Sometimes We Must Shatter to Remember Who We Are

I believe that to truly heal our minds and hearts, sometimes they must first be shattered.

Many of us have lived lives that left us feeling broken, fractured by relationships, belief systems, and environments that were never safe for us to be fully seen or fully loved. But what I have come to understand is this: the shattering is not the end. It is often the beginning. It is what makes us stronger, wiser, and more deeply connected to who we truly are beneath the conditioning, the fear, and the pain.

Healing invites us inward into the places we were taught to ignore, silence, or suppress. It asks us to examine the beliefs we inherited, the roles we were forced to play, and the parts of ourselves we abandoned in order to survive. When we bring awareness to these hidden pieces, we begin to understand why we’ve felt stuck, why we’ve repeated patterns, and why moving forward once felt impossible. Sometimes life breaks us open so we can remember who we were before the world told us who to be.

I often describe healing like repairing a shattered vase. When something precious breaks, we don’t simply glue it back together blindly. We pause. We assess what can be saved. We examine how the pieces fit. Then with intention and patience, we begin the reconstruction. This is how true healing works. Not by bypassing the pain, but by consciously choosing how we rebuild.

My understanding of this didn’t come from books alone. It came from my life.

I was raised in a family deeply embedded in a high-control religious cult — a belief system rooted in fear, obedience, and perfectionism, disguised as divine truth. From a very young age, I learned that love was conditional and acceptance had to be earned. My father was narcissistically abusive, emotionally unavailable, and impossible to please. No matter how hard I tried, I was never “enough.” I still remember proudly bringing home what I thought were good grades, only to be told they weren’t perfect and neither was I.

Our home had to look perfect. Our family had to appear perfect. Our faith had to be unquestioned. And slowly, I internalized the belief that my worth depended on meeting impossible standards. By the time I was a teenager, the control tightened, the conflict escalated, and the emotional abuse intensified. At fifteen years old, I was thrown out of my home in a fit of rage, a moment that cemented a belief I would carry for years: I do not belong.

That belief followed me into adulthood.

I later found myself in a marriage that mirrored my childhood not because I was weak, but because trauma seeks what is familiar. I believed I had found unconditional love, only to realize I had chosen another narcissist shaped by the same belief system I was raised in. For nearly seventeen years, I lived in a marriage filled with emotional, verbal, mental, and physical abuse unaware that I was being profoundly traumatized because abuse was all I had ever known.

The moment he put a knife to my throat changed everything.

For the first time, I realized I was not safe and never had been. The environment was toxic, and we had become toxic together. I had learned to survive by fighting fire with fire by manipulating, defending, and reacting from fear. I didn’t recognize myself anymore, and I knew something had to change.

Around that same time, the religious foundation my entire life was built upon began to crumble. My husband uncovered the truth behind the cult — the lies, the hypocrisy, and the systematic covering up of child sexual abuse. At first, I couldn’t accept it. My nervous system rejected it. My identity depended on believing it wasn’t true. I even labeled him “possessed,” because that’s what I had been taught to do when someone questioned the faith.

That was the beginning of the end not just of the marriage, but of the life I thought I knew.

The divorce was brutal. Trauma bonds don’t break easily they feel like withdrawal. I was grieving a relationship, a religion, a sense of God, my community, my family. all while trying to stay strong for my two sons. I hit what I now call rock bottom. And from that place, I rebuilt.

I found new strength. New ways of living. New people. And eventually, a relationship that showed me what real love actually feels like — patient, safe, and unconditional. But healing is not linear. As I began to feel safe, old wounds surfaced. PTSD, triggers, and deeply ingrained patterns emerged. Therapy helped, but I still felt stuck like my body was holding pain my mind couldn’t release.

As I was healing, my ex-husband was unraveling.

After losing the religion that defined his identity, he lost himself. He turned to substances to numb his pain, his shame, and his lack of self-worth. Despite everything we had been through, I tried to help — for him, and for our boys. There was still love there, even if the relationship had been toxic. I now understand that some souls come into our lives not to stay, but to teach us something profound.

The day he didn’t show up to pick up our sons, I knew something was wrong.

That phone call — the one telling me he had died from a drug overdose — shattered me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Watching my children grieve their father cracked my heart wide open. That pain became the catalyst for my awakening. I was furious with God. I needed answers. I needed to believe in something again.

And that search led me back to myself.

I began to understand that I am not broken, I am a soul having a human experience. That many of the beliefs I had lived by were illusions. That death is not the end. That healing happens when we release what no longer serves us and return to our truth. And when that awakening began, everything changed.

This is why I do the work I do today.

I help women who feel trapped in toxic relationships, controlled by fear, shame, or belief systems that no longer fit. I help those who feel lost, disconnected, or broken remember that they are not. Freedom is possible. Healing is possible. Reclamation is possible.

Because I believe now more than ever that sometimes we must shatter in order to remember who we truly are.

With Love,