From strangulation to survival. From silence to speaking. A journaled healing from the inside out.
September 7, 2016
Our house is filled with stress again.
We had just gotten off the phone with the city prosecutor. It had been days of waiting—radio silence after their latest court date. We finally got a call back on Tuesday night. It was after work. We were tired. But it wasn’t a surprise, he said. Of course it wasn’t. Nothing in this “justice” process ever is. It’s predictable in the worst way.
They didn’t send Yoni to court, like they promised. Yoni was supposedly tied up with a child molester trial—because trauma like mine, I guess, always comes second to something more headline-worthy. Instead, they sent Michele Ryle. Again.
They said she was “the best person” for the job because she had the case from the beginning, but that’s a lie. Kaitlan had it first. And even when Michele stepped in, she hadn’t read the full file. She didn’t know I had brain trauma. She was unprepared then—and again now. Yoni told me he hadn’t even read the medical reports. But he insisted he was “brought up to speed.”
“It is dawning on me that maybe they’ve only ever skimmed the surface.”
The most disturbing thing? Their lack of outrage. Their indifference. It felt like we were being punished for seeking justice.
When the judge reviewed my case, he dismissed it. He looked at a photo of a cut on my ear—just my ear. He said it wasn’t enough. As if a cut on the ear could explain the kind of trauma I endured. My brain. My neck. My life. And Yoni—he looked at the pictures (probably for the first time) and decided they “wouldn’t have helped.”
He focused on bruises on my legs. Avoided the strangulation marks entirely.
“No one ever said my shins hurt. But my brain did. My neck did. My nervous system still does.”
The prosecution promised me everything, and in the end, an intern wrote the motion. We were blindsided. They didn’t represent my story. They let the court distort it. I didn’t know back then that the legal system would retraumatize me worse than the original assault.
If I could do it over? I would’ve never cooperated. My husband’s ex would’ve been convicted either way, but maybe we would’ve been spared the second-hand violence of being legally erased.
It became clear that this wasn’t just incompetence—it was something more sinister. I started to wonder if young prosecutors were getting favors to flub cases. I don’t say that lightly. I watched them lose with no fight in their eyes. Like they were performing a play they didn’t believe in. It’s all connected—the old boys’ club, the courthouse politics, the family ties.
Even the father/son judge pairing… the son convicted her, the father undid it.
“We were outmaneuvered. Gaslit by the courtroom. And every time I relive it, my neck tightens and the memories flood back.”
After the call, I talked to my brother. I had to. If I didn’t speak it, it would rot me from the inside.
We are tense. The kids feel it. But at the same time, something small and real is returning. I’ve started working again. My new job at Disguise is a fresh start. No one there knows, except my friend here. I’m still wounded, but I’m living.
September 10, 2016
Her mom got a dog.
It showed up in the house the same day she did. And when she posted about it online, her friends commented, assuming it was hers. Her best friend corrected the post, saying it was actually her little brother’s dog, and her mom had said it was for him because he couldn’t sleep.
She snapped back. Said it was hers too.
Then her mom chimed in with “Guys, it’s a family puppy.”
This is the stuff that breaks us in quiet ways. Confusion. Narrative control. Ownership over small symbols of emotional care. It’s subtle, but it chips away.
I surfed this morning with my bestie at Blacks. I typed “surged” in my journal—brain trauma showing up in phonemic aphasia. But the ocean was good to me. My jaw is tight. The headaches are back. Driving alone is taxing. The sensory inputs still trip me into stress spirals.
But the house feels peaceful. My daughter is writing to her great grandma. We laughed so hard this morning my bestie and I accidentally walked past each other in the dark, wetsuits on, each thinking the other had vanished. We saw ourselves from the outside, laughing like kids.
“These are the moments trauma doesn’t steal.”
September 11–15, 2016
I’m struggling to track anything. Habits fall through my fingers like sand.
Headaches. Jaw throbbing. Ear pain.
Sage told a boy at school she’d kick him in the face. I don’t even have the energy to unpack that.
I feel off-center. I look up the meaning of 6666.
“It’s the number of harmony and balance. Spirit guides. A sign that you’re very much out of balance, and it’s time to return.”
It tells me to meditate for 15 minutes a day. I write it down. I know I won’t do it yet. But maybe soon.
September 17–18, 2016
Everything still feels tender around my stepdaughter.
No journal. No tracking.
September 19, 2016
I read a quote today from DailyOM:
“Sometimes a part of us must die before another part can come to life.”
That’s it. That’s what this season has been. A molting. The death of the woman I was before the assault, before the court, before the betrayal. This version of me is new. Raw. Unfinished.
“The new self cannot grow inside the shell the old self built to survive.”
September 21–30, 2016
We’re on a plane to Florida. One court date left, October 5. We’re crawling to the finish line. I’m hoping the ocean heals me again. St. Augustine. Pool time. Family time. Anything but this courtroom trauma.
I told my stepson and his wife I’m writing a book.
I believe it now. I need to tell this story.
My step daughter had a nightmare.
My daughter asked me how families are made.
I cried at the rehearsal dinner and imagined myself gone, looking down from heaven at the people who didn’t believe me, mourning me too late.
My neck hurt so badly that day.
“Pain doesn’t always look like bruises. Sometimes it looks like missed birthdays, silenced voices, or sleeping alone with grief.”
If I’ve learned anything, it’s this:
The legal system wasn’t built for people like me.
It wasn’t built for healing. It was built for procedure.
But I have a body. I have memories. I have a voice. And I have proof.
They didn’t save us. We saved ourselves.
Through family. Through surf. Through saltwater tears and journals.
Through rebuilding. Over and over again.
“This isn’t just my trauma story—it’s my survival story. And I get to write the ending.”
Strangled In La Jolla 