Trauma doesn’t just live in the moment of violence. It weaves itself into the fabric of your life, even into your happiest memories. Healing, especially through trauma therapies like EMDR, is about slowly untangling those threads so your nervous system can finally rest and joy can stand on its own again.
What follows are my journal entries from the fall of 2017, alongside the meaning I’ve since come to understand.
10/16/17
First EMDR session. The therapist says that sometimes for very complex traumas that it is important that we establish a good safe foundation before we address the trauma. I called my friend to talk about it, we talked and cried till we laughed. What happened was that the therapist was doing an exercise that started with the question are you a mountain or a water person. I said water. He said okay we are a turtle in the ocean and we are floating. We are going to a turtle spa over there on a rock. We float over and all the little fish and plankton start cleaning my shell. I am relaxed looking out at all the humans on the beach. Very relaxed, safe and happy. We are now going into my daughter’s birth my #1 best memory in life so far. We are in the room, I see my favorite picture taken of Jonathan, Julian, Sage and I in the bed she was born but suddenly now it is like I am in a movie of it, really there. I am now in the moment having the picture taken and I am looking at Debbie taking the picture. I immediately start crying. The therapist is concerned, asking of these are tears of Joy. I say no and tear off the headphones. I say DEBBIE is there, crying. He asks who Debbie is and I tell him how we lost our closest friends through this mess. I am now crying uncontrollably. He looks at me and says you see how tragic this is? How devastating this is? (as if someone needs to point this out to me) This woman he says, this evil woman has infiltrated your happiest moments in life, tangled herself into memories throughout your brain. We then decide that we need to go after the attack. I have to take the day off work to do this. It is going to take a double session.
This is exactly how trauma works: it hijacks memory. Instead of joy living in a pure space, trauma invades it, attaching grief, betrayal, or fear to moments that should have been untouched. The brain wires these experiences together. EMDR’s job is to gently separate them, so the memory of your daughter’s birth can return to being joy not grief.
Mind Fuck.
10/17/17
Approach your life like you would your iPhone. That is what EMDR does, it clears it all up. Just like you would turn off apps on your iPhone or update you operating system. If we are having reoccurring post traumatic memories that means we need EMDR to turn them into regular memories.
This is one of the best descriptions of EMDR. Trauma isn’t deleted, but the brain reorganizes it. The “apps” of terror, shame, and intrusive thoughts stop draining your energy. The memory remains, but it no longer runs your whole system.
October 22, 2017
It’s Sunday. I feel a panic attack coming.
What’s going on I’m laying in bed with ice on my neck that hurts really bad I just stretched a bunch feeling a little bit more motivated to get engaged to my life again and wanted to document some of the radicals seating episodes that I’ve had since EMDR Office last Tuesday before I left for Chicago time and now I am back and really tired and I have EMDR Office tomorrow.
Starting to sleep better I’ve got three EMDR sessions under my belt addressed attack address the court try to fill some good memories didn’t work at Debbie on the way but definitely starting to think about different things feeling better.
Healing isn’t linear. Early EMDR work often stirs things up before it settles them down. Panic attacks may spike, but your nervous system is beginning to shift small changes like sleeping better are signs that the work is starting to “land.”
11/1/17
Starting to notice that the trauma is getting quieter inside, asked my husband if he notices anything different.
This is the miracle of trauma work: what once screamed inside your body begins to whisper. For many survivors, this is the first true taste of hope.
11/2/17
Second EMD our session was about court third EMD our session was about my stepson’s girlfriend. I can handle it. I cannot stand it it’s not my fault.
My journal shifts here into a raw, unsent letter to my stepdaughter.
I describe the impossible bind of step-parenting inside a trauma-affected family system. I am trying to protect myself and set boundaries while being accused of “causing” the very rupture the abuser created.
This kind of triangulation is devastating. It’s not just relational drama — it’s part of how trauma perpetuates itself across generations. Children often side with the more manipulative or threatening parent as a survival strategy, leaving the safer parent feeling betrayed and erased.
MY words show the heartbreak of being misunderstood, while still holding fierce love and a desire for your stepdaughter to have an honest, healthy relationship with her mother.
Dear Stepdaughter-
What you think you heard and what was actually said can often be two different things.
Like your Biology book being online, you didn’t hear that.
You stated your relationship with your mother is improving. The way you choose to handle it was to shun me at your game for showing up.
You take the stance that if I don’t go your mom can. Making the problem me and not what your mother did to lose her right to participate in your life like she used to for the three years of criminal protective orders that was her consequence for her actions.
You lashed out, ignored, mistreated your sister even to get your point across that we were ruining your life by not going to the game so your mom can because your relationship with your mom was improving and you wanted your mom. You even said you wanted to live at your moms because I said something about you dressing inappropriately at school.
But weeks before you called me furious with your mother and wanted to teach her a lesson by leaving Urban Outfitters. That’s improving? Or is it that she buying you things all the time now so it feels better between you guys?
What I said was if you continue to bring your relationship drama into our house and advocate for your mothers rights that you and she perceive we have taken away and not her actions causing it, then you can live at your mothers. I still feel this. That energy is toxic to me and it’s just too much to ask after what your mother did.
I said this because my life has been severely injured by your mothers actions and in order for me to continue to heal and one day feel normal again I can’t be dragged through this with you and your mother everyday like we were when this was going on in September.
I have sacrificed a lot to keep you safe and you acting like you did showed me that my sacrifices don’t really mean much and maybe I should not have tried as hard as I did to make sure you didn’t fail school and end up in a really bad place come high school and not even have a chance to get into a good school or be educated to go on and achieve your dreams and goals in life.
I did not say if you have a good relationship with your mother you cannot live at my house.
That’s absurd. I said clearly your actions indicate you are not happy in my house so remember you have a mother you can live with if it’s so horrible at my house.
I still believe for my safety it would be good for you to live full time with your mother so she can stop blaming me for destroying her relationship with you. This misperception nearly got me killed.
I did not destroy your relationship with your mother. Your stepdad mistreating you and your mother not protecting you changed your relationship with your mother and made it impossible for you to learn at school but she blamed me and attacked me.
Having you show up like you did after everything we have been through is heartbreaking for me and still is. You can believe what you want.
It’s especially sad after everything we have been through, after all the support I’ve given you and getting to know each other over the past eight years that you still believe I would say that.
I have always stressed the importance of having a good relationship with your mother if you don’t figure this one out you will have a void in your heart for the rest of your life.
Part of having a good relationship with your mom is your mom embracing all the people in your life that love you including me and your Dad. It would involve her being honest about what she did. Until that happens, until you both are authentic about your feelings and what happened it will hard for you to convince me that your relationship is improving.
Have you shared with your mother what you heard that day? What is was like to hear me screaming like a “chicken”? To hear Biggie crying for me because he knew I was being hurt? Or the sleepless nights of terror nightmares you had after? Or the diarrhea and stomach cramps from the stress? Or the pains in your back from the stress and the hours on a heating pad to relax? How can you guys heal and improve with these wounds inside unaddressed?
Maybe it’s me that was the only one wounded and your mom’s life doesn’t skip a beat, life as usual.
My life isn’t as usual yet. I am still healing. My healing is my priority so I can be the best I can be and be the best mother I can be and the best wife I can be.
The point is that I want you live where you are happy. If your actions say you are not happy I am going to address it with you and not live in emotional chaos.
It’s not healthy.
11/3/17
Bad Headache
November 5, 2017
Six days until my 42nd birthday. I hear the words of my friend Grace saying I am the chosen one, the one chosen to go through this and teach others how to survive. I feel this. I have always wanted to write a book, maybe I already have and don’t realize it and now I just need to share it. I have always thought why would anyone want to read a book from me. I have always thought I have had a privileged life and it would be insulting to come across preaching to people how to be happy having never experienced a real depression?
I’ve felt the panic attack before. I remember being with my friend when my first marriage was falling apart. I remember so afraid to feel that emotion building inside me like feeling it meant it really was happening so I tried to hold it in butcouldn’t it reared it’s ugly head and wailed with my head in my hands. I remember thinking while it was happeningmaybe I should put a lid on it the neighbors might hear me and think someone is being injured but I could not control it. I had to let it out, I believe I slept for a long time after. But I am learning today that maybe I having been resting very well since. Something happens to you once you get dragged through trauma. It’s the wounds that are invisible the ones that have seared your soul that I find the most intriguing. You can see in the depths of the eyes, they say that is the window to your soul. I believe in our souls, I believe in that part of us that makes us special and different than everyone else. I believe we all have a special place in this world, even the woman that attacked me. I think today about what type of mother she really is. I have seen the outcome of some of the treatment that my step daighter has had but she has also gotten love from her mother. A great love as all mother’s love is and one that undoes any wrong doing without even words at most times. But its the words that count to me, words are so powerful and I hope that my are to someone someday. I didn’t think about what it would be like being a step mother before I became one. I was asked to consider these circumstances but I fell in love. I fell in love with someone that loved to surf like me, someone that when I laid on his chest I felt like I had come home for the first time. My past didn’t matter we actually never even talked about our past. I was dating someone at the time, another guy with a baby but I quickly shifted gears to the man that was emotionally available to me. I can still see him in my mind the first time on the beach that day in September when it was super warm and the waves were waist high super fun. I actually caught waves, I was so incredibly nervous surfing in front of him.
I did more EMDR again this week. It’s helping I’m feeling better. Less activated.
Here, I am naming what many survivors discover: physical scars fade, but the invisible wounds remain. Soul-level injuries often take the longest to heal, but they are also where the deepest transformation can happen.
11/10/17
Lithium Orotate
Panic attack this morning but got out of it
11/15/17
My brain is getting better! Excel is getting easy!
11/16/17
Why am I afraid ask her what I need?
I love the way my husband and I fit in a kiss.
11/17/17
555
JC: I was there I would not let anything happen. Ugh that does not make me feel very safe because he was there and he could not stop it soon enough.
11/18/17
My daughter and I got our first wave.
life’s work
noun [ U ] UK /ˌlaɪfs ˈwɜːk/ US /ˌlaɪfs ˈwɝːk/ uk us lifework
Your life’s work is the work that is most important to you and to which you give a lot of time and effort:
Her garden was her life’s work.
Dealing with the workbook that my therapist gave me to think about my life’s work. I was offended severely wow. I got so pissed at him.
11/20/17
Yoni Discusses I am not protected on the CPO. Yes that is right apparently it was a mistake the whole time that I was on the CPO, someone in the courts wrote my name down by mistake.
11/22/17
Love ❤️ is coming back to my heart
But then my Uncle Mark dies, so sad. I sent my dad the Alex Murdoch song Orange Sky.
11/27/17
My heart filled with love again
Trauma recovery is full of contrasts: panic attacks one week, joy the next. Catching a wave with your daughter, feeling love return, noticing cognitive ease these are not small things. They are signs that your nervous system is repairing itself.
11/28/17
Big headache the stress of things not right with my daughter is getting to me.
11/28/17
Conversation with Dr. Cantu about how the brain changes in emotional changes.
11/29/17
Got adjusted helped headache.
11/30/17
Lance trying to help me get a book agenda together.
Like this:
1. Start with the attack it is the intro ‘hook’!
2. Go back to the relationship history
3. The aftermath, physical injuries – and the invisible nature of the other injuries(shock, death spasm, language and memory impairment, etc
4. The legal, social, family damage
5. How To heal in total chaos and overwhelming Stressors
6. The legal jungle and perversion (the technical term what a ‘cluster f**k
TO BE Continued!!
Strangled In La Jolla 