You don’t find healing — it finds you.
Usually when you’re not looking.
Often when you’re holding your breath in a cold vet waiting room, worried about your dog.
That’s where I met her.
Jessica and her doodle puppy Rosie were strangers — until five hours of shared snacks and nervous laughter made us temporary soulmates. I mentioned, offhand, that my daughter was struggling. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. PTSD. A shadow we’d been walking through for too long.
Jessica smiled softly.
“I’m a therapist,” she said. “I just got certified in something called Accelerated Resolution Therapy.”
I didn’t know it yet, but this wasn’t a coincidence.
It was a breadcrumb trail from the Universe.
What Happens When You Don’t Know You’re Carrying Trauma
I lost her contact info.
Found it again a year later through digital detective work.
Made the appointment. Drove the hour. Sat on the couch. Told my story.
She stopped mid-session.
“You’ve experienced trauma,” she said gently.
And I blinked.
Because I didn’t think I had.
I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t molested. That’s not my story.
But it was.
In a thousand invisible ways.
In the way I walked past overturned trash cans and didn’t blink.
In the way I raised myself from the age of 5, because my mother had other priorities.
In the way I was constantly gaslit about my medical and mental struggles.
In the way I was let down by educators, for labeling me as lazy and telling me to just apply myself.
In the way I had learned to carry so much that would destroy anyone, and still carry on.
In the way I tell childhood memories like a joke, and then see the look on the other person's face.
In the way I talked about losing my dog as if it were an errand gone wrong, not a heartbreak.
In the way I re-experience and describe memories in 8D, like I am physically there.
The Forest Behind the Gray
In therapy, I told her something that I had noticed recently, while trying to overcome creative block.
That it felt like there was a gray sheet between my eyes and the top half of my brain.
Like something was hidden behind it — something creative, alive, but inaccessible.
She told me to pull it down. Wrap it around myself, like a blanket. See what was hiding.
Behind the gray?
A forest. Dense. Dark. Alive.
I didn’t understand it at the time. But I do now.
Because a year later, I moved into that forest — literally.
A dream with my father, finally fulfilled. A healing space.
A threshold.
Synesthesia. Hyperphantasia. Energy Work.
Words I never knew, but always embodied.
After losing my father and my soul-dog Jester, something cracked open.
I realized my gifts weren’t gone — they were just waiting.
Waiting for me to stop caretaking long enough to remember.
To rest.
To reclaim.
The fog, it turns out, was protection.
But now?
Now I can see behind the trees.
And what a beautiful, vibrant, magical world it is.
Want to Explore What’s Behind Your Gray?
This space, The Wild Signal, is here for exactly that.
For the dreamers and rememberers.
For the ones who don’t even know they’re healing yet.
For the ones who don’t recognize their trauma until they see the forest in front of them.
✨ Your signal is not static. It’s a broadcast. ✨
You didn’t find this post by accident.
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