I close my eyes, I breathe, and I see it a deeply unconscious metaphor that has been running my entire life.
I see it so clearly in my mind. A pitch black room, so dark it feels endless. The kind of darkness that does not just surround you, but presses in on you. There is a bed sitting quietly in the room, barely visible beneath the heaviness of it all. And then there is the closet…
And inside that closet, a little girl.
A little me.
She is frightened. Frozen. Curled tightly into herself as if making herself smaller might somehow make her safer. Her body is tense, her breath shallow, her whole being pulled inward. She is scared to face the world, but somehow even more scared to face herself. Scared of being seen. Scared of what might happen if she steps out. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared of life itself. She is paralyzed with fear, frozen in time, trapped in a moment her body never fully left.
That was my childhood.
A constant state of vigilance. A constant state of fear. Always hiding. Always bracing. Always waiting for something to go wrong. Always feeling like danger could appear at any second. My nervous system never learned safety. The world around me felt unpredictable, fragile, and hard to trust. It was as if I was always preparing for impact, always trying to protect myself from something I could not name but could always feel.
And somehow, all of that became one living metaphor in my subconscious. The little girl in the closet.
What is so unbelievable to me now is realizing how much of my life has been filtered through this one image. That one wound. That one inner state of being.
It shows up in the way I walk through the world.
It shows up in the way I speak.
It shows up in the way I run this blog.
It shows up in the way I create my art.
It shows up in the way I manage my finances.
It shows up in the way I handle opportunities.
It shows up in the way I relate to visibility, expression, responsibility, and even success.
It is almost hard to comprehend how a part of me I was not consciously aware of could be silently shaping so much of my life. But that is the thing about deep trauma, deep fear, and the survival patterns we form early on.
Some experiences do not just hurt us in the moment they root themselves so deeply into the subconscious that they begin to live there Underneath everything & from there, they start running the show.
It is not always obvious at first. In fact, most of the time it is not. It can look like procrastination. Avoidance. Perfectionism. Numbness. Control. Fear of being seen. Fear of not being seen. Fear of making the wrong move. Fear of moving at all.
It can look like paralysis.
It can look like wanting so badly to live, create, express, and expand, while at the exact same time feeling terrified to do any of it.
That is what I did not understand for so long.
I did not know that the little girl in the closet was still with me.
I did not know she was showing up in so many areas of my life.
I did not know she was influencing my decisions.
I did not know she was behind that frozen feeling.
That collapse.
That hesitation.
That deep fear of life.
I did not know that when I felt out of control and tried to control people, places, and things, it was her.
When I felt unmotivated and unable to do my work, it was her.
When I felt paralyzed and unable to move forward, unable to face the world, unable to take up space, it was her.
When hiding felt safer than being seen, it was her.
When shrinking felt safer than shining, it was her.
She learned a long time ago that hiding was survival.
So of course she hid & for so long, I judged that part of me.
I resisted it I got frustrated with it.
I did not understand why I could not just move forward, why I could not just be different, why I could not just force myself out of it.
Healing has been teaching me that this little girl does not need more judgment.
She does not need to be forced out.
She does not need to be shamed for how she learned to survive.
She needs love.
She needs tenderness.
She needs compassion.
She needs someone to sit beside her in the dark and say, I see you. I understand why you are afraid. You do not have to do this alone anymore.
And ever since I brought awareness to her, to this scared little girl in the closet, I have been doing my best to be there for her.
To sit with her.
To listen to her.
To love her.
To care for her.
To stay with her when she is scared.
To stay with her when she is furious.
To stay with her when she wants to shut down, hide, disappear, or push everything away.
To listen without judgment.
To let her feel what she never got to fully feel.
To give her the space she needs.
To let her know that she is no longer trapped in that room.
That time has passed.
That the danger is over.
That she survived.
And slowly, she is learning something new.
She is learning that it is safe now.
Safe to breathe.
Safe to be seen.
Safe to exist outside of fear.
Safe to come out of hiding.
Safe to live.
She is learning that there is no harm coming for her anymore.
That she does not have to stay frozen in time.
That she does not have to keep reliving the same story forever.
She is learning that she can step out of the closet now.
And maybe that is what healing is.
Not becoming someone else overnight.
Not erasing the past.
Not pretending that little girl never existed.
But meeting her.
Seeing her.
Understanding her.
Loving her enough that she no longer has to hide.
And little by little, with patience, presence, and love, helping her come back into the light.
