Chap. 11 — The Courage to Stay Under
There’s a specific kind of courage we who come from trauma carry.
It’s not the flashy kind, not adorned in medals or announced with trumpets.
It’s quiet.
It’s breath-by-breath.
It’s the decision to keep showing up—to life, to healing, to ourselves—despite the ache, the fear, the wreckage we once had no words for.
For many of us, courage didn’t come in a lightning strike. It came slowly, like dawn. It arrived through whispered truths in folding-chair circles, through trembling hands held in prayer, through pages of guidebooks and sacred pauses between tears. It came through moments that asked everything of us—and gave us back only a glimmer.
But we followed the glimmers. 🌺
We may enter healing hoping we can skim the surface. We want relief, not revolution. But then something happens. We dive—or get pulled—into the pool. And in the deep, murky water, we begin to see the landscape we’ve spent years avoiding.
It’s not pretty down there. It’s haunted. It’s full of lost parts of ourselves—the shamed, the silenced, the shut-down. But it’s real. And there’s something strangely anchoring about that reality. Because for all its darkness, there’s also clarity. We start to know—know what happened, what hurt, what shaped us.
And once we know, we cannot go back.
We may try. We may long to float again, to pretend again, to dissociate just enough to feel safe. But pretending has lost its power. The old tools—numbing, fixing, overfunctioning—feel brittle in our hands. We can’t unsee. We can’t unknow.
🌼 And so we stay.
The day I could no longer hold onto spiritual practices, teachers, and books, I collapsed on the floor in utter despair, and without intending to surrender, surrender happened without a decision. It didn’t feel like a relaxation. It felt like insanity calling me to run to the nearest psych ward because I could not bear this mental and emotional pain anymore. But I stayed. I stayed on the floor in that scrambled mind, crying out a final prayer. It took another day of somehow getting through the hours, knowing there was no help in the world that could automatically heal this. This was when I fell into the well.
One of the lights that helped me stay in the depths was a poem by David Whyte titled The Well of Grief: Click here to hear David share its meaning and read it aloud. His voice became a lantern for me when I needed it most. 🌸
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source
from which we drink
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness
glimmering the small round coins
thrown by those who
wished for something else.
When I first heard David’s voice speak these words and elaborate on their meaning, something inside me stilled and softened. He spoke of how people throw things down that well—credit cards, money, distractions—anything to avoid going down into the grief itself. But what I don’t remember him saying was something I came to discover on my own: that even though we don’t want to go down, we also don’t want to leave. We linger at the edge. We hover in fear and longing, hoping for an easy way through the dark. There is no easy way. But there is a way
The poem became not only a lantern. It became a breath of knowing. A voice from the deep saying: "The coins of truth are not on the surface. They shine in the dark."
🌿 The home and the culture I was raised in was one where the only experience that felt safe was to be numb to whatever I was feeling. The irony is that there were always emotions flying around: my mother raging, my father in his drunkenness throwing punches. My mother was the one in charge, and her rage dictated to me and my brothers that if we expressed any feelings, there would be punishment—physical or psychological. There was no way of being physically harmed without psychological suffering. But there was a way to experience psychological pain and never be touched.
To survive, I had to find resources inside myself just to get through each day. I speak of this in other chapters—how this survival mode took me to alcohol and later to drugs.
I could no longer hold so much feeling and pain inside. I learned it was up to me to find a way. And the way I found was the same as in childhood. Church was welcoming. Spirituality felt safe. I believed I could finally get out of my childhood. I didn’t know that all those feelings were still at the bottom of the well. Now I do. And I am down there, on my way to the clear water.
🍃 But no anchor has steadied me more than my children—my son and daughter.
They were the reason I kept swimming through the darkness, even when I couldn’t see where I was going.
I didn’t tell them the depths of what I was facing—not directly.
I built muscle hiding the pain, even while staying present in their lives, on phone calls and in shared moments.
Of course, the pain sometimes leaked through. I saw their worry. I felt their care.
And then I’d gather what strength I could and send back something lighter—messages of resilience, a small success, an evening without terror.
I wanted them to see a mother healing.
I wanted to love them not from my wounds, but from my wholeness.
That longing became its own kind of compass.
It helped me rewire my motherhood—anchoring my desire not to repeat, but to renew.
They are two bright lights in my heart who still say to me—sometimes aloud, sometimes in silence—"You can do this, Mom. We’re right here."
And that is enough. Enough to stay in the water. Enough to trust the descent. Enough to believe that even in the murkiest depths, something holy is waiting.
If you, too, are standing at the edge of your own well, know this: you are not alone. There is no shame in the longing to escape. And there is no shame in staying. When you are ready, trust that your courage—quiet and breath-by-breath—will guide you down and through.
⬅️ Chap. 10
➡️ Part 2: Intro.
⬆️Return to Hub List
🕊A Living Memoir
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