Growing up, I had never heard words like resilience or trauma. Or, if I had heard the word trauma, it described someone who had been severely attacked or physically injured.
Trauma was something visible. It was blood, a wound, an injury, something you could point to and say, “This happened.”
So I would never have described myself as traumatized. I certainly would not have called myself resilient.

But then life happened.

We march through life without being taught to stop and consider how events, circumstances, and relationships affect us beyond the physical or financial parts of our lives.

When something hurts your body, you can usually feel it. You may see the bruise, the cut, or the wound. You have evidence that something happened to you.
When you lose money, the impact is also visible. You can no longer spend what you had. Your bills suffer. You adjust your budget. You feel the strain of not having enough.

But what happens when a touch, a word, a look, or a series of events leaves you paralyzed, not physically, but mentally and emotionally?

That is what happened to me.

One morning, I woke up feeling unusually heavy. It wasn’t because of the weight I had gained. I had carried extra pounds for years, so that was not new.

My feet were not swollen, but they felt as though they were filled with water.

It was 7:34 a.m.

I began my usual morning routine. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and put on a house gown. Then I checked on the children.

They were still sleeping. The COVID shutdown had kept us homebound, and homeschooling allowed me to let them sleep a little longer.
I usually enjoyed walking through my backyard garden in the morning. I loved breathing in the fresh scent of the dew, caressing the newly budding flowers, and giving myself a few quiet moments to think.

But that morning, my thoughts were racing.

I hate her. I can’t believe she lived in my house and then married him.
These people don’t know what they’re doing. Why do I even bother working with them?
She had better listen to my advice. I need to get away from her.
You’re too fat to go on a date with him. That’s why your husband left.
You lost everything because you are not who you say you are. You don’t know what you’re doing.
They are right about you. You need to give up and find any job you can. You don’t know what you’re doing.

On and on the thoughts ran through my mind.

I have removed names and changed or withheld certain details to protect the identities of the people involved. But I want you to understand how quickly and relentlessly my mind was firing, one painful thought immediately followed by another.

At first, I assumed the thoughts would eventually subside. They always had before.

Just think about something else, I told myself. Maybe I’ll meditate later.

But I had begun to dread meditation. Meditation meant sitting still. Sitting still meant listening to the incessant rambling of my mind as it replayed events that had become increasingly painful to remember.

The pain was not caused by a physical injury, but it was still physical.
There was a sharp, knife-like sensation in my chest. My entire body felt heavy. My lower back hurt. The skin across my scalp felt tender. My knees and joints ached, and my wrists hurt as though I had carpal tunnel syndrome.

“If you run fast enough, until you’re out of breath, your mind will quiet down, and you’ll start feeling better,” a friend finally told me. He was a marathon runner.

I was approximately fifty pounds overweight.

Walking quickly is enough to leave me breathless, I thought. Running is going to be quite a sight.

“Sure,” I replied smiling. “I’ll definitely try that.” So I joined a gym and started running.

A speed of 3.7 on the treadmill was the fastest pace I could manage, and I could only sustain it for about fifty seconds at a time. I was out of breath, just as my friend had predicted.

But my mind did not become quiet. The thoughts became worse.

Look at you. What do you think you’re doing?
They’re all looking at you.
You call that running?
That woman is bigger than you, and even she is running faster.
You can’t even run properly.
This is embarrassing. Just quit.

Beneath the criticism, however, I heard something else.

It was barely a whisper. You’re getting better.
That whisper caused me to straighten my shoulders.

I stepped off the treadmill, walked toward the free-weight section, and picked up a five-pound dumbbell. I watched the man exercising beside me and discreetly imitated his movements, trying not to let him notice. For a moment, I felt as though I had done something good for myself.

But when I returned home, the inner critic was waiting.

You are ridiculous.
You think you accomplished something?
Now you’re going to be in pain for the next few days.
You’ll quit anyway. I know you.
You can’t sustain this.
This is not who you are.

I opened the refrigerator, found a container of ice cream, sat in front of the television, and ate nearly half of it.

What do you call that? How do you find your way out of it?

The following day, I joined a class call. I solved problems. I smiled. I offered advice. I spoke confidently and carried myself as if I belonged among all those “normal” people; as if I, too, were normal.

No one looking at me through that screen would have known that something inside me was unraveling.
The thoughts were growing louder, but I did not understand what was happening to me.

I had recently separated from my husband and was going through a divorce. I had lost my job during the pandemic. I had enrolled in school because I was trying to create a different life, one in which I might no longer feel like the impostor I believed I had become.

I did not have language for what I was experiencing. I only knew I was not well.

And I wanted to hide it.

What would people think of me? I had graduated from college. I had held senior positions within companies. I had been trusted to manage people, products, and budgets. I was capable. I was responsible.

Surely, I was capable of going through a divorce, raising my children, rebuilding my career, and managing life on my own.

Right?

But life kept happening!
While I worked tirelessly to hold everything together, something inside me felt as though it were free-falling.

Then an intuition began growing stronger. Abandon ship.

Sell the house. Return to your family. Take on as little responsibility as possible until you can understand what is happening and find your footing again.

For once, I listened.

I sold the house, stepped away from the life I had been trying so desperately to maintain, and returned to my family.

At the time, I thought I was retreating because I could no longer manage my life. I did not know that choosing to stop was the first courageous decision I had made for myself in a long time. I did not know that resilience was not about continuing to carry everything until I collapsed. It was not about appearing capable while silently unraveling. It was not about forcing myself to function so that no one would question my strength.

Sometimes resilience begins when we acknowledge that the way we have been surviving is no longer sustainable.

Sometimes it begins with a whisper beneath the noise: You’re getting better.
And sometimes it begins when we finally create enough space to hear it.

That was how my journey began.