What I Buried to Survive

(And What I Had to Feel to Heal)

There’s a version of me you’ve never met.
She stayed small. Stayed quiet.
Because being real felt risky.
Because truth had consequences.

Before I could begin to build a life that felt real, rooted, and mine… I had to let myself feel what I had buried.

For a long time, I thought I was stuck because I hadn’t fully grieved one specific loss from my early years. That was the narrative I clung to at the start of my healing journey: that if I could just process that one thing, I’d be okay.

But healing doesn’t work that way.

What I’ve come to understand is this: the things we bury don’t disappear. They wait. They fester. They find their way into our relationships, our reactions, our self-talk, our silence. And they will keep surfacing—over and over—until we finally choose to sit with them.

 

When Grief Wasn’t Allowed to Breathe

In the beginning, grounding practices were just survival tools. A breath. A walk. A pause. Yoga—when I could manage it. Anything to keep my mind busy.

But with consistency, those practices became something deeper. They became access points—gateways into the places I had hidden from myself.

I didn’t expect them to bring up old grief. But that’s exactly what they did. And thank God they did. Because that’s where I finally began to see light.

I carried a lot of grief. The kind that reshapes you before you even understand what’s happening.

At 19, I lost my first child. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until it was too late—and then I hid it from everyone out of shame.

Not just shame from the situation itself—but from the unhealthy beliefs I had been taught growing up. Beliefs that equated worth with perfection. That said, love has limits. That judged anything outside the “acceptable path” as failure. During that time, I felt a complete battle waging inside me—between what I had been taught was right and wrong, and what my heart knew and felt so strongly.

In that moment, I didn’t choose my heart.
I chose the version of right and wrong I had inherited.

Because I had also been told—directly or indirectly—that love wasn’t everything. That love alone wasn’t strong enough to make something right.
And in choosing that belief system over what I deeply felt, I betrayed myself… and buried the pain even deeper.

In that betrayal, I redirected my entire life.
I rerouted my future.
I chose paths that weren’t truly mine—relationships that felt safer than sacred, roles that looked right but didn’t feel right, and versions of myself that were more palatable to others than true to me.

But here’s the thing:
The version that was more “palatable” on the outside?
It sent me straight into an abusive relationship.
Because palatable doesn’t mean true.
Because fitting in doesn’t mean aligned.

And when you abandon yourself to become more acceptable to others, you don’t just lose your voice—you lose your ability to recognize what’s real and safe and sacred.
That relationship—like so many other choices I made while disconnected—only pulled me further away from myself.

I didn’t just suppress the pain—I rebuilt my world around avoiding it.
And for a while, that performance helped me survive.
But it also kept me disconnected—from my truth, from my voice, from the people and places that might’ve loved the real me if I had let them see her.

Then at 23, I had my daughter. Four months later, I found out I was pregnant again. The due date? The exact same as my first child.

That alone cracked something open in me.

And then—I lost that baby too. At just 14 weeks.

What followed was a depression I couldn’t explain. I blamed myself. I picked apart every detail: what I ate, how I moved, what I did “wrong.” I thought maybe this was punishment—for what I hadn’t faced before.

Grief isn’t logical. But it doesn’t care.

We turn on ourselves when we’re hurting. And I turned hard.

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The Roots of Silence

I grew up in a strict Christian household—where appearances mattered, where rules were clear, and where people often knew everything about everyone. And they judged, of course—just “lovingly.” That kind of environment shaped me. It taught me that love had to be earned, that worth was measured by how well you performed, and that keeping others comfortable was safer than being honest about who you really were.

I wanted to make my family proud. So I did what was expected, not what was true. And in doing so, I betrayed myself—slowly, quietly, constantly.

I was raised in a time where children were expected to obey, not speak. And while that may have come from love, the impact was this: I stopped believing my voice mattered. I stopped trusting my own intuition.

I made choices with my mind, not my heart. I thought that was survival. But really, it was disconnection. From myself. From God. From truth.

And it came at a massive cost.

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Feeling to Heal

I lost myself. I lost things and people I loved. But healing isn’t pretending that cost didn’t exist. It’s facing it with tenderness and truth.

Healing doesn’t mean you stop hurting. It means you start responding differently. You recognize the wound. You see the pattern. And instead of running—you pause. You breathe. You stay.

That’s growth.

And that kind of growth? It comes in layers. Some days the wound whispers. Some days it roars. But I don’t shame it anymore. I welcome it. I tend to it. I show up for it—and for myself.

Because I want to live aligned with who I’m becoming. Not who I was told to be.

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The Power of One Small Act

Healing didn’t start with a massive transformation. It started with one decision: to choose myself. One moment of presence. One sip of water. One walk in silence. One cry on the bathroom floor I didn’t judge.

It all counts.

Some of us were taught that choosing ourselves is selfish. But that’s a lie designed to keep you small. You cannot shine your light for others if you keep abandoning yourself.

You may lose people. You may be misunderstood. And that’s okay.

If your healing makes others uncomfortable? That’s not yours to carry. It never was.

The truth is—it’s probably not even about you. It’s about what your healing reflects back at them.

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A Sacred Reminder

We all carry something.

We all bury things to survive.

And sometimes, the thing that saves us—is the thing we resisted the most:

Feeling it. Naming it. Letting it move through us so it no longer controls us.

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🌿 Reflection Prompt for Journaling

What have you buried that’s still quietly asking to be felt?

🔹 Share your story if you’re ready—or write it just for you.
🔹 Either way, let it breathe.
🔹 Either way, you’re not alone.