There’s no magic wand where one day your PTSD is gone. You don’t just wake up healed, whole, untouched by what carved its marks into you. Healing isn’t a finish line or a tidy before-and-after. No—healing is a journey made of forward steps and backward ones. It’s a dance you didn’t ask to learn, and after a while, dancing becomes exhausting.
Last night, I was triggered.
Panic rose fast, sharp and suffocating. It gripped my throat, curled around my lungs, and settled on my chest with the weight of an anvil. Every breath felt earned. Every second stretched thin. My body reacted before my mind could reason, as if danger still lived in the room with me.
I wanted to scream. Instead, I bit my lips and tongue, holding back the sobs, trying to stay quiet, trying to stay contained. I focused on my breathing like I’ve been taught—counting, grounding, reaching for the tools I’ve gathered over years of trying to survive myself. But the fear kept tightening, panic drowning out logic, memory overpowering the present.
Eventually, the urge came—the familiar, shame-laced instinct to hurt myself just enough to snap back into focus. To feel something I could control. To anchor myself in pain instead of terror. And even knowing why that urge exists didn’t make it disappear.
In those moments, the old voices came rushing in too.
You’re weak.
You should be past this by now.
You’re failing at healing.
I felt worthless. Like a failure. Like all the work I’ve done—therapy, reflection, growth—meant nothing because here I was again, shaking, unraveling, exhausted by my own nervous system.
This is where the Crow appears.
The Crow is not gentle reassurance or blind optimism. The Crow is witness. It perches in the dark and does not flinch. It knows what survival looks like up close. It reminds me that naming the storm is not the same as being consumed by it.
And the Flame—quiet, stubborn, flickering low in my chest—did not go out. Even under the weight of panic, even when fear pressed hard against my ribs, the Flame remained. Not roaring. Not triumphant. Just alive.
Healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered again. It means you learn how to sit beside the ashes without setting yourself on fire. It means you learn when to let the Crow keep watch while you rest. It means trusting that a small Flame is still enough light to find your way back to yourself.
Some nights, healing looks like progress and clarity and peace.
Other nights, it looks like sitting on the floor, breath shallow, heart racing, whispering I am safe, I am here, this will pass.
Both are part of the journey.
If you’re reading this and it feels familiar—if your body still remembers things your mind wishes it could forget—you are not broken. You are not weak. You are not failing.
You are a survivor carrying a watchful Crow and a living Flame.
And even when the dance is exhausting, even when you stumble backward, the Flame still burns—and the Crow does not leave.
🖤🔥
Crow and Flame 