To The Sister Who Feels Stuck

Sis…
I remember the day I broke.

I was sitting in the front seat of my car, sobbing—the ugly cry. The kind where you can’t catch your breath, where your whole body trembles, and you’re praying no one pulls up beside you because you can’t explain any of what’s happening inside.

“How could this be my life?”

I had just started counseling, and everything I had spent years burying was clawing its way back to the surface. Sexual abuse? How? When? What happened to me? My heart couldn’t accept that someone took advantage of me when I was a little girl: maybe too little to understand the violation, too little to put language to what was stolen. But my body remembered. The nightmares remembered. Night after night, I woke up with my heart racing, breath shallow, shaking as someone chased me again in my sleep.

And that day… sitting in that parking lot… I felt done.

Tired of the memories.
Tired of the fear.
Tired of wondering who abused me.
Tired of feeling disconnected from my own husband and not understanding why.
Tired of feeling like healing was happening for everyone else, but I was stuck in the same storm.

Sis, are you in that place today?
A dark place that feels too heavy to describe?
Do you feel like you’re drowning beneath the weight of your past, like no matter how hard you try to move forward, the pain keeps pulling you under?

If so, hear me clearly:

I’m not going to hand you a cute bow and pretend everything will be okay overnight.
I’m not going to give you a cliché that minimizes your trauma or your tears.

What I am going to say is this:

Give yourself permission to grieve.
Not the quick kind of grieving people expect you to finish in a week. But the real, raw, slow process of letting your heart finally feel what it has spent years trying to survive.

You can begin gently:
• by naming what hurts,
• by journaling through the memories that still sting,
• by talking to God honestly about your disappointment,
• by sharing your heart with a safe friend, mentor, or counselor,
• or simply by giving yourself permission to feel instead of pretending to be strong.

There is grace for every beginning… including the beginning of your grieving.