Survival Mode
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There has been a quiet gap here. Not because I stopped healing.Not because I had nothing left to say.Or ran out of the courage to say it. But because sometimes the most important healing happens away from the page. Healing isn’t always pretty journaling prompts and bath bombs.Sometimes it’s messy and hard and completely invisible…
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I didn’t know I was in survival mode.Because I was naive, naive to how bad it really was. I didn’t know that long-term fear and chronic stresscould quietly dismantle a nervous system.That the body keeps scoreeven when the mind insists everything’s fine. I didn’t understand trauma.And I definitely didn’t understand mental health.I wasn’t raised in…
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Most people think survival mode looks like chaos. Panic attacks. Screaming. Obvious distress. But that’s not how it usually shows up, at least not for me. Survival mode is quiet. It’s calculated. It’s the tension in my jaw on the drive over. It’s the rehearsed “safe” phrases looping in my…
Ashes & Ink 