I Specialize in Trust Wounds. Here’s What I Know.

There was a time I wore competence like armor.

People called me strong. Capable. Wise.

And I was. But I was also tired—deeply tired.

Because no one could see how much effort it took to hold it all together.

The truth? I didn’t trust the ground underneath me.

Not fully.

And definitely not when I felt messy, vulnerable, or unsure.

Trust wounds don’t always come with obvious scars.

Sometimes they show up in subtle patterns—

the way you shrink in conversations,

over-explain yourself in emails,

or hold your breath before speaking a truth you’re not sure will be welcome.

For me, trust wounds showed up in how I edited myself.

How I smiled when I wanted to leave.

How I pushed through when I should’ve rested.

How I kept giving—even when I was already running on fumes.

I learned early that love could be conditional.

That showing up “too much” might mean being left behind.

So I became what the world rewarded: polished, kind, composed.

But inside, I was disconnected from my own body. And honestly? I was lonely.

There were times when I was polished, kind, and composed. But when I was deeply tired, when I was ready for collapse, the worst parts of me seeped out—all of the messy parts I tried to keep hidden. That only made me double down and try harder to become polished and composed again. But what I always feared the outside world knew is that it was a facade. I didn’t know how to right the ship. I didn’t know how to be real and safe at the same time.

When my mother died, I finally saw how deep that disconnection ran.

Grief cracked me open—not in a poetic, romantic way, but in a disorienting, can’t-find-the-floor kind of way.

And somewhere inside that unraveling, a truth surfaced:

I didn’t trust myself. Not really.

After my mother died, I was finally able to come out of a sort of denial and be honest with myself, mainly because I was so exhausted from dealing with the pain of losing a parent that I didn’t have the capacity to fight for how I came across. Things just naturally started to get very clear, as often happens when you’re in deep grief, and that’s when I learned the truth. I really didn’t trust myself, and I had to finally honor that and deal with that grief.

That became the work.

To listen differently.

To pause instead of perform.

To stop trying to earn rest and start honoring it.

To let parts of me speak—the ones I’d silenced for years.

And now, this is the work I guide others through.

Not from a mountaintop, but from the muddy, sacred middle.

I work with people who’ve been praised for their power—

and punished for their tenderness.

People who’ve spent years chasing external certainty

because their internal compass got tangled in fear.

But here’s something most people don’t talk about:

When you carry trust wounds, and you’re high-functioning, nervous system shutdown can feel like personal failure.

You’re used to performing. Holding it together. Solving the problem.

So when a shame spiral hits and your body freezes or collapses, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong.

But you’re not.

You’re protecting something sacred.

That shutdown isn’t weakness. It’s a biological reflex—a nervous system trying to preserve you in the face of perceived threat.

Even if that threat is emotional. Even if no one else can see it.

High-capacity individuals often don’t realize how often they’re overriding their body’s cues just to keep functioning.

So when the body says “No more,” it can feel like betrayal.

But it’s actually an invitation.

To stop.

To feel.

To meet your shame not with strategy—but with softness.

We don’t fix these wounds with quick tips or mindset hacks.

We meet them.

We move slowly.

We learn the language of the body again.

And trust doesn’t come all at once.

It comes in small, steady moments:

when you say no without apologizing,

when you cry without explaining,

when you believe yourself without needing permission.

This work isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about returning to the version of you who was never broken—

just buried under years of survival.

That part of you—the tender one, the fierce one, the honest one—

was never the problem.

The problem was the world that asked her to go quiet.

But she’s still here.

And she’s ready to speak again.