My Healing Story
This is the story of how God met me in darkness, and how surrender became the beginning of a healing journey that would change my life.
The Patterns I Couldn't Seem to Break
For years, I found myself repeating patterns I didn't fully understand.
I moved from one relationship to another, carrying unresolved wounds into each new chapter and hoping that somehow things would turn out differently. I desperately wanted love, connection, and intimacy, yet I struggled to experience the very things I longed for.
What I couldn't see at the time was that the protective patterns I'd developed in response to childhood sexual abuse had become barriers to the vulnerability, trust, and emotional safety that genuine intimacy requires. The very things I'd learned to do to protect myself were keeping me from experiencing the connection I so deeply desired.
When life became painful or complicated, I had a habit of avoiding what needed to be faced, burying difficult emotions, and moving forward before I'd ever really processed what had happened. Eventually, I began recognizing that the childhood sexual abuse I'd never truly addressed was affecting far more of my adult life than I'd realized.
That awareness marked the beginning of my healing journey.
When the Darkness Became Impossible to Ignore
The loss of someone I deeply loved coupled with the reality of a failed marriage became a defining turning point in my life.
It brought me face-to-face with a grief so profound that I could no longer maintain the facade I'd been living behind. So much of what I'd spent years avoiding was suddenly impossible to ignore.
But instead of allowing myself to face that pain, I did what I'd become so accustomed to doing. I buried it and sought comfort in another relationship. At first, that relationship felt like a sweet distraction from everything I didn't want to feel. But it wasn't long before the unhealed wounds we both carried began showing up in destructive ways.
I desperately wanted to help him. I began studying trauma, trying to understand his behaviors and searching for answers that might help him heal, and, in turn, save our relationship. But somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened. The more I learned about trauma, the more clearly I began to see myself.
That relationship became a mirror, reflecting not only the wounds and unhealthy patterns I could recognize in someone else, but the ones I'd been carrying and repeating in my own life. I began recognizing how often I'd abandoned myself, ignored what I knew wasn't healthy, and looked to relationships for something they could never truly give me.
Eventually, I had to face a difficult truth: I couldn't heal someone else's wounds for them, and I couldn't keep neglecting my own. But the decision to walk away wasn't simply about choosing myself. It was about choosing God.
I knew that relationship wasn't where He wanted me to be. And after years of trying to find my own way through the pain, I finally surrendered to His. I ended the relationship and began turning my attention toward the healing I'd spent so long avoiding. This time, I wasn't searching for answers to change someone else or save a relationship.
I was ready to face my own wounds, understand my own patterns, and allow God to begin transforming the parts of my life I'd spent years trying to manage on my own.
Understanding What Was Happening Beneath the Surface
As I began learning more about trauma, I started recognizing just how deeply my past experiences had shaped my responses to the world around me.
One of the biggest revelations came when I realized that my body wasn't always responding to what was happening in the present moment. Sometimes, my nervous system was reacting to reminders of experiences from the past that I'd never fully processed.
Suddenly, so many things began making sense. The anxiety. The hypervigilance. The emotional reactions that seemed disproportionate to the circumstances. The patterns of avoidance, self-sabotage, and disconnection that I'd struggled to understand for years.
Reading The Body Keeps the Score opened the door to a deeper exploration of trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and the connection between the body and mind. I took courses, continued researching, and began incorporating somatic and cognitive practices into my daily life. And I started experiencing meaningful changes.
I was learning to recognize my nervous system's responses, understand what was happening beneath the surface, and respond to myself with greater awareness and compassion rather than judgment. But even as I made progress, I sensed that something was still missing.
I was learning so much about how trauma affected the body and mind, yet I hadn't fully connected those discoveries to what I believed about the God who created me.
The Missing Piece Wasn't Another Healing Technique
Throughout my life, I'd turned to Jesus in moments of need. I'd prayed, sought His comfort, and experienced His love and mercy.
But somewhere along the way, I'd begun approaching my healing practices as something separate from my relationship with Him. I was learning how to regulate my nervous system, process difficult emotions, and challenge unhealthy thought patterns. Yet I hadn't fully understood what it meant to invite Jesus into those very experiences.
And as my relationship with Him deepened, I began seeing my healing journey through an entirely different lens. God hadn't created me as a collection of disconnected parts. He created me as a whole person—body, soul, and spirit. The things I was learning through neuroscience and somatic healing weren't separate from His design. They were helping me understand aspects of the body and mind He had created.
His Word revealed truths about my identity, my worth, and the freedom available through Jesus that no healing technique alone could give me.
For so long, I'd been trying to understand what was wrong with me. But when I started looking at what happened to me, how had I learned to survive it, and who had God created me to be beneath those wounds, it changed the way I approached healing. Instead of simply trying to manage symptoms or eliminate unwanted behaviors, I began addressing the deeper wounds, beliefs, and survival patterns that had shaped my life.
I learned to bring my emotions, memories, fears, and struggles before God, not just asking Him to take the pain away, but allowing His truth to challenge the lies I'd come to believe about myself.
My faith was no longer something I turned to only when I needed comfort. It was becoming something I was learning to live and experience through my body, soul, and spirit.
Healing in Layers, Becoming Whole Again
My healing didn't happen overnight. Just as my trauma had accumulated in layers, healing unfolded in layers, too.
Some brought understanding. Others brought grief. Some required learning new ways of responding to my body and emotions, while others meant confronting painful truths, releasing old beliefs, establishing healthier boundaries, and making different choices.
There were moments of profound breakthrough and seasons when progress felt slow. But over time, I began recognizing changes that went far beyond simply understanding my trauma. I experienced relief from anxiety, depression, chronic tension, migraines, and digestive struggles that had affected my life.
I began breaking patterns of self-sabotage and unhealthy relationships, processing grief I'd avoided, and responding differently to situations that once overwhelmed me. And perhaps most importantly, I began discovering a sense of peace, safety, and identity that I'd spent much of my life searching for in other people and circumstances.
I was learning that the ways I'd adapted to survive weren't the entirety of who I was. The woman God created me to be hadn't disappeared beneath the trauma. She was still there. Healing was helping me recognize her again.
And through it all, I came to understand something that continues to shape the way I live: My past was part of my story, but it didn't have to become the prophecy of my future. I'm still learning. I'm still growing. And there are still places where God is working in my life.
But I no longer believe that the darkness I've experienced gets to determine who I am or what the rest of my story can become.
Why I'm Sharing My Story
For a long time, I believed the pain I'd experienced was something I simply had to learn to live with.
I didn't understand how deeply trauma could affect the body, soul, and spirit. I didn't know how much of my life was being shaped by wounds I'd never fully addressed. And I certainly didn't imagine that the very experiences I'd spent years wishing I could erase would eventually become part of a purpose so close to my heart.
But God, in His goodness and mercy, continued meeting me in the places I needed Him most. He didn't abandon me in my darkness. And He wasn't finished with my story.
Dark Sky Flutterby grew out of my desire to share what I've learned through that journey, to help other women understand what's happening beneath the surface, recognize the ways trauma may have shaped their lives, and discover that healing, wholeness, and freedom are possible through Jesus.
I can't promise that your healing journey will look like mine. And I don't have every answer. But I can share the biblical truths, knowledge, practices, and encouragement that have helped me along the way. That's why I created Victorious.
It's an offering of what I've learned through my own healing journey, brought together in a faith-based, whole-person approach designed to support women as they begin understanding their wounds, reconnecting with their God-given identity, and learning to walk in the freedom Jesus has already made available.
You don't need a program to experience God's love or receive His healing. But if you're looking for guidance, encouragement, and a more intentional path forward, I'd be honored to share what I've learned with you.
Your past is not prophecy. And your story is far from over.
