The Purple Phoenix Collective

IFS therapy has been a game changer for me. I highly recommend it 💜

Some haikus I wrote: You mistook my peace For the girl you could still break She no longer lives No one came for me So I became the person I had needed most. The wound wasn’t love. Healing was the first thing that Didn’t ask me to bleed. The monster I feared Was a child behind a mask Begging to be held Trauma wrote my past I refused to give it the Pen for chapter two

Trauma is not the whole story. Trauma may explain where you started, but it doesn’t have to decide where you’re going. You become the author of your own life one small choice at a time: 📖 Write the story instead of reliving it. 🧠 Get curious about your patterns instead of judging them. 🌱 Do one thing each day that your future self will thank you for. 💜 Speak to yourself the way you would speak to a scared child. 🫂 Let safe people witness the real you. 🔥 Feel your emotions instead of carrying them forever. 🌿 Rest without believing you have to earn it. 🦋 Try something that reminds you who you are beyond survival. ✨ Remember: your survival strategies wrote one chapter. You get to write the rest.

Trauma isn’t pathology. It’s survival intelligence. Your nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive. Dissociation lets you endure the unbearable when there is no escape. Hypervigilance scans for danger before it arrives. People-pleasing can reduce the risk of violence when someone else holds all the power. Becoming exquisitely sensitive to other people’s moods isn’t weakness—it’s a survival skill when your safety depends on reading the room. These responses weren’t random. They were adaptive. The tragedy is that the strategies that once saved your life can keep showing up long after the danger is gone. That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your nervous system learned its job very well. You are not the sick one. The abuse was the sickness. The violence was the sickness. The neglect was the sickness. Your symptoms are the evidence that your mind and body fought to survive. Healing isn’t about erasing those survival strategies. It’s about gently teaching your nervous system that it doesn’t have to fight so hard anymore.

For most of my life, I didn’t realize there was a space between what I felt and what I did. Something would trigger me, and before I even knew what was happening, I was already spiraling, shutting down, people-pleasing, lashing out, or acting on an urge. It all felt automatic. Healing didn’t magically erase those patterns. But it did introduce me to a part of myself I call the Observer. It’s the quiet awareness that notices what’s happening without immediately getting swept away by it. Now, sometimes I catch myself mid-pattern. I notice the racing thoughts. The tightening in my chest. The familiar story my mind is starting to tell. I don’t always make the perfect choice, but I make it more often than I used to because I remember to pause. That pause has changed everything. It’s where I remember who I want to be instead of just repeating who trauma taught me to become. There is power in the pause.

For a long time, I thought healing meant becoming more positive, more peaceful, more “put together.” My healing didn’t begin when I stopped struggling. It began when I stopped running. I’ve sat with my fear, my grief, my rage, my shame, and the parts of me I wanted to exile. Not to let them take over—but to understand what they were trying to protect. The more honestly I’ve faced my shadow, the less it has controlled my life. That’s what healing has looked like for me: not becoming perfect, but becoming whole.

We weren’t designed to carry grief forever. Some cultures understood that. They made space for sorrow to have a voice instead of forcing it into silence. Trauma teaches us to swallow everything. Don’t cry. Don’t be angry. Don’t make people uncomfortable. So we clench our jaws, tighten our shoulders, numb ourselves, and wonder why our bodies still ache years later. Healing has taught me something different. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is let the emotion finish its sentence. Cry until your chest softens. Scream into a pillow. Sob in your car. Shake. Tremble. Breathe. You don’t have to perform your pain for anyone else. But you also don’t have to imprison it inside your body. Emotions are like waves. They were made to move. When we stop fighting them, they often pass through us instead of living inside us. Not every tear heals everything. But every tear that is finally allowed to fall is one less thing your nervous system has to carry alone. 💜

💓

I’m realizing I don’t just “go with the flow.” A lot of the time, I disappear. I agree too fast. I say “whatever you want.” I tolerate things that make me uncomfortable because keeping the peace feels safer than being honest. Now I’m learning that having preferences does not make me difficult. I can say, “I don’t like that.” “I’d rather do something else.” “I need a minute to think.” Start small. Pick the restaurant. Change the music. Say no without writing an essay. Notice when your body says no before your mouth says yes. Healing is not only finding your voice. It is believing you are allowed to use it.

Trauma survivors often notice the exit before they notice the room. We scan for doors, watch people’s faces, and mentally rehearse how we would leave if something went wrong. Even in safe places, part of us is still preparing to escape. That isn’t being dramatic. It’s a nervous system that learned safety could disappear without warning. Healing is slowly realizing you know where the exit is—and choosing, little by little, to stay.