From the Pages: The Heavy Lifting of Healing

Healing isn’t always gentle.
Sometimes it tears you open from the root and dares you to rebuild yourself from the inside out.

For me, the real work began in rehab—not just talking about what I’d been through, but reliving it. Breathing through it. Writing my way into it. Holding it in my body until either it let go… or I did.

This part wasn’t about pretty breakthroughs or clean goodbyes. It was about sweating through the mess, confronting what still lived in my body, and choosing—again and again—not to numb it. Not to run.

Here’s what it really looked like:

A quiet moment of reflection amidst the chaos.

Choosing to Feel It All

For a long time, I believed healing meant finding the right combination of meds, routines, and coping strategies to stay afloat. But eventually, surviving stopped being enough. I didn’t want to float—I wanted to feel. Even if it hurt. I wanted to face what I’d buried beneath years of prescriptions, distractions, and survival-mode.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 19. For over a decade, I wrestled with the idea of being medicated. From 2011 to 2021, I stayed off all psychiatric meds as I navigated the ups and downs of bipolar disorder, the emotional weight of single motherhood, marriage and divorce, complicated relationships, and unresolved trauma that had lived in my body for years.

In 2021, eight loved ones passed away—grief stacked on grief. That same year, I developed a herniated disc in my neck that wouldn’t heal. In hindsight, I know it was tied to the emotional weight I hadn’t yet processed. I went on a 9-month medical leave from work and eventually underwent surgery.

With all that, I finally gave in. I chose medication—not because I believed in it, but because I needed help to keep functioning.

“It wasn’t silence, but a blanket over the noise. Just enough to make life bearable. Just enough to keep going.”

In early January 2025, after a spiral that led to my stay in a behavioral health hospital (more about that here), they put me back on the full lineup—mood stabilizers, antidepressants, anxiety meds.

I took them because I was scared. Because the system said I should. Because I didn’t know what else to do.

But once I arrived at the long-term recovery house—a quieter place, designed for the real work—I knew:

This was my chance to actually feel it.

“I told my doctor I want to taper off my meds. I don’t want to be on all this. I feel emotionally blocked & disconnected from my body.”

I didn’t want to keep numbing myself to get through the day. I wanted to know what was really happening inside me.

“There’s a fog that’s been lifting. At first, I thought it was just exhaustion—but I think it’s my brain, adjusting to feeling again.”

Little by little, my body was reminding me what it meant to be alive.

“Already my body feels more alive. I feel more in tune with what’s really happening inside me.”

I wanted to face the pain—not sedate it. I wanted to process—not perform. I wanted to wake up.

“If I’m going to heal, I have to do it fully. I want to feel the hard things, the grief, the rage. I want to know it. That’s how I’ll know I’m alive.”

And this time, I wasn’t doing it alone. For the first time, I had real support—support that honored my intuition.

“This is one of the first times I’ve come off psych meds with true support instead of shame. And it feels different. It’s rare to feel truly supported in choosing a more holistic path—especially by doctors. That support makes all the difference. For once, I didn’t feel dismissed or pathologized—I felt trusted. And that changed everything.”

The Body Remembers

Before I could talk about what happened to me, my body had already been telling the story.
The pain in my neck. The fatigue that pulled me under. The way my limbs felt like they were made of lead when depression crept in. My body was never quiet—it was just ignored.

“I realize I've had so much trauma in the past five or six years that I have not properly processed and so many trapped emotions, no wonder I've been struggling as bad as I have. More confirmation that I'm on the right path.”

At the recovery house, I was reminded time and time again of something no doctor had ever explained to me:
That trauma doesn’t just live in your mind—it lives in your tissue. Your nervous system. Your breath. Your sleep.

“The only way to get rid of the trauma is by processing the trauma, feeling your feelings & doing different physical healing modalities to remove that stuck energy from the body. That is my new mission. I need to get rid of this shit…”

I learned that my body wasn’t betraying me. It was holding everything I hadn’t yet let myself feel.

They gave us space to release it—through yoga, acupuncture, massage, somatic work. Each session became another chance to listen instead of override.

It hit me again one evening when my roommate and I rewatched E-Motion, a documentary I’d first seen back in 2018. It opened my eyes then—and watching it again in the middle of my healing process felt like a spiritual nudge that I was exactly where I needed to be.

“Dear Body,
You've harbored & dealt with many traumas over the years. You've been resilient.
You've done a great job reminding me when I'm putting in too much & not taking care of you. Thank you for always speaking up when there's something I need to pay attention to.
Stay strong. Don't give up on me. I need you & appreciate you.
– Love, Joselyn”

The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
And now—I’m learning to let it speak.

Truth Telling & Trauma Eggs

Therapy here didn’t mean retelling stories to check a box. It meant stepping into the fire and learning I could stand it.

It meant saying the unsayable out loud—without being met with silence or sidestepping. It meant being seen in my rawest grief, fear, and anger... and still being welcomed.

“There’s power in speaking your truth. I shared something today I’ve never said out loud before.”

One of the most powerful assignments we were given was something called the trauma egg. Each of us had to map out the major events and traumas that shaped us, and then present them aloud in group. There’s something disarming about being witnessed like that—and even more powerful about witnessing others. It broke down walls. It made telling our truth easier, because we weren’t telling it to strangers. We were telling it to people who had already shown us theirs.

“Writing the trauma egg cracked something open in me. Seeing it all in one place... it made the pain feel real—but also like I didn’t have to hold it alone anymore.”

We also had an assignment where we had to share every single one of our problems, secrets, and worst moments—the things we normally bury and protect. All of it. And still, no one ran.

“Hearing everyone else’s pain made it easier to speak my own. We were all carrying something.”

For the first time, I stopped intellectualizing my pain and started feeling it. Therapists didn’t rush to fix it. Group members didn’t flinch. We stayed. We let each other break. And in that space, something deeper could finally surface.

Letters That Tore Me Open

Some of the hardest work I did wasn’t spoken—it was written.

We were asked to write letters—to people & things who’ve hurt us, to parts of ourselves, to the past. Sometimes we read them aloud in group. Sometimes we didn’t have to. But the act of writing them, of putting words to pain I had never dared to name, changed me.

“Dear drugs & alcohol,

You've made me feel at ease during some hard times, but man you've really dragged my friends & family through the dirt & quite literally to their graves. You're a clever con man and I can no longer stand with you. I refuse to let you do to me what you did to them. Yes, you haven't ruined my life yet, because I haven't let you, but you've been getting the best of me lately & I'm proactively making the choice to leave now before I'm dragged to my grave with the rest of them. I will not entertain you any longer. Be gone. Be well. – Joselyn”

These weren’t just letters. They were confrontations. Closures. Confessions.
They were how I began to take my power back.

“I'm sorry for all the times I abandoned you. For all the years I silenced you so others could feel more comfortable.”

I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear those words—especially from myself.

“I see now that you were never the problem. You were just trying to protect me. And I’m not angry with you anymore.”

Letting go of the blame made space for something else—something lighter. Compassion. Understanding.

“I’m choosing to let go, not for you—but for me. Because I deserve peace. I deserve to be free.”

Some of what poured out on those pages had been trapped inside me for years. Writing was the only way I could say it without breaking.

A Work In Progress

No one tells you how much strength it takes to sit with yourself when the numbing wears off.
To stay when it’s heavy. To breathe through what you used to run from.

But this is where the real healing happens.
Not when it’s over—
But when you decide to stay in it.

Even now, months later, I’m still facing challenges—financial stress, family responsibilities, emotional weight. But I’m not where I was. Not even close. I can feel how much lighter I move through the world because of the heavy lifting I did back then.

Writing this reminded me of how far I’ve come—and of how important it is to keep applying what I learned. Healing isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a daily choice. And today, I’m still choosing it. Over and over again. The best I can.

There’s more to this story—because after the heavy lifting, came the rebuilding. The routines. The moments of peace. The version of me that started to form next is someone I’m still getting to know.

The next post picks up where this one leaves off—where I stopped falling apart and started putting myself back together. Where identity, discipline, and a quiet kind of strength began to take shape.

Finding peace in the stillness of the desert.

For the Page: A Letter to the Body

This week, try writing a letter to your body.
What has it carried? What has it protected you from? What does it still hold that you’re ready to release?
Let the words come without editing. Let it be messy. Let it be yours.

If you need a place to start, try finishing this sentence in your journal:

“If I were to stop numbing, I might finally feel…”