She Was Always There; I Just Had to Burn First.
(Almost Ten Years After “The R Word” I learned healing isn’t a phoenix moment—it’s a slow, glittering burn.)
Content Note (TW: sexual assault, PTSD)
Read in a space where you can breathe. If tonight feels heavy, bookmark this for daylight and come back when you’re ready.
I used to think healing would look like closure.
A conversation. A moment. A miracle.
Something that would stitch the wound and let me move on with grace and clarity.
But survival doesn’t look like that.
Sometimes it looks like silence.
Sometimes it looks like bracing your palms on the bathroom sink at 2 a.m. because the floor won’t stop tilting.
Sometimes it looks like laughing at a meme 30 minutes after reliving your worst memory.
But you know what? That still counts.
You don’t need to be articulate to be believed.
You don’t need to “transform” into a warrior to be worthy of rest.
You don’t owe the world your story tied up in a bow.
July 19th 2015, 1:18 a.m.
The house is still, but the memories are loud.
A decade ago, I sat on the floor of my room in my parents' house—knees to chest, lungs refusing to move air—and began typing the post now living in internet archives everywhere: “The R Word.”
I wrote because silence tasted like poison.
I wrote because I needed proof I was still here.
I wrote because I didn’t know what else to do with the night.
I did not write to be brave, or groundbreaking, or a “founding mother” of anything. I wrote to survive.
Late the next night, with a trembling voice, I read my final draft out loud to my mother - my biggest supporter and source of strength since the day I took a deep breath, walked into the kitchen where she was doing dishes and said "Mom...I need to tell you something." She hugged me and rocked me in the way only a mother can and told me it was beautiful but I didn't have to post it. With tears streaming down my face, I said the phrase I would say so many times in the next decade, "I do, though, because if I don't, no one else will." So, with a trembling hand, I clicked Publish, not yet even close to comprehending the tidal wave that simple click created.
I don't regret it. At all. I wrote to help others and to find my own healing.
Tonight I write because I finally did.
The Night That Split My Timeline
Back then, the story spilled out in jagged detail: a plastic grocery bag on my coffee table, a sitcom I still can’t stomach, Coca-Cola laced with something that stole my body and left the lights on.
Those sentences remain online unchanged—my living scar tissue. I won’t rewrite them; I honor them. But I’m no longer trapped inside them. I’ve learned that we don’t heal by sanding down the edges of our past; we heal by letting the edges teach us how to wield them.
How Healing Actually Looked (Un-Instagrammed Version)
PTSD is a shapeshifter.
One day it’s insomnia’s cruel chorus; the next it’s vodka-silent blackout, because nightmares can’t find you if you don’t dream.
My textbooks never mentioned how trauma will trick you into becoming the villain in your own story just so the real monster can disappear.
Therapy saved me, yes—
But so did messy friendships, late-night phone calls, parking-lot tears, and the stranger in a church foyer who said, “I don’t know what you’re carrying, but you don’t have to carry it alone.”
(If that was you, I remember; thank you.)
Ten Things 2015-Me Didn’t Know
1. Reporting or not reporting is never the yardstick of courage. No courtroom defines your worth.
2. Triggers shrink when named out loud. The naming is surgical: it hurts, but the bullet comes out.
3. Love that needs you unscarred isn’t love, it’s performance.
4. Your nervous system keeps receipts. Learn its language or drown in its debt.
5. One day you’ll wear the shirt or dress you were assaulted in—and it will feel like fabric again, not evidence. One day...
6. “Strong” and “soft” are siblings, not opposites.
7. You’ll still flinch at certain fragrances—and that’s okay. Healing means fewer landmines, not zero, and many underestimate how quickly scent can trigger memory recall.
8. Your story will midwife other stories; pain recycles into permission.
9. The people who walked away weren’t the loss; their absence made room for the ones who run toward sirens. They are the ones you need at 2 am when you forgot how to look for the light.
10. Survival is the prologue. Thriving is the series.
A Love Letter to 2015 Samantha
Sweet, hopeful girl,
I know you hated mornings because nights never ended.
I know Monster energy drinks felt like armor.
I know you scrubbed until your skin stung and yet you still swore you could feel him there (and every so often, you still have to remind yourself you don't).
Here’s what you couldn’t see through the steam-slick mirror:
• You would stand on stages and speak words that turn rooms electric.
• You would mother a luminous daughter who thinks bravery is spelled M-A-M-A.
• You would fall in love, get it wrong, heal a little, and love again—with wiser eyes and better boundaries.
• You would become the lighthouse you were looking for.
I’m so proud of you for choosing ink over oblivion.
For Anyone Reading in the Dark
If you’re skimming this at 1-something-a.m., phone brightness turned down because shame and curiosity make strange bedfellows—hi. I see you.
Maybe you’re the survivor wondering if your story is too old to matter.
Maybe you’re the friend who never understood why she ghosted every social event that year.
Maybe you’re someone who loves a woman like me and you’re piecing together the timeline with slow-forming horror.
Whoever you are, here’s the whole truth in one breath:
It happened.
It hurt.
It tried to end me.
It failed.
If “it” is clutching at your throat tonight, let these words be proof of life: survival doesn’t end the story—it starts the power.
Where We Go From Here
1. Speak (when you’re ready). Your voice untangles nightmares.
2. Stay (if you can) when someone else finally speaks. Your presence is anesthesia.
3. Start something—a text, a comment, a movement. The smallest ripple can become policy, culture shift, or simply a hand on a shaking shoulder.
I wrote The R Word to claw my way through a single night.
Ten years later, I write this so no one claws alone.
If you need help tonight: RAINN Hotline: 800-656-HOPE.
If you need company: my inbox has never closed.
I've been working on a book, and when it came time to name the protagonist, I decided she is Scarlett Yates.
She’s fictional — but only barely.
Einstein said, “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke said, "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”
I believe that in those moments (and there have been far more than I would like to admit) where I almost gave up, said "I can't do this anymore" my future self coexisted with me in those moments, silently held me, and was the one who whispered "don't give up, there are so many counting on you," and that's who Scarlett embodies to me; quiet strength in the darkest hours. She’s the quiet proof that healing doesn’t mean you become someone new. It means you remember who you’ve always been.
She’s not who I became after trauma.
She’s who was waiting underneath it.
12:17 a.m.—one hour before the ghosts usually come.
The shame.
The self-blame.
The quiet voice that asks, "Was I too much? Not enough?"
But this time, they didn't show up.
Because this time, I was already holding myself.
The keyboard glows. My daughter sleeps down the hall. The world is still full of monsters, but I am no longer one of them, and that is enough fuel to keep this lighthouse lit. The fire is quieter now, more like candlelight guiding ships.
In 2015, I wrote to survive.
Tonight I write because I finally did.
And tomorrow, I’ll write so you can, too.
If no one else has told you this yet:
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to still be figuring it out.
And you are loved — even in your silent hours. Especially then.
You are not alone.
You are not broken.
You are not too much.
You are here.
And that is everything.
I...Scarlett...was born in the fire.
But this - this quiet survival?
This is what made me real.
And you, Scarlett/I, are not alone.
Love,
Present day, (mostly) healed, Samantha
