrective experience that helps to rebuild confidence (Munoz et al., 2019). But true healing doesn’t come from structure alone. It comes from doing the emotional work, from confronting the past instead of running from it.
Confronting the Past: Education and Therapy
After the military, I knew I needed more than just survival. I needed healing. Pursuing my education became part of that process. It wasn’t just about getting a degree—it was about understanding my trauma, about learning how the brain works, how trauma rewires everything from our sense of safety to our sense of self.
Therapy played a crucial role in my journey. It taught me that resilience isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about acknowledging the pain, feeling it, and then finding a way to move forward anyway. Resilience is the ability to keep going, even when the weight of your past tries to pull you down.
Resilience is something you build. It’s not about never being hurt—it’s about learning to stand up after you’ve been knocked down. According to Munoz et al. (2019), resilience isn’t just about bouncing back from adversity; it’s about growing from it, learning from it, and using it as fuel for personal transformation. Therapy helped me see that. It helped me understand that the things I once saw as weaknesses—the self-doubt, the fear, the anxiety—were actually protective mechanisms my brain developed in response to the chaos I grew up in.
Hope: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
If resilience is what keeps you going, hope is what lights the way. For a long time, I didn’t know what hope felt like. When you’ve been through as much trauma as I had, hope feels like something meant for other people, not for you. But slowly, I started to believe in the possibility of something different, something better.
Hope isn’t just about wishing things were different. It’s about believing that they can be different, that you have the power to make them different. Snyder’s hope theory suggests that hope involves not just the desire for a better future, but the belief that you can create pathways to achieve it (Munoz et al., 2019). Hope was the fuel that kept me going when everything in me wanted to give up.
Breaking the Cycle
The hardest part about healing from trauma is breaking the cycle. Trauma teaches you to live small, to expect disappointment, to fear connection. It makes you believe that your past defines you. But healing is about rewriting that narrative. It’s about learning to carry your scars with pride, not shame.
Today, as a clinician/ coach, I see so much of my younger self in the people I work with. I see their pain, their fear, their doubt. But I also see their strength. I see the resilience they don’t yet know they have. And I remind them, as I remind myself, that resilience isn’t about never falling—it’s about getting up, again and again. And hope isn’t just about wishing for a better life—it’s about creating one.
If you’re reading this and you feel like you’re stuck in your trauma, if you feel like the pain is too much to bear, know this: You are not your trauma. You are stronger than you think, and you have the power to change your story. I know because I’ve done it. And if I can, so can you.
W/ Thoughtful Consideration
❤️Dr. Ari
References
Kliethermes, M. D., Schacht, M., & Drewry, K. (2014). Complex trauma in children and adolescents: Interpersonal trauma. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 23(2), 339–361.
Munoz, R. T., Hanks, H., & Hellman, C. M. (2019, October 10). Hope and resilience as distinct contributors to psychological flourishing among childhood trauma survivors. Traumatology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/trm0000224
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