The Rooms That Rebuilt Me

I grew up in the kind of home where the air itself was a study in tension—you learned to listen to it, to read the weather inside people, to shrink before the storm arrived.

I moved quietly, hiding fear inside imagination. And when the walls closed in, I built my own worlds—ones stitched from possibility, where magic was real, dragon’s roamed, power came at a cost, and survival meant transformation.

The instant I started school, it became my refuge. In classrooms, I discovered order, rhythm, and possibility. Books became my guardians. I could disappear into stories and re-emerge intact. Creating—visual arts, writing, music—was the only place I could breathe without asking permission.

The night they finally took me, I didn’t cry. One month shy of my 12th birthday, I remember the chill of the vinyl seat, the way the static clung to my arms, the quiet between the radio bursts. The officer driving didn’t speak; he didn’t have to. The silence told me what I already knew—that rescue and rupture sometimes arrive wearing the same uniform.

What followed was a blur of houses and rules. Foster homes, social workers, case files that spelled my name wrong. I learned how to pack fast, how to answer questions carefully, how to stay small. For a while, it almost felt like safety.

And then, just as quickly, I was sent back.

Not much had changed; the walls still held their breath. The beatings slightly lessened, replaced with more insidious psychological threats and violent language—a different kind of warfare that left invisible scars. I learned that fear doesn't need to be loud to be life-altering.

Then one afternoon, rifling through a stack of papers I wasn’t supposed to see, I found some official looking paperwork and—my father, reporting his desire to kill me. Reading the threats was worse than hearing them; inked in black, they became so real—something spoken not to my face in the heat of the moment, but calmly, when I wasn’t even in the room.

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I knew I couldn’t stay.

At first, I tried couch surfing with relatives and friends, but safety always had a price. Everyone wanted something—money, labor, silence, a promise to be gone in the morning. At thirteen, I was too young to hire anywhere, so I started hitching rides with people who worked in places where no one asked questions. I chopped wood, picked berries, hauled feed—whatever would buy me a meal or a few nights on a couch.

I went to school when I could, but exhaustion caught up. The mornings started before dawn, and eventually, classes became impossible. Survival was the only subject left to master.

That quiet devotion—to words, to curiosity—became the thread that carried me forward through the years that followed. The string of addresses that marked not home, but survival.

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Afternoons spent hidden in steep slops by the riverside, buried in a notebook or a novel, kept me alive.

But the real transformation began when I was finally ready, years later, to putt down the armor I’d worn for decades. It happened in rooms that smelled of ink, coffee, and secondhand hope—writing groups.

Those spaces changed everything. Workshops in dusty community halls, local cafés with mismatched chairs, notebooks filled with half-dreamed worlds.

I met people who spoke my language.

I met friends who became mirrors and mentors who became lifelines.

There was laughter, the occasional argument over commas or character arcs, but mostly there was care. A quiet, powerful kind of care that said: I see you. You belong here. You have worth.

It was in those rooms that I learned not just how to write, but how to be. How to take up space. How to speak my truth out loud. I went from the girl who would barely whisper her name during introductions to the woman standing behind a mic at readings, shaking—not always (perhaps rarely) graceful, but speaking anyway.

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And still, life didn’t unfold neatly. The ground dropped out again in my thirties—after a marriage that looked solid from the outside but stripped me of myself piece by piece. When it finally imploded, the wreckage was cellular—a complete systemic failure. I found myself back in shelters and lines for food banks, navigating welfare systems with three children in tow. I was left rebuilding from the ground up: finding work, carving out a career, holding my family together with equal parts fear and grit. Survival became my full-time occupation.

These were seasons of exhaustion, and the stress carved its toll into my body.

Through it all—the loss, the grief, the exhausting work of remaking—work became my anchor. I relied on both kinds of work: the work that paid the bills and the work that fed the soul. I wrote technical manuals on assembling buildings and I wrote through grief and growth, through laughter and fatigue.

The Body Keeps the Score

However, when I finally found solid ground again, my body had been running so hard for so long that I practically collapsed. The stress had taken its quiet toll. It led to multiple trips to the ER by ambulance due to near-loss of consciousness, a seizure, severe anemia, and chronic fatigue.

These were the quiet betrayals of a body finally allowed to stop running.

This physical collapse became my involuntary masterclass in systems failure. It took years to learn these lessons: I learned the hard way that the human body and personal systems follow the same rules as complex architectural projects—pushing past established limits leads to catastrophic failure. My qualification to speak about burnout, boundaries, and sustainable work doesn't come from a textbook—it comes from having been the structure that failed. I know precisely where the procedural errors occur, and what it takes to rebuild with integrity and a functional set of standards.

What I Carry Forward

The past made me resilient. But community made me whole. Now, having navigated the full spectrum of collapse and reconstruction—from a beginning built on fear to a life built on love— I understand the mechanics of endurance better than any textbook could teach. This unique expertise—combining survival wisdom with systems analysis—is the foundation of my work today.

This is what I carry forward:

• The Power of Process: As a specialist in standards and documentation, I know that complexity can be made modular. I can help you translate your chaos into a clear, functional blueprint, moving you from survival-mode improvisation to intentional, sustainable design.

• The Integrity of Limits: My body taught me the cost of ignoring boundaries. My work is now focused on helping others establish and document their own non-negotiable standards—the "envelope integrity" that keeps your energy, time, and spirit safe from the elements.

• The Value of the Invisible: I know the real work happens in the quiet, supportive networks. I contribute to society by building communities and systems that prioritize care over control, showing others how to find their voice and stand safely in their truth.

I built this life. And I know you can build yours. My unique skill is in combining the wisdom of a survivor with the precision of a systems architect: I can see the scaffolding you need, document the process, and help you recognize that your story is the strongest material you possess.

Thank you for being part of the architecture.

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If this story spoke to you, you can help it travel further—by liking, sharing, or donating to support my ongoing work and my novel-in-progress, What Doesn’t Kill, a story of magic realism, resilience, and renewal.

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