I was eight years old when my dad started abusing me. I didn't know that's what it was. He made it into games. When you're a kid, and the person who's supposed to protect you is the one doing it, you don't have a framework for what’s wrong. You just know something feels off, but you don't have the words for why.

He was my adoptive father. He adopted me when I was six. I called him Dad, and I meant it. I was a daddy's girl. I would have been the most devoted daughter if he had just let me be that. Instead, he used me, and he kept using me until I was nineteen years old.

I told my mom when I was nine. We were in the car, and she asked what kinds of things we did while she was away, and I started describing the games, and I watched her face change. She got us a therapist. No one reported it, so it continued.

I spent most of my childhood trying to hold everything together for everyone else. My mom worked long hours and emotionally checked out when she got home. My brothers were six and eight years younger than me, so I was the one making sure they were okay when my parents were downstairs screaming at each other. One day, they were fighting for a long time. I had taken my brothers into my room. They were getting hungry, so I went downstairs. My dad gave me some money to take them out to dinner. We walked through the kitchen, and I remember thinking, I'm the adult here. And I’m sixteen.

By the time I was thirteen, I had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I had PTSD. I just didn’t have a name for it yet. My self-worth was in the gutter. I got bullied at school. Teachers knew something was wrong, but nobody did anything. I cut classes because I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and emotionally drained, and people assumed I was lazy.

I finally cut off my dad completely when I was in college. I got a permanent restraining order. If he contacts me, he goes to jail. That sounds like a relief, and in some ways it was. But he was my dad. I had spent my whole childhood just wanting him to love me the way a father is supposed to love a daughter. Cutting that off broke my heart in a way I wasn't prepared for. I withdrew from classes. I started struggling in school. I cried on the floor of my dorm room with my forehead pressed against the carpet, feeling my heart breaking in my chest.

I kept going anyway.

I worked my way through college mostly alone. I spent 6 years working in retail management, then built an HR career from scratch, starting at the bottom and eventually working my way up to an HR Director. I bought a beautiful house with a huge kitchen for baking. Things were finally starting to look like what I had always hoped my life could be, but I still wasn’t truly happy. There was an underlying pain that never fully went away, and I started to wonder if it ever would.

And then I got laid off. Again.

I have been laid off four times now. Each one knocked me down. But there was one night, years before any of that started happening, when I almost didn't get back up.

I was living in San Diego with my grandparents, who probably needed a part-time nurse. My grandmother couldn’t walk anymore, and it had become more than my grandfather and I could realistically manage on our own. I was barely keeping myself together. I was sick, exhausted, financially struggling, and my mom and I were still at odds.

One night, my grandfather hit a median and blew out the tires on the highway. My grandmother was panicking, my grandfather was frazzled, and I was the one holding everything together: calling the tow truck, relaying instructions, and getting everyone sorted out while we were all overwhelmed.

When it was finally over, I called my mom. I didn’t need her to fix anything. I just wanted someone to say, “Hey, that sounds like a rough night. Are you okay?”

Instead, she coldly told me that if I couldn’t handle it, I should leave, and then she ripped into me.

That phone call didn’t break me. A lifetime of having nobody finally did.

After I hung up, I screamed. I don’t know for how long, maybe a minute or two, but it felt like years of pain finally coming out all at once. I picked up my grandmother’s walker and threw it across the room.

And then I had a thought that was eerily calm:

I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.

I had always hoped things would eventually get better. That hope had kept me going up until that point. But suddenly, I felt like it never would, and that hope was gone. I went to the bathroom. I got a bottle of pills and poured them into my hand. I lifted my hand toward my mouth, but stopped and asked, "Is there any hope?"

Is there any hope at all?

The name of my mom's best friend from high school, TC, came into my mind. She was like an aunt to us and lived nearby. She is the kindest, least judgmental person I’ve ever known. I put the pills away and texted her. She said she would meet with me right away for some hot cocoa. I went.

I might not be here today if it weren’t for TC. I send her cards regularly, just so she knows how amazing and special she is.

I share that moment because I need you to understand something. I was a person who had done everything right. I told the adults. I got therapy, read self-help books, and took medication. I worked hard and kept showing up. And I still ended up on the bathroom floor, wondering if there was any point.

Healing is not a straight line. It just isn't.

What finally shifted things wasn't a book, a therapist, or a promotion. It was a Kundalini awakening experience that opened my spiritual senses and began bringing buried things back to the surface. I had already done a lot of work before this happened. I wasn't starting from zero. I had already healed a significant amount of what my dad did. This wasn't some spontaneous breakthrough. It was the last piece of a puzzle I had been putting together for a long time.

What triggered it was unexpected. After my Kundalini awakening, I started hearing from Spirit in ways I hadn't before. One day, I heard what felt like my dad's spirit coming through. I heard apologies and the word ashamed. At first, I thought he had died, but later I heard from my brother that he was still alive. I eventually found out that other people have experienced this as well, hearing from the spirit or energy of someone who’s still alive, which I didn’t know at the time. Whether it was him or an angel showing me something I needed to see, I don't know. But something about it cracked me open.

The next day, I heard, "I'll see you in the bathroom." I was baking at the time and didn't think much of it. But when I went to shower, everything started coming up. And I let it.

I said everything I had never been able to say. I called him a coward. I called him weak. I told him I understood he had probably been abused too, that cycles get passed down, and that I felt sorry for who he was before all of that happened to him. But I also told him that understanding why someone does something is not the same as excusing it. He had a choice. He chose wrong. And I was done carrying that.

What finally healed in me wasn't just the anger. It was the perspective shift. When you're a child, your parents are everything. What they think of you feels like the truth about who you are. I had spent decades with this quiet background belief that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow the problem, because that's what you absorb when the person who is supposed to love and protect you treats you the way he did. Losing that reverence, seeing him clearly for what he actually was, a weak man who made terrible choices and hurt everyone around him, that's what finally freed me.

After that, I felt lighter than I had in a very long time.

I realized that I am strong. I figured that out late, but I figured it out. I protected my brothers, told the truth when I was just a kid, got a restraining order when it terrified me, built a career, bought a house, and kept going through things that would have stopped a lot of people, and I did most of it completely alone.

So did you, maybe. And if you're still in the middle of it, still on the floor asking if there's any hope, I want you to hear this:

There is. I promise you there is. I am living proof. Whatever you’re facing, you can get through it.

If you need support:

If anything in this article brought something up for you, please reach out. You don't have to figure this out alone.

RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673 (available 24/7, also has online chat at rainn.org)

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988

Psychology Today therapist directory: psychologytoday.com/us/therapists

You are not too far gone. You are not too broken. And you are not alone. You are stronger and more loved than you know.

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