The Moment I Realized What Abuse Meant

For many years, I sat across from mental health professionals—not as a client, but as a peer and an advocate for those who couldn’t speak for themselves.

We collaborated.
We strategized.
I taught classes, supported families in crisis, and helped build bridges between clinical knowledge and real-life chaos. I was the advocate with lived experience—the one who could decode a teenager’s silence, or explain why a mother was shutting down instead of showing up. I was the go-between. The translator. The one who knew how to speak both fluent psychology and raw human pain.

I wasn’t there just to learn. I was there to lead.

And yet—
Every now and then, when the conversation veered unexpectedly personal, when a little too much of my story slipped past my filters, I’d hear something that made me bristle:

“You show the signs of someone who’s been abused.”

Now, they didn’t say it to wound me.
They weren’t labeling me weak, broken, or damaged.
They were just naming what they saw—patterns that are hard to miss when you’ve spent years studying trauma, survival, and human behavior.

Still, I brushed it off.
Me? Abused?
I wasn’t that girl. I was strong. I was competent. I helped other people through trauma. I refused to wear that label—it didn’t fit. At least, not in the way I understood it.

But abuse doesn’t always arrive with bruises.
Sometimes it’s subtle, slow-burning, invisible to the naked eye.

It’s being blamed for someone else’s outburst.
It’s walking on eggshells in your own home.
It’s a childhood full of guilt trips instead of guidance.
It’s neglect wrapped in discipline.
It’s control disguised as love.

One day—after decades of surviving, serving, supporting others—it hit me.

Not like a slap. Not like a scream.
More like tuning a static-filled radio to the right frequency.
The fuzz cleared. The signal sharpened.
And I saw it.

I wasn’t just skilled. I was trained—for survival.
I wasn’t just empathetic. I had learned how to read a room to stay safe.
I wasn’t just humble. I had been taught to disappear.

It wasn’t that I had escaped abuse.
It was that I had normalized it.

And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

The way I apologized for needing anything.
The way I flinched at certain tones.
The way I over-functioned, over-gave, and called it “strength.”
It wasn’t just personality.
It was protection.

I had survived abuse.
And I had thrived.

But then came the question that haunted me:
Did I thrive in spite of the abuse… or because of it?
Abuse didn’t give me my gifts. But it sure gave me practice.

It sharpened instincts that should’ve been used for joy, not defense.
It made me an expert in the emotions of others, while detaching me from my own.
It taught me how to serve everyone at the table… while starving quietly inside.

So yes, I thrived.
But not because of what was done to me.
I thrived because I refused to stay in the shape that pain tried to leave me in.

The abuse didn’t give me strength.
It revealed it.
It didn’t grant me wisdom.
It forced me to dig for it, barefoot and bleeding.

And still, there was grief.
Grief for the years I thought dysfunction was love.
Grief for the little girl who thought “being good” would earn peace.
Grief for every time I made myself small so someone else wouldn’t erupt.

That girl wasn’t broken.
She was brilliant.
She was doing the sacred work of surviving a world that didn’t yet know how to love her.

And even as I worked side-by-side with mental health professionals—teaching, advocating, empowering families—I was still unpacking my own pain in the quiet moments no one saw.

So here’s what I know now, without doubt:

You don’t need visible wounds to validate your pain.
You don’t need to “qualify” for the title of survivor.
If something hurt you, shamed you, or conditioned you to expect less—that matters.
You matter.

If you’ve ever wondered why you’re so good at predicting other people’s needs, why you feel guilty for resting, or why love feels like a negotiation—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken.

You’re a survivor.
And more than that—you’re a rebuilder.

You can be both the wounded and the healer.
Both the student and the teacher.
Both the advocate and the one still learning how to advocate for herself.

Healing isn’t linear. And it isn’t always loud.
Sometimes, it starts with a whisper—the quiet, brave voice that says:
"That wasn’t okay. But I am."

Not in shame.
Not in silence.
But in truth—with your head high, your story intact, and your future wide open.

Because what they called "too sensitive"...
was actually your superpower.

And what they tried to crush in you...
is exactly what will set others free.

You don’t need bruises to prove you were hurt.
If something made you shrink, question your worth, or live on edge, it matters. You matter.

And healing isn’t about blaming or staying stuck in the past—it’s about honoring the you who made it through.

There’s courage in surviving.
There’s power in recognizing what shaped you.
But there’s freedom in deciding who you get to be now.

And sometimes, healing doesn’t come wrapped in light or whispered peace.
Sometimes it shows up like a reckoning.
Not to destroy you—but to strip off the lies you were taught to live under.
Not to punish—but to clear the clutter so you can see yourself clearly.

It doesn’t always feel like triumph.
It can feel like losing everything that kept you safe,
only to find out it was also keeping you small.

So let me put it plainly:

You were not put on this earth to keep the peace by staying silent.
You weren’t made to make yourself smaller so others could feel bigger.
You don’t owe anyone your exhaustion, your compliance, or your silence.

You’re allowed to call it what it was.
You’re allowed to stop minimizing it.
You’re allowed to walk away from anything that asks you to betray yourself just to belong.

You don’t have to justify your healing.
You don’t have to explain your boundaries.
And you sure as hell don’t have to carry shame for surviving what was never yours to carry in the first place.

I didn’t just survive what I didn’t know was hurting me.
I woke up. I stood up. I walked out.
And I didn’t look back.

If you’re in the middle of that same walk—keep going.
No need to sprint. No need to prove. Just go.
You’re not running from the past.
You’re walking toward the life you were always meant to have.