My Story of Hope & Healing

My story of suffering is not over, but even as it continues to unfold in the breadth of hope, I want to share it with you.

”What we need is the healed capacity to imagine and believe the profound goodness of the future, to stand in light of a happy ending whose power reaches and draws us forward in hope.” – Sarah Clarkson

Life is unfair. Life is hard. And life is full of gripping, agonizing tragedy. But hope is the magic ingredient of healing that keeps us here, embracing the first and last breath of every day, even through tremendous suffering. Hope, as I know it, is the power from Jesus that enables us to persist and believe in a better world, beyond the brink of sorrow we now behold.

I was first introduced with my own suffering just two years ago. On January 19th, 2023, a gasping crash of my skull on the hardwood floors at ballroom rehearsal instantly flipped my entire world upside down and collided me with severe physical disability, mental terror, emotional pain, spiritual searching, and complete loss of who I knew myself to be. The day I sustained a traumatic brain injury was the day a part of myself died. Weeks after my fall, my world slowly started deteriorating, and the solid structure of independence I was building myself on as a bright sixteen year-old girl was dissipating. 

By March 2023, I lost everything – save it were my beloved family, few precious friends, and my little cavalier. On a loop with no end, I was facing constant tremors, desolating psychosis attacks, suicide ideation, violent night horrors, POTS, chronic pain, PTSD, extreme sensitivities, depression disorder, and more every day. My brokenness and the loss of my very own mind broke me down more than I could bear. The future I had once dreamt about daily was now lost because of the dark fears that sought my soul. It wasn’t long until I began to question my own life, and the silent pain of numbness over my body got so desolating, the only way to feel alive was by pressing and scraping my nails into my arms.

Like an avalanche, everything fell apart in one day. I don’t know why, and no medical professional can give us any explanation even to this day, but it took 2 months following my accident for my brain to break down. There were recurring times when I could no longer talk and had to use a white board to communicate with my mother. She often had to help feed me as my body did not work. My dad carried me up and down the stairs for months on end, because I could not walk. I could neither dress, nor bathe myself, and would even get lost in my own home. My mother remembers the first day I was in the entry living room, when from upstairs she heard me start to cry, then escalate into a scream, “Mom! Where am I? MOM! Where are you!? Help me, HELP ME.” She came to my rescue again that day, as she always did, and we tightly embraced in tears. But that wasn’t the worst for her. It was when I didn’t even know who she was when she entered the room during one of my episodes. “Wait, who are you?” I would ask her, and inside her heart would silently break.

Day after day, I ask myself, how could this happen to us? What is wrong with me?

This dissociation became a daily thing, and I’d often unknowingly scurry out the back sliding door and get myself lost on our one acre property. Very quickly, I could never be left alone again. Just two years ago, I was an independent teenager able to drive myself to work for my own cleaning business. But today, I need someone in the same room with me, for fear I will run away, get lost, or grow haunted by the recurring fear that people are coming to take me away.  I am lost in my very own mind.

After my fall, I couldn’t sleep alone anymore because my brain played tricks on me. Some of my darkest moments have been at night, when dark visions of violence and sexual assault haunt me, overtake me, and physically attack me. In the beginning, my parents would switch off nights to sit with me for late, long hours on my bed until I fell asleep until the Lord sent my miracle service dog, Caspian, to sleep at the foot of my bed and comfort me. It still takes hours to fall asleep each night for fear of being tortured by my terrors again.

So much has changed, I don’t know myself as I used to because of all the horror that’s claimed my brain. I feel isolated when my body shakes and shakes in seizures, and even more agonized in my terror attacks. They overtake me and make me feel as if I’m being tortured in a corner of our home, where no one can rescue me, and I am completely, helplessly alone. This very thing has been the hardest for my family to face and has caused the most pain for all of us. My torture psychosis attacks alone sent my heartbroken mother into a desperate search for medical help, which, after 2 years, has been a search which has brought more or less comfort, while we wait for eventual recovery. We breathe in awaiting hope for the eventual day my healing from my mind’s torture will come by Jesus, who alone carries that power.

Today, I still have mornings where I wake up in wracking sobs after a gory, murderous night terror claims my mind. There are still days after a terror attack that I don’t recognize my mother’s face, or believe my little sister is my own baby after nightmares of being raped. Years when I was bullied by my peers have bubbled to the surface, and have created a sticky web of fear in Portland that my home has become the only safe haven I have. So, here I stay, and here I write, relearning who I am and holding to any hope I have, often doubting my very own dream of ever being righteously, eternally loved one day…

Looking back at the extreme place of brokenness I was in – and still am – I know so many others are there too, trembling as they audibly cry to God for help, feeling unworthy to ever belong. In that wasteland of grief, desert of unknown, and isolation of despair, the throngs of your heart thirst for rest – an assuring rest you cannot understand could be true in such circumstances. All you know is you need it more than anything.

You need Jesus’ healing – His anchoring truth – more than anything.

I was in that place. And at frequent times, as I experience the hollowing weight of my injury in my continuing journey, I still am.
But I have learned in the pattern of my humbling story of gripping survival that right when you feel all hope is lost – the flickering fire of faith has burnt out, and there is nothing left to fight for at the end of your cliff – the windows of heaven open and the dawning sweetness of a new hope rises, just to keep you lingering for one more vital step.

At your darkest, Father hears your prayers. He lingers to weep while you cry. And He could never deny you of hope. While He does not grant everything we ask, He blesses us with more than we could imagine. As long as we are holy to peer for His hand.

From the hope-giving miracle of my first functional neurology rehab, to the dear gift of my angel fur pup & service dog, Caspian, and now the opportunity to discover new purpose and healing in the sweeping warm valley of Texas, my darkness of recovery is flitting with heavenly stars. Though the pain and suffering of my invisible injury remain, I am mending by hope alone, through Christ who makes me whole. He is paving my story, and He is granting me eternal, sweet hope through every horrid moment. Even in my horror, I believe in Him!

My dear sweet friend, hope is here! You are never alone. In the midst of heartache, fear, loneliness, anxiety, depression, grief, or other, there is still a goodness of sweet hope flickering in your darkness. Just look up, and you will find it. God is in endless pursuit of you, and He will never cease to bring you the hope you need to take just one. more. step.

The core of my blog and mission of writing is to inspire hope in every part of life, including all things modesty, holy living, faith, healing, learning, homemaking, and more. I pray that in every post, you will glean purpose and strength to continue to hope in Jesus no matter where you are in your journey through life. You belong. Your sweet hope is here, and it is coming! I pray it will forever be our cause to find it, no matter how desolate our way.

xo.