Chapter 49 | The Ground My Mother Watered

The gift of knowing can also be a curse… my fears lie louder than my intuition whispers.

I’ve lived in survival panic mode since I was a little girl… trying to retrain my brain on my own has been the hardest task of my post 8/6/2017 life… not having my mom, my Spectrum Coach as my foundation has left me cracked into so many pieces.

My mom… my anchor, my translator for a chaotic world. She understood my mind before I had the language for it myself.

Without her, I have been left piecing myself together, teaching myself how to stay when everything inside of me screams unalive yourself.

I always knew how to be strong for others.

I could coach, pray, anchor, and heal everyone around me

but when it came to myself,

my voice shook. My hands trembled.

I was helpfully helpless.

I poured and poured and poured from a bottomless cup… an ache to make sure no one else drowned the way I felt I was drowning.

I am learning that I deserve the water too.

I am learning what it means to pour because I am nourished and not because I am empty.

My own mind has stolen my joy,

my peace

but worse

it stole my son’s peace.

My mother was my compass when my own mind felt like a maze. She translated storms into forecasts so I could survive… without her, I’m learning the raw art of coaching myself through every crack and collapse.

I miss her with a tenderness that tastes like hope and grief tangled together.

I’m beginning to realize some of the roots she planted in me are just now starting to break the surface.

I’m realizing that if you believe you have to keep healing you never heal…

I am realizing I don’t have to keep living like everything is about to be ripped away.

I’m realizing I can have the soft life that I want… somewhere beneath all the grief,

all the surviving,

something she planted is still alive in me.

Her lessons didn’t die when she did.

They buried themselves deep inside me, waiting for the day I’d be ready to live by them.

I am standing on ground she watered with her tears and prayers.

Soft life isn’t denial. Soft life is permission.

Permission to stop bracing for trauma like it’s oxygen.

Soft life doesn’t mean nothing bad ever happens. It means waking up without the gnawing belief that something terrible is always lurking.

It means choosing rest, choosing joy, choosing ease… even when your body is still wired to expect disaster.

It means refusing to live in a constant forecast of rain that never even falls.

Soft life is how “normal” people seem to live without even noticing it…  without holding their breath while the phone rings,

without scanning every conversation for hidden attacks,

without needing an exit plan for a simple trip to the grocery store.

I struggle because my survival mode never had an off switch. I learned how to hear danger in silence.

After years of treating adrenaline like home… peace seems foreign to me.

“Normal” people seem to trust the world to hold them. I am still teaching myself how to believe it won’t collapse under me every single time I start to relax.

I choose to trust one more inch,

every time I choose softness over suspicion,

every time I put down my armor even for a moment

I win.

I win back the minutes and hours survival tried to steal from me.

I water the garden survival said I was too broken to grow.

I live softer, not because the world got safer

but because I got stronger.

I’m learning rain is nourishment not punishment or abandonment.

I’m learning storms are not warnings they are baptisms.

I’m learning that even when the sky grows dark… I can sit still and trust growth is still happening in the downpour.

I was never a defect to fix.

I was never broken.

I am wired different for a different kind of survival, and now I’m rewiring myself for a different kind of thriving.

I am the blueprint for surviving storms,

and now, finally,

for planting gardens after them.

The text read:

You are protected always!

and she’s right

Even when my mind forgot

even when survival panic screamed louder than scripture

protection never left me.

God never left me.

My angels never clocked out.

no weapon that is formed

against me shall prosper

Isaiah 54:17 tattooed down my back

on the part of me that once believed I had to fight alone.

Not the weapons of fear.

Not the weapons of anxiety.

Not the weapons of loneliness, or grief, or self-doubt.

My spiritual recipes are not because God needs reminding

but because I do.

I recite Psalm 91 because every word wraps around my son like armor.

I recite Psalm 23 because my mother held this Psalm like a shield… an armor… so I know even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I am not abandoned.

I am escorted.

I remind myself every day:

That the angels are not mythical.

That they go before my son, clearing his path when my eyes can’t follow him.

That they camp around our house, our dreams, our breath.

That they take their job seriously even when I tremble.

I am protected.

He is protected.

We are protected.

Always. All ways. All days.

Even when we forget to feel it.

Even when fear tries to shout it down.

Even when the sky goes dark and the forecast lies.

We are not built by storms.

We are not broken by rain.

We are carried by a covenant older than grief, stronger than fear, and deeper than death itself.

Built by Prayer, Carried by Covenant