Tag Archives: meditation

Let’s talk about trauma—really talk about it.

Not the sanitized version. Not the movie montage. Not the “it made you stronger” narrative we’re so quick to offer when discomfort shows up.

Trauma isn’t always one catastrophic event. Sometimes it’s years of being on edge. Years of not feeling safe—in your body, in relationships, in your own mind. Sometimes it’s what happened. Sometimes it’s what didn’t happen: protection, consistency, care.

PTSD doesn’t mean you’re broken.

It means your nervous system learned how to survive.

It learned to stay alert. To scan for danger. To react quickly. To brace. These responses once kept you alive. The problem isn’t that your body remembers—it’s that the threat is no longer there, but the alarm keeps ringing.

And then comes the shame.

“Why can’t I just get over it?”

“Other people had it worse.”

“I should be stronger than this.”

These are not truths. They are trauma talking.

Trauma changes how we experience the world. It lives in the body as much as the mind. It shows up in food relationships, in sleep, in trust, in the way we speak to ourselves. It can look like anger or numbness, perfectionism or avoidance, hyper-independence or collapse.

None of that makes you weak.

It makes you human.

At Crow and Flame, I think of trauma through symbolism. The crow—the survivor, the observer, the one who remembers. The flame—the life force, the spark that never fully goes out, even when buried under ash.

Healing doesn’t mean erasing the past. It means teaching your body that the present is safer than the past. It means learning how to sit with yourself without punishment. It means building tools—grounding, boundaries, creativity, movement, rest—that slowly turn the volume down on the alarm.

This work is not linear. Some days feel light. Some days feel heavy. Both are part of the process.

If you live with trauma or PTSD, you are not failing.

You are adapting.

You are surviving.

And with time, support, and compassion, you can learn to live—not just endure.

Your story is still being written.

And you get to hold the pen.

Today was an absolutely terrible day.

Not hard.

Not “a bit stressful.”

Terrible.

One of those days where your body feels like it’s vibrating under your skin, where your mind is a storm of noise, where everything inside you is screaming “too much.”

And maybe it was.

There are days when overwhelm doesn’t whisper—it roars.

It claws.

It demands to be felt.

And as much as I wanted to push through with grace or strength or whatever word we use when we’re trying to pretend we’re fine… I wasn’t fine.

Not even close.

This is the part people don’t talk about:

Healing doesn’t prevent terrible days.

Healing teaches you how to survive them without abandoning yourself.

Today felt like being cracked open.

Like my nerves were outside my skin.

Like I was one breath away from collapsing under the weight of everything I’ve been carrying so quietly.

But even on days like this, the Crow comes.

Not as a symbol of darkness—but as a witness.

The crow sits on the edge of the chaos and reminds me:

I see you. I’m not afraid of your shadow.

You don’t have to pretend with the crow.

And then, somewhere under the exhaustion, under the panic, under the heartbreak of being overwhelmed, I feel the Flame—small, trembling, but still there.

Not blazing.

Not inspiring.

Just… present.

A single spark refusing to go out.

Today isn’t a day for solutions or lessons.

It’s a day for honesty.

I was overwhelmed.

My body and mind were screaming.

And instead of silencing them, I’m writing this to say:

I hear you.

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply stop running from yourself.

Terrible days don’t define you.

They don’t undo your progress.

They don’t erase your strength.

They are part of the path.

Even the crow has days when its wings feel too heavy.

Even the flame flickers.

But they remain.

And so do you.

Some days, your body speaks before your mind catches up.

You wake up already tired.

Your nervous system hums like a frayed wire.

The idea of being “on” for other people feels heavier than it should.

And suddenly, that plan you made—when you felt better, clearer, steadier—now feels like a mountain.

We’ve been conditioned to push through everything.

To show up even when our cup is empty.

To attach our worth to our productivity, our availability, or our ability to say “yes.”

But here’s the truth no one says out loud enough:

Canceling plans is not a moral failure.

It’s a form of self-respect.

Your body is allowed to need rest.

Your mind is allowed to ask for quiet.

Your spirit is allowed to step back and breathe.

People who care about you don’t want the exhausted, anxious, stretched-thin version of you—

they want the version that feels safe, grounded, and present.

And you can’t get there by forcing yourself to show up when you’re already unraveling.

Sometimes the most healing thing you can do is listen to your own energy.

To say, “I can’t today—and that’s okay.”

To choose restoration over obligation.

To trust that your worth isn’t measured by how available you are.

The Crow teaches discernment—knowing when to engage and when to retreat.

The Flame teaches balance—honoring both the burn and the rest between sparks.

Together, they remind you that pulling back isn’t weakness.

It’s wisdom.

So if you need to cancel plans today, don’t apologize for needing space.

Don’t spiral into guilt.

Don’t convince yourself you’ve failed anyone.

You’re simply honoring the season your soul is in.

And that is more than okay—it’s healing.

There is a particular kind of silence that forms inside a person after years of surviving.

Not peace.

Not stillness.

Not serenity.

A taught, practiced, protective quiet.

It’s the silence of someone who trained themselves to need less, to speak softer, to disappear just enough to stay safe. The silence of someone who learned early on that their feelings could be “too much,” their dreams “unrealistic,” their needs “inconvenient.”

It’s the quiet that grows when the world doesn’t make space for your inner landscape—your creativity, your longing, your truth.

And eventually, you forget there was ever a voice inside you at all.

But that voice isn’t gone.

It’s waiting.

Waiting like the crow who circles a field long after the noise fades.

Watching.

Listening.

Patiently returning to what is rightfully theirs.

Waiting like a flame that refuses to die, shrinking to embers but never extinguishing—holding its warmth, its glow, its promise of return.

Healing begins the moment you finally notice that quiet and ask why it’s there.

Not in a self-blaming way.

Not with shame or judgment.

But with curiosity, compassion, and willingness to see the truth beneath your old survival patterns.

Because the truth is this:

Your soul didn’t go silent because you had nothing to say.

It went silent because no one ever convinced it that being heard was safe.

The Awakening

Then life shifts.

Sometimes subtly—like a thought you can’t quite shake.

Sometimes abruptly—like a door closing or an ending you didn’t expect.

And inside you, something starts to move.

A restlessness.

A small hunger.

A whisper pushing its way through the dust of old fears:

“I want more.”

“I deserve more.”

“I am meant for something deeper.”

This is your Crow—your intuition—your inner watcher awakening from long dormancy.

It brings messages, knowing, direction.

It asks you to look beyond what hurt you and toward what calls you.

And alongside it rises your Flame—your creativity, your authentic self, your hope.

It begins to burn again, gentle but undeniable, warming the parts of you that thought they’d gone numb forever.

It’s not a loud return.

Your inner voice doesn’t come back as a command.

It doesn’t storm in demanding attention.

It returns in fragments.

In glimpses of desire.

In sudden waves of emotion.

In creative sparks that appear at the most inconvenient times—twilight, showers, grocery store parking lots—anywhere you’re momentarily not performing for the world.

You may not trust it at first.

Of course you don’t.

Why would you?

So much of healing is learning to believe your own knowing again.

To trust your instincts instead of your fears. To differentiate intuition from old wounds. To understand that desire is not selfish but sacred. To believe that your voice has value simply because it is yours.

And here is the part most people don’t talk about:

When your inner voice returns, it brings grief with it.

Grief for the years you didn’t hear yourself.

Grief for the dreams you muted.

Grief for the child inside you who whispered into the dark and never got an answer.

But grief is not an ending—

it is an opening.

It clears space for truth, for creativity, for identity, for rebirth.

So today, let this be your practice:

Slow down.

Just enough to hear the subtle things.

The thoughts that flutter.

The emotions that lift then sink then rise again.

The desires that keep resurfacing even after you dismiss them.

Notice the things that light up inside you without permission.

The things that feel like relief.

The things that feel like breath.

Your soul isn’t quiet anymore.

It’s emerging.

It’s speaking.

It’s remembering itself.

And it’s time to answer.

Answer softly, if that’s all you can do.

Answer boldly, if you’re ready.

Answer with curiosity, if you’re unsure.

But answer.

Because the Crow and the Flame have returned,

and so have you.

For the longest time, I genuinely believed the way I moved through the world was normal.

I thought everyone lived with a tight chest and a body that never fully exhaled. I thought everyone scanned every room, replayed every conversation, braced for every worst-case scenario. I thought lying awake at night, heart pounding for no reason, was just part of being human.

I didn’t know I was traumatized.

I didn’t have that language.

I just had symptoms I thought were personality traits.

I told myself I was “just being strong.”

Just being responsible.

Just being prepared.

Just being whatever I needed to be in order to make it through one more day.

But the truth is: I wasn’t living — I was surviving.

And the worst part?

I didn’t even know it.

No one ever told me that the constant tension wasn’t normal. No one ever taught me that being hyperaware of everyone’s moods was a defense mechanism. No one explained that the heaviness, the alertness, the emotional numbness, the inability to rest… were all signs of a nervous system shaped by hurt.

This was just my everyday existence. My baseline.

My “normal.”

I didn’t know there was another way to live.

I didn’t know my body had been whispering its story for years — through aches, fatigue, panic, overthinking, self-protection disguised as independence — and I had been too busy surviving to hear it.

Healing didn’t begin when everything got better.

It began when I realized:

Nothing about the way I was functioning felt safe.

It began when I finally saw that what I thought was “just me” — the overthinking, the tension, the need to anticipate everything — was actually the version of me that learned how to endure.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

You start to notice the moments when your body flinches at kindness.

When rest feels like danger.

When peace feels unfamiliar.

When receiving feels suspicious.

When softness feels like a setup.

You realize it wasn’t a personality flaw.

It was a survival pattern.

And slowly, gently, you begin to wonder:

What would life feel like if I didn’t have to brace for it?

Healing is not about becoming someone new — it’s about remembering who you were before you had to armor up. It’s about teaching your body that safety exists now. That calm isn’t a threat. That you don’t have to live like the danger is still happening.

There is another way to live.

You just have to give yourself permission to find it.

And if you’re only realizing now what you’ve carried for so long, that’s not failure.

That’s the beginning.