Chap. 10 — The Day I Told Everything
—and What Came After
There are moments when speaking the truth becomes a threshold—a place where something long hidden is finally laid bare. But the story doesn’t end when the words are spoken. Sometimes, what happens next is another unfolding: the way another’s presence can reflect back a deeper meaning, a gentler understanding, or a new way to see the path behind and ahead. This chapter holds both—the telling itself, and the mirror that helped me recognize just how much was being healed.
🌸 In late April, I sat with my sponsor and her sponsor, two women who have walked beside me as I unspool the tangled threads of my life. We gather each week, tending to the steps of ACA like gardeners returning to the same patch of earth, trusting something will grow.
In the days before that meeting, sorrow had begun to swell in me. It was an ache I had carried in my heart for decades—a grief woven into the quiet places I rarely touched. The sorrow of having hurt my son, of having abandoned him in ways I could not fully name. I knew, with a kind of quiet certainty, that I had never spoken the whole story—only fragments, scattered confessions. No one had ever really heard everything.
On that particular day, they welcomed my need to speak. There was no shrinking from my truth. I cried, and I confessed, pouring out all the pieces until I felt, for a moment, complete.
The day after, something remarkable happened. A quietness settled over me, like a soft hush that touched every cell. I moved through the day without the usual tug of thoughts. There was no effort. Just a gentle alignment with something vast and merciful—God, or whatever word could hold such grace. It felt like being returned to the center of myself, to a place where nothing was missing. I canceled my appointments, not out of avoidance, but because I couldn’t bear to leave that stillness.
I remember so vividly how strong I had been feeling before all this. In the weeks prior, I was practicing chair yoga almost every day, reclaiming strength in my body. I drank green smoothies full of vegetables and fruit, and I could feel my system growing more resilient. There was still fear and nervous system pain, but something in me believed I was moving forward, that I was finally becoming steady.
Here is how the timeline unfolded:
Prior to April 21 – I felt stronger. Chair yoga daily. Green drinks nourishing me. Fear remained, but I sensed a quiet progress.
April 21 – I shared the story I had never fully spoken.
April 22 – A hush, a stillness, an alignment so complete it felt holy.
April 23 – The fear began to return, threading itself back into my body.
April 24 – The exhaustion grew heavy, and the old pain gathered itself again.
April 25 onward – I needed to rest. For two weeks, I surrendered to the fatigue. The fear and nervous system distress grew more pronounced. Not as ferocious as it had been in those early years, but enough that the ground beneath me felt less certain.
Through May and most of June, something in me shifted. My desire to do yoga and make green drinks began to slip away. It wasn’t depression, not in the way most people describe it. I still felt willing. I still believed I could. But something had unplugged itself, as if an unseen cord had been pulled from the wall, and I no longer knew how to draw energy.
When I sat quietly with this feeling, I asked the part of me that had gone silent why she withdrew. She answered with a voice that was tired and honest:
“I thought I was done. Not entirely. I knew there was more to do, but I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was before. So I gave up. You are the part of me that doesn’t give up. But there is a part of you—me—who often wants to. So many times, as a child and a teenager, I believed I was finally getting somewhere, only to feel it ripped away.
"Except for church activities and certain things at school—things that required no effort or money from my mother—everything I wanted eventually vanished. When I needed her support, her participation, it simply wasn’t there. I would have to let go of what I wanted—what I needed—because I couldn’t do it without her. Eventually, I’d find something else, but even the jobs I was offered needed her help, and she wouldn’t give it. So I stopped hoping.”
As that younger part of me spoke, the pattern became clear as glass. I saw how being held so kindly by my sponsor and her sponsor had felt like a dream finally coming true—like the ache of being unseen had, at last, been answered with presence. When I returned home, I felt a kind of disorientation, but I didn’t question it. The next day, it was as if a door had opened inside me and every possibility felt suddenly close enough to touch.
But when the fear and the nervous system pain returned, it was as if that teenage part of me decided it was proof that dreams could never last. That perhaps this was the day she quit trying. And maybe it was around that time in my life when I discovered alcohol. I remember how the first drink felt—like freedom, like a promise I could keep without needing anyone’s help. A dream that could never be taken away, because I could hold it in my own hands.
I hadn’t known all this was living inside me, waiting to be remembered.
🌼 On the evening I realized these truths, I thought about putting on my pajamas and climbing under a blanket. But an old fear came with that thought—the fear of vanishing into the same ritual I had known as a girl. When I was sent to my room, I would put on my pajamas and cry into the darkness. Eventually, I would stop crying, and the sadness would congeal into something private and unspoken. The next day, I would pretend I felt nothing at all.
In that moment, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to comfort the teenager in me. But all I knew was the old way—to lie down, to surrender, to pretend. I was afraid that if I let myself rest, I would disappear into the pattern again.
🌸 Reflections from a Compassionate Friend
I shared all this with a friend, and here are some of the reflections they offered back to me:
What you discovered—that recurring experience of almost getting somewhere only to have it yanked away—is not just a memory. It is a wound of interruption. A wound that says, “I want, I reach, I hope… and then it’s gone.” And the result? A self-protective part that says, “Don’t reach next time. It’s safer not to try.”
But you didn’t fail. You adapted. You made it survivable.
The unplugged part of you is not weak or lost. She is a guardian of despair, and her job has always been to spare you more heartbreak. When she said, “I thought I was done,” what I hear is a kind of inner sigh—“Please let this be enough. Please let me finally rest.”
The nervous system doesn’t care how much insight you have. It runs on pattern and protection. So it reactivated. Not to punish you—but to defend you from disappointment it once deemed life-threatening.
You weren’t weak or flawed. You were brilliant in survival. And now—now that you’re walking the path of truth and healing—these younger parts don’t know how to trust it yet. Not fully.
You are not going backward. You are going inward—to the place where true healing plants its roots.
What if you let the teenager get into her pajamas—but this time, you don’t leave her alone?
What if you crawl into bed with her, not as a punishment or a hiding place, but as a sanctuary?
You could whisper: “I’m not sending you away. I’m coming with you. You don’t have to pretend tomorrow. You don’t even have to stop crying. I will stay right here until the sadness doesn’t feel like a secret anymore.”
The fear that you’ll get lost in the pattern is a wise fear. But here’s the truth: you’re not inside the pattern anymore. You’re witnessing it. You’re holding it. You’re loving the one who used to be alone inside it.
🌼 Reading these words, something in me softened. I realized I was standing at a threshold between the old reflex to abandon myself and a new possibility. Maybe, this time, I wouldn’t have to leave her behind. Maybe this time, I could stay.
⬅️ Chap. 9
➡️ Chap. 11
⬆️ Return to Hub List
🕊A Living Memoir
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