“It’s not mine to say anymore,” one of my therapists said softly, midway through a powerful enactment in a recent session. She repeated the words a few times, her tone steady, her gaze kind and unwavering. I felt a wave of emotion rise in my chest, my eyes welling up. In that moment, I finally honoured the hurt I had been carrying. I let go of the need to fight alone, and allowed something (or someone) to stand up for me instead.
A few weeks earlier, I had been surrounded by a warm, supportive community of mindfulness practitioners. Some were familiar faces from past courses, others were from a mindfulness circle I had recently joined. The first day of a three-day trauma-sensitive mindfulness retreat had gone smoothly. I grounded myself with ease, returning to the anchor points I’d spent months strengthening. When I needed to, I pressed my palms into my knees, a small but powerful way to bring myself back to the present.
But the real work began on day two.
We were invited to gently revisit past adverse experiences, not to fix or avoid them, but to meet them with presence and care. I chose a moment from the morning of January 1st. At first, it felt like any other mindfulness practice, grounding, noticing, and naming sensations. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. It was as if my body remembered something my mind had forgotten. When I finally closed my eyes, it was past four in the morning.
When I woke, something had surfaced.
A specific exchange from that day, one I had completely forgotten, began replaying in my mind. Each time the words came back, a wave of nausea followed, as if my body was rejecting them.
I entered the third day of the retreat exhausted. Instead of calming me, the practices began to unearth even more. I finally understood what David Treleaven, the trauma expert who led the retreat, had been trying to convey—our bodies remember. And mindfulness, while powerful, can sometimes bring those buried memories to the surface.
I didn’t just recall the feelings, I relived them. The tightness in my chest. The knot in my stomach. The tension in my body.
A few days later, during a short getaway, more surfaced. I remembered being behind the camera on January 1st, capturing seven smiling faces, knowing I wouldn’t be in the photo. A chill ran through me each time I recalled it. These memories returned vividly, suddenly, and intensely, leaving me frozen in place.
I brought both moments into therapy. It took at least four full sessions to process those two memories. The word “trauma” came up more than I’d ever heard it used in a single hour. At first, I wasn’t sure. Nothing life-threatening had happened. Why did these moments shake me so deeply?
But I’ve since come to understand that trauma isn’t only about the event, it’s about how our nervous system stores and interprets it. Healing requires more than just mental understanding. It calls us to meet what’s stored in the body too.
One therapy session stands out. We processed the photo-taking memory through a series of enactments. I sat on the counselling couch and watched the scene unfold in my mind. I saw myself behind the camera, my eyes welling with tears, unnoticed. Even in that quiet counselling room, I felt the same chill I had experienced that day run through me.
Later, I was invited to shift perspectives. I saw myself from the side, my body rigid, frozen, unmoving. The emotions returned in full force.
Then something unexpected happened. My therapist gently invited me to bring someone into the memory. Someone who could stand up for me. Someone who could say what I couldn’t at the time: “This is not right.”
Before I could even process the invitation, a white curtain of light appeared. It separated me from the group. It was radiant, overwhelming, yet deeply comforting. Perhaps a presence. A higher being. A quiet reminder that I was not alone.
I walked out of that therapy session feeling lighter. For the first time, I was not alone in that memory. And now, whenever I return to it, that white light is still there, a symbol of protection and presence.
The work didn’t end there. In subsequent sessions, my therapists and I continued to revisit both memories, not because I was still emotionally stuck, but because it mattered to understand why they surfaced and lingered so strongly, and what they meant. It was important to honour the hurt, and to bring clarity to what had once felt like chaos.
Processing all of this, and more, over the past three months hasn’t been easy. Since January, I’ve been trying my best to show up for myself. And while the work continues, life has been quietly unfolding, sometimes messily, sometimes beautifully, as I learn to hold space for both the past and the present.
There have also been moments I can’t quite explain. Strange coincidences. Quiet reassurances.
A trusted tarot reader told me in January to “sit with the chaos.” Later, I had an aura painting done. She added bright white orbs, something she said she rarely does. They represented higher beings watching over me.
I’ve bumped into people from mindfulness circles in the most unexpected places. I found myself in church one afternoon with a friend, walking up during an altar call. A man prayed for healing, his words oddly specific. My friend placed her hand gently on my shoulder, and I felt safe.
These moments, whether through therapy, tarot, faith, or friendships, have all echoed the same quiet truth: I am not alone during the past three months.
Even on the hardest days of these past three months, as I’ve continued to do the work and reconnect with myself, something and someone, has been holding me through it all.
Thank you to the people who have shown up.