Ashes to Anchor

They say pain shapes you. But they never tell you it can hollow you out first, strip you of your sense of safety, your voice, your worth—before you even know what those things are.

I was just a little girl the first time I realized love could hurt. My father’s hands weren’t just hands—they were weapons. And his words? Sharper than fists. I learned to flinch at footsteps. Learned that silence was safer than asking for anything. I learned to disappear inside myself.

His rage never needed a reason. A dropped glass. A wrong look. Breathing too loud. He’d explode, fists flying, curses spewed like venom, eyes black with a hatred I never understood—because it was pointed at me.

Years of walking on glass left me numb. But even numbness has a limit. By my late teens, I found a different way to feel nothing—drugs, alcohol, parties that blurred into sunrises and shame. Every shot, every pill, every stranger’s touch—it all dulled the ache. For a few hours, I could pretend I wasn’t the broken daughter of a man who broke everything he touched.

But pretend is a dangerous drug.

My twenties were chaos wrapped in lipstick. I smiled wide, laughed louder, drank harder. By my thirties, I was gone—just a shell running on benzos and vodka, barely alive. I’d become the kind of woman people crossed the street to avoid. And honestly? I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have trusted me either.

Then came the collapse.

Two arrests in one month. Cold steel cuffs. The deafening clang of a cell door. I saw my reflection in the jail’s cracked mirror—hollow eyes, trembling hands, mascara-stained cheeks. And I thought: This is it. I’ve lost everything.

But life wasn’t finished. Not yet.

One month after the arrests, the diagnosis came: Lupus. Chronic. Incurable. My body turning on itself, the same way my father once did. I was exhausted in ways sleep couldn’t fix. Every joint, every breath, a war.

Then my marriage ended. Papers signed with dry eyes and dead hearts. He walked away. I stayed—with a five-year-old boy who looked at me like I was his world, even when mine was falling apart.

I was broke. Alone. Addicted. Sick. And I had a child who needed more than a ghost for a mother.

So I chose.

Not some movie moment of clarity. No white light epiphany. Just a quiet whisper inside: Enough.

I detoxed alone on a mattress soaked in sweat and shame. I clawed my way through withdrawal, nausea, hallucinations, nightmares. And when I thought I’d die from the pain of it all—I didn’t. I survived.

Then I got to work.

Cutting hair for scraps. Living paycheck to paycheck. The job barely covered rent, but it gave me dignity—something I hadn’t felt in years. And slowly, I began to rebuild. Not in leaps—but in inches.

I went back to school. A mother. A recovering addict. A woman with an illness. I juggled homework with bedtime stories, wrote essays between flares of joint pain, studied marketing while folding laundry at midnight.

Bachelors in Communications. No applause. No one cheering. Just me and a piece of paper that said: You did it anyway.

Then came the internship. A marketing company that didn’t care about my past, only my potential. That opened a door. Then another. I walked through every one, sometimes crawling, sometimes limping—but always moving.

Then—an offer from a drug and alcohol treatment center. Entry-level. Nothing glamorous. But I knew that world. I had lived that world. And slowly, brick by brick, I built a new kind of power.

From filing paperwork… to guiding others.

From shadows… to light.

From survivor… to Executive Director.

Not because someone saved me.

But because I clawed my way up from hell and decided I wasn’t going back.

Now, I sit in the office I earned, and I look in the mirror.

Same eyes. Same woman.

But now, those eyes are fierce. Focused. Alive.

I didn’t become who I am despite the trauma.

I became who I am through it.

And that little girl who once flinched at her father’s footsteps?

She walks beside me now.

We don’t flinch anymore.

We rise.