This time, I’m really doing it.

I’m writing a book about how traumatic events in my childhood and young adult years still reverberate through my daily life. Wending threads of infection through every detail of my being. There are many fears that build the wall of my resistance. Yet, at the same time, I feel this great swell of relief mounting inside of me, waves rising and cresting out through my pores. Medicinal droplets of acceptance soothing my weathered skin. Already, I can see the positive impact sending ripples out through my “now” life.

Is it possible to stop living in the past? I don’t know. But I am an individual woman who is testing the boundaries of the barbed wire fence that she was told she must live within.

I’ve spent most of my life hiding. The tattoo of secrets driven deep into my skin by needles crafted of fear. Traumatic events are hard for people to understand. I’ve had people ask me why I can’t “just let it go.” Believe me, to heaven and hell back, I’ve tried. And it doesn’t work. For me, there is a certain level of surrender involved. Knowing that I may always carry this early programming with me. And that it is more than O.K. I don’t need to be perfect. None of us are in reality.

By sharing our stories, we can connect on a deeper level. We can understand what it means to be fallible. Even more importantly, together, we can’t shake free from the edict that we must be good and right and come to understand that it is perfectly beautiful to be damaged. Shake your wings and let the dust of self contempt flee from you!

Rather than feeling guilty about having baggage, I want to be accepted and even valued for my scars. I haven’t succumbed to the depths of my despair. Not yet. I am forever grateful this vein of strength that runs through me. Perhaps, by the end of this journey in memoir transcription, I’ll be able to feel worthy enough to accept credit for the positive choices I’ve made.