Content Warning:
This piece contains references to child abuse, trauma, self-harm, and emotional distress. Reader discretion is advised.
This piece also reflects a journey of survival and healing.
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Part 2 – What They Couldn’t Steal From Me
They took almost everything — others.
They took my safety, my voice, my childhood, my trust. They took my innocence, my sense of belonging, and even my body.
But they didn’t take me.
Not the part that kept loving. Not the part that kept praying. Not the part that would one day find Wyman, or hold Lily close, stand beside Alex as they rebuilt their identity. The day I got to see Cole again, and his smile. Hearing Autumn, Harper, and Rose's voices, I knew they would be okay and rebuild one step at a time. Not the part that would find warmth and welcome in Wyman’s family, when I didn’t know how to trust one of my own. Not the part that would begin to write all of this down so it would never be forgotten.
Leaving their house didn’t feel like an escape. It felt like falling through a trapdoor and landing somewhere I didn’t understand. I thought being taken away would mean peace. But I was still carrying their hands around my throat. Their words in my ears. Their shame under my skin.
I lived in fight-or-flight. I doubted everyone. I hated myself. I questioned if God had ever really loved me, or if I was just one of the forgotten.
I still wanted to believe. But belief hurt.
There were nights I couldn’t sleep because I thought Jordan was coming through the door. There were moments where someone else’s anger made me flinch like Thomas was standing over me. There were times I heard Margaret's voice in my head, even when no one was talking.
There were days I tried to die quietly, emotionally, and spiritually. And once or twice, physically — many.
But something wouldn’t let me.
Something pulled me back.
It wasn’t because I loved myself. It was because I still loved them: my siblings, other foster kids, anyone who had no one. Turning 'what if' into 'even if'.
I thought:
If I disappear, who will protect them? If I vanish, who will fight for the ones who never had a voice or needed protection?
So I stayed.
Not because I wasn’t hurting. But because I wasn’t done yet. I didn't know how to be just didn’t know how to be.
I didn’t know how to exist in my own body, my own mind, my own being.
Foster care after the Whites wasn’t simple. I was placed in a new home, but I brought the ghosts with me. I cut myself because it felt like the only pain I could control and release. I tried to break my own wrist to escape punishment, just to get someone—anyone—to believe I was in pain. That didn’t start after the Whites. It started while I still lived with them. I remember taking a hammer to my wrist in secret, trying to cause enough damage to be seen, to be believed, to be spared. It wasn’t about rebellion. It was about survival—and desperation. I wasn’t trying to fake pain. I was trying to prove it existed.
What hurt more than the bruises or the fear was the fact that no one believed me. I was being hurt behind closed doors, punished to the point of collapse, starved of love and safety. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I showed them an injury they could see—one I gave myself—they might stop and ask why. I thought if I hurt myself badly enough, they’d look past their hatred and finally see that something was wrong. It wasn’t to scare them. It was to reach them. But it didn’t work. They saw what they wanted to see.
That’s the truth about my wrist — the reason why. Not because I was bad. But because I was desperate to be seen as human.
Food became my only comfort. Attention was something I feared and craved at the same time. I was tired of the punishments over and over again.
I didn’t trust kindness. I didn’t believe safety was real.
And when people looked at me like I was the problem, I started to believe it.
But there were moments.
Small ones...
A quiet word from a caseworker. A stranger who didn’t flinch. A child I could comfort. Even a police officer who stopped me when I ran, and listened—really listened.
When I met Wyman, I wasn’t whole. But he didn’t expect me to be. He listened. He stayed. He believed me. Being human and imperfect was okay and journeying together.
And somewhere in that believing, I began to...
Heal.
Learn.
Reshaping.
Safe enough to step into my becoming.
Not because a man saved me. But because for the first time—I felt seen. Not watched. Not judged. Not used. Seen.
There’s so much more to tell. The rage. The flashbacks. The quiet victories. The shame that still tries to creep in. The kink, the submission, the parts of me I’m still learning were shaped by trauma, but aren’t only made of it. Trauma may have opened the door, but it didn’t write the script. My submission isn’t a scar—it's a sacred offering. I choose it now, with trust, with joy, with faith. What was once taken from me, I now give freely to the man who honors it. My body, my devotion, my pleasure—they are not reminders of pain. They are part of my healing, my strength, my intimacy with God.
God always gave me my softness. He anointed me with gifts and sensitivities that couldn’t be erased, even in darkness. I only have them because He made me who I am. Accepting the women I am instead thinking being a women was a mistake. I live out His purpose now: to embody the kind of love that reflects His heart, in every touch, in every tear, in every room I walk into. To be a living invitation for others to experience God’s nearness through me.
There’s my relationship with God. Still sacred. Still trembling. Still real. There’s Lily, and the way I’d walk through fire if it meant keeping her safe. There’s Alex, whom I still love deeply, even in the middle of everything we’ve survived. There’s Rose, whom I found again—proof that even broken bonds can reconnect. There’s Cole, Autumn, and Harper, and the moments I got to see or hear them again—reminders of what I fought for. There’s Wyman’s family, like his mother, who is my mom, who gave me a place to belong when I didn’t know how to ask for it. There’s Wyman, and the man who holds me when the nightmares return. His family, who makes me whole again in safety.
There’s all of it. And I’m not done telling it.
Because they tried to break me. But I’m still standing. And they couldn’t steal the woman I’ve become.
I decide who I am, through every part of me, even the mess, even the mistakes, past, present, and still to come.