ACT ONE: AWAKENINGEasier, when the house looks like it ought to be haunted. Falling apart, decrepit. Cobwebs and cracked concrete and the palpable film of the people that came before. Easier, yes, when the house is the last one on the left, or in the hills, or with nothing else but the trees for company. Easier still when there can be no fingers pointed — it’s you, you brought this here — and instead outside forces can be blamed.

But this isn’t how this story goes, not mine and not others.

Once your eyes are open, you cannot just simply close them.

***In Insidious (2010), we are presented, first, with a peaceful, suburban idle. A married couple who are better than average looking, three children, a new house. Nothing is, visibly, wrong. Just a normal family. A good one.

But can any peace last so long? Soon, the film informs us, everything will be different than we want it to be. A haunting will occur, the sighting of any entity. And, even if we flee it, it will follow us. For it is not the house that is haunted, no, but us.

And even when we think it’s gone, well. Can’t you feel it?

***There are plenty of things in my childhood I would like to forget, sure, who wouldn’t.

The dreams of the Red House, the no longer enterable treehouse that stood too high up in the middle of the woods. How I’d thought I’d simply imagined it until I walked past it in those months when I still lived in the place where my father had died and shook with horror, stood mutely and looked, and then fled as fast as my feet could carry me. The way I refused to use the bathroom in my grandparent’s trailer unless my grandmother went to flip the light on at the end of the hallway first and then waited for me there. Waking myself up weeping but only because my mother shook me. Did you have a bad dream? she’d ask.

I think so, I’d say.

What I couldn’t bring myself to say: Is that really you, momma? 

***In Insidious, both father and eldest son possess the ability to project their consciousness elsewhere. The father does not remember this. He does not want to remember this. He has lived his life in such a way, these myriad layers of forgotten repression, in order to preserve a kind of normalcy. That is what he wants, not this psychic gift, this swirling miasma. But sometimes it doesn’t matter what you want.

Is it a gift if you want to forget it ever existed?

ACT TWO: VOYANCEI could show it to you, if you wanted to see it. That country church, thirty-five people, twilit evening, hum of the cicadas and the crickets, the flood light and big oak tree, suffocating because there were only one or two windows, nowhere to escape, nowhere to go except deeper inside, wood floors and walls.

I hated to be back there, alone in the bowels, in the eerie empty Sunday school classrooms, though occasionally I was required to fetch something. They didn’t trust any of the other children to go there and come back. Why would they when I was so obviously broken in by a strictness that comes from somewhere beyond fear — desperation. Sometimes, though, I’d linger, for five seconds, ten. My own private rebellion. Listen to the voices of the choir through the shoddy little hallway. It was dark behind me, and I shivered with it. Then, a phantom caress on the back of my neck, a heavy hand, pushing me forward. Run along now, little seer — didn’t your momma teach you not to eavesdrop?

***The Further is the film’s conception of the Otherworld, the Summerland, the Beyond, the astral plane, Dreamland, the spirit world, the Other Side. It is terrifying, the Further. It is filled with bad things and long corridors and screaming and silence and pain. When you are there, it is hard to come back. You can learn, of course, but at what cost?

I used to go walking after midnight as easy as anything. Up and out of my body in a flash. Dangerous. No rope. No tether. Not to the Further, thank god, but somewhere else. It looked like this world but not. It looked like a dream you remember for the rest of your life in vivid and shaking detail. There were fearful places there, too, of course. They called to me, but I did not yet speak their language.

Small mercies.

***The story goes that as a child I hated clothes and shoes. There’s photographic evidence of both of these things; I was heavily documented for a span of years and then refused the camera. I suppose the one that strikes me most is myself amongst the trees, pantsless, about to hurl my socks and shirt off, too. There’s even a picture of me at a small family reunion, sitting near my older cousins, sans pants again, in a big t-shirt, scowling at the camera. I used to roll myself around in the grass like a dog even though my mother would scold me about my breathing, the nebulizer up in the closet for my albuterol treatments. I used to fling my arms around the sycamore and rub my face up against it, putting my ear close to listen for its heartbeat. When I went to preschool, already having learned to read, I cried and cried to have my feet so confined. When it rained, I begged to sleep on the porch with its tin roof or, at least, with the window open. When allowed to dip my hands in the brisk bite of the creek on our walks, I always ended up with soaked sleeves.
***In my first conceptions of this essay, I thought to chronicle the entirety of the Insidious franchise, five films in all. The way they unsettled me but in a ridiculous way. None of the other films stand up to the first film’s truths. Its themes. Its horrors. If I recognize myself anywhere in the latter installments, it is obliquely.

It wasn’t that bad for me, of course. Not as dramatic. But then again, sometimes, in my worst dreams, it was.

And, of course, I did not have the luxury to forget.

ACT THREE: MANIFESTATIONOnly children born in wedlock are born ensouled, he said with a shrug. At least that’s what they used to say. His brother laughed. It was a good laugh — and it made you want to hear it. I was perhaps never as funny as I was that handful of years. My mouth acting without my consciously deciding it.

In the years after my mother married her new husband, I barely said a word to anyone. I was eleven then, and now eighteen. I did indeed feel different, like something had just barely begun to open up, a tangible feeling of possibility, that heady rush of freedom. I liked that my family had begun to look at me like I was a dog they were afraid to muzzle.

Too bad for you, bunny, his brother said, the lack of a laugh removing the kindness from his face.

Don’t call me bunny, I said, blushing though I didn’t want to. And I was born in wedlock.

You weren’t. Your parents were married in March, and you were born in September. You’re a bastard.

Don’t say that, he said. Bunny has a soul.

He looked at me. Don’t you, bunny?

***The question of inheritance of trauma is perhaps the film’s most obvious theme. Even if we forget what has happened to make us the way we are, it does not absolve us from our missteps. Father might have helped son, in another world where he was stronger. In a world where he had never been a child with a monster in his closet. A father of his own.
***For the first eleven years of my life, I slept beside my mother, or with my grandmother, my grandfather wedged on the other side of her, and never alone. That is, of course, until my mother married her new husband. It was much easier to hear the whispers in the dark without the sound of my mother’s honking snoring, so soothing to me that, years after, when a friend spending the night asked if she’d snored, if it kept me up, I simply replied that she had, but it had put me quickly to sleep. The flood light was outside of my window, which brought a relief. You must remember the road was dirt, and there was traffic so infrequently that on hot summer afternoons I would lie in the shade of the snowball bush, directly in line to be crushed by a car, if any had come. They didn’t though, and sometimes I’d nap there until my mother called me in, though she rarely did. She indulged me, in her way. It was easier to sleep in the light.
***The father confronts his fear, his trauma, his ghosts, his demons, his pain. He remembers it all.

Fine. And now what?

ACT FOUR: LINGERINGYou can only see me as I am now, but I was different, an age ago. Or maybe you knew that. Maybe I can show it to you. Maybe I already have. Sometimes, the people I love most show me things that they don’t mean to: a headache, a craving, an urge. Or maybe it is that I do not mean to see it. Him, once, our heads pressed together in the dark, the quilt laid out underneath us, his breath hot on my cheek. What did he say? Don’t eavesdrop. Be sweet. Open your mouth.

My devotion levelled me. The spirits promised me they would be back for their pound of flesh and, at first, I didn’t believe them. And then I did. I had no choice. To regret it would be pointless. It was always going to happen.

At Aunt’s house, the clouds moving fast over the perfect blue expanse of the sky, large and imposing, you could imagine God looking straight down from heaven, his one good eye, the stretch of an angel’s hand, a fractal, terrifying. Long summer evenings made me weep — was it the beauty or the loneliness? I’m still not sure. Inside, something in the pit of me shook, knocked me off balance. The creek held its own melancholy, every shade of green and brown. I didn’t know water could be azure until I saw the sea for the first time as an adult. That made me weep, too. It seemed impossible to me then that a past version of myself, of the Ghost, had not done the same thing.

Another thought: That we would again.

***The film does not end happily, but it ends honestly. Father and son wake back up in the “real” world. Nightmare over. Except now, the membrane is less defined. Don’t let them tell you different — if you want to go, you’ll come back changed. You are not the exception. Think of Orpheus, Gilgamesh. All those crossings.

Changed, yes.

But not dead.

***What the ghosts taught me when I was young: To cover my tracks. My back. To want nothing. To stop crying. To listen. To refuse speech. That everyone I loved would one day be dead.  That it doesn’t matter what you want. Inevitably. Fate. How to read the room.

What else?

It’s a hard life.

But see, through the fog, the terrifying paths, all the wonders.

One of the most radical acts of therapy in the 1990s didn’t happen on a therapist’s couch, but in a cartoon, broadcast on Saturday mornings between commercials for L.A. Gear light-up sneakers and the technicolor sugar-blast of Cap’n Crunch cereal for kids. The show was Life with Louie, and its creator, the late comedian Louie Anderson, used it to stage a weekly séance with his past.

Anderson took the terrifying ghost that haunted his childhood, his violent, alcoholic father, and rewrote him. He didn’t erase the man’s flaws, but he softened the rage into complaint, filtered the abuse into absurdity, and in doing so, performed a gentle exorcism in the 8:30 a.m. time slot.

To watch Life with Louie, which aired on Fox from 1995 to 1998, was to enter a world of planned drabness, committed to the muted ochres and dull blues of a perpetual Wisconsin winter. In an era of animated hysteria, when its schedule-mates were mutants saving the world or the anarchy of Eek! The Cat, here was a show whose dramas revolved around acquiring a bicycle horn or joining the chess club.

Yet it was in this cultivated mundanity that Life with Louie revealed its strange and enduring power. It wasn’t just a children’s cartoon; it was a public reckoning with a private history.

Portrait of a Father as a Rambling War Machine

Life with Louie was the semi-autobiographical creation of Louis Anderson, who voiced both his eight-year-old self and the formidable figure at the centre of his universe: his father, Andy Anderson. Animated Louie is a nervous, sensitive child, a soft, doughy figure navigating Midwestern boyhood. The show’s true gravitational force, however, was Andy, a human weather system all other characters had to navigate.

A veteran of World War II, a fact he deployed with the strategic subtlety of an anvil, Andy was a vessel of near-constant complaint whose worldview was a fortress built of thrift, suspicion, and old-school American grit. Critically, his life lessons were cryptic, often nonsensical koans wrapped in the husk of his past traumas.

This is perfectly illustrated in an episode centered on chess. When young Louie discovers a talent for the game, Andy doesn’t foster it; he relentlessly warns him that chess players are mocked and scorned, a direct transfer of anxiety from father to son. Fearing this ridicule, Louie competes in a tournament while hiding his identity as “The Masked Chess Boy”.

The crucial act of grace the show affords Andy comes in the climax: it’s revealed that Andy himself was the original Masked Chess Boy, having invented the persona decades ago to hide his passion for the game from bullies. What seems like cruelty is reframed as a tragic attempt to shield his son from the same hurts he endured. 

Nowhere was Andy’s true character more evident than in his relationship with the family car, a Rambler that was as much a metaphor for his soul as it was a vehicle. Perpetually on the verge of collapse, the car ran on little more than old-school stubbornness. For Andy, the Rambler was a testament to his own resilience.

In one episode, after the car finally breaks down, his wife Ora buys him a new one. A normal man might be grateful, yet Andy is deeply insulted. The new car is an admission of defeat. He tries to adapt but in the end he rejects the new car, choosing instead the (in his mind) noble, familiar struggle of keeping his broken-down chariot running; a hilarious and poignant portrait of a man clinging to a failing piece of machinery because, like him, it was a veteran of a bygone era.

A Son’s Radical Empathy

This portrayal of Andy as a formidable yet lovable patriarch becomes an act of reinvention when considering the reality. In his searingly honest memoir from 1991, Dear Dad: Letters from an Adult Child, Louie Anderson painted a far bleaker picture. The real Andy wasn’t a sitcom dad but a violent, unpredictable alcoholic whose outbursts were genuinely terrifying. The comedian’s childhood wasn’t gentle melancholy, but the nerve-shredding vigilance required to survive the whims of an addict. Anderson recalled becoming so sensitive that he could tell if his father had been drinking the moment he walked in the door from school. 

The real Andy didn’t just complain; he carried a gun and would menace his children with a “Click-click!”. He would get drunk and beat up the neighbour, Mr. Wilson, yelling, “Come on out, you chicken-shit bastard!”. The cartoon catchphrase “For crying out loud!” was a heavily sanitized echo of a far more frightening reality, one where Anderson was woken up in the middle of the night by his father yelling, “Hey, lard ass, when ya going to lose some weight?”.

The source of this rage, for most of Louie Anderson’s life, remained an unsolvable riddle. Then, late in his father’s life, came the revelation. During a hospital visit, Anderson overheard his father, weakened by cancer, finally confess his history to a social worker. Louie’s monstrous father had been a wounded child himself.

His parents were alcoholics who, when he was just ten years old, took him and his sister to their church and put them up for adoption in front of the entire congregation. This created a wound so deep he tried to escape it by lying about his age to join the army. A life of frustrated dreams compounded his trauma. He was a gifted trumpet player who had played with Hoagy Carmichael, but gave it up for a life of manual labour to support the 11 children that his wife, Ora, said just left him “plain tired”.

That hospital room confession was the key that unlocked everything. It was the first time Louie Anderson saw his father cry. As his father wept, recounting the story of his childhood, Anderson describes desperately wanting to hug him and ask why he’d never shared the story before. The moment of raw vulnerability, however, was immediately sealed over.

After apologizing for his tears, the old man defaulted to the only language of connection he had left: a gruff, deflected pride. “Did I tell you my boy is a comedian?” he asked the social worker. In that single question, a son could finally hear the validation he had spent a lifetime seeking.

Viewed this way, Louie Anderson’s choice to voice both his childhood self and his father was more than a casting decision. During every recording session, he staged a dialogue between his vulnerable younger self and his primary tormentor. By literally giving voice to his father, Anderson reclaimed him. He controlled the volume, filtering the incoherence into funny, rambling stories. He took the monster out of the closet, put a comfy jumper on him, and made him tell jokes. This whole dynamic worked thanks to Louie’s mother, Ora (voiced by Edie McClurg), Life with Louie’s calm centre whose love provided the safety net that made the anxiety bearable.

The media establishment took note of this quiet anomaly. Louie Anderson won two consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards for his dual performance. More tellingly, the series was awarded the prestigious Humanitas Prize for three consecutive years, an unprecedented achievement for a cartoon. 

Interrogating the American Past

Released in 1995, the series aesthetically fit into a wave of nostalgia for a supposedly simpler post-war America. Life with Louie, however, performed a clever subversion. It used the familiar imagery of that era, defined by the clunky Rambler, the community fish fry, or the black-and-white TV, as a simplified backdrop to explore universal anxieties that are anything but simple.

The show wasn’t really about the 1960s; it was about the myth of the 1960s. It found its deepest truths in the rituals of American life by stripping them of their idealized gloss. Thanksgiving wasn’t a harmonious occasion but a pressure cooker of family grievances. A trip to the state fair became a theatre of quiet desperation, where winning a blue ribbon for the best mac and cheese dish felt like a validation of one’s entire existence. 

Life with Louie‘s therapeutic subtext quietly cleared a path for a new kind of animated confessional. A direct, albeit far more profane, descendant arrived two decades later in Bill Burr’s adult animation series, F is for Family (2015-21). At their core, both shows are driven by the same engine: a comedian attempting to understand a difficult father by recreating him.

Burr’s Frank Murphy is the full-throated, R-rated evolution of Andy Anderson’s disgruntled muttering. Where Andy’s war trauma was a source of baffling non-sequiturs, Frank’s Korean War experience fuels his explosive, terrifying rants. The anxieties are the same; the volume has just been turned all the way up.

Ultimately, Life with Louie captured the uniquely American tragedy of men taught to equate love with providing, who were sent to witness the horrors of the world and then expected to return and quietly mow the lawn. It was a show that examined a flawed, difficult man and chose not to condemn him, but instead to painstakingly try to understand him.

This act of empathy, performed weekly by a son giving voice to the father who had caused him so much pain, remains one of television’s most quietly profound achievements. It suggests that the past is never truly past, but that with enough courage and artistry, it can, at the very least, be made funny. 

Sometimes, for those of us looking back and trying to make sense of our ghosts, that’s close enough.

“The journey of the perfect daughter is not about perfection; it’s about finding the courage to be imperfect, to be human.” ~Robert Ackerman, Perfect Daughters

Growing up in a home shadowed by addiction is like living in a house with no foundation. The ground beneath you is unstable, the walls feel fragile, and the roof could collapse at any moment. For me, this was my reality. My earliest memories of my mother’s alcoholism are tied to confusion and worry—a child’s attempt to make sense of an adult world filled with unpredictability and silence.

Her moods were erratic, swinging from one extreme to another, I recall. I remember one night, she came into my room, woke me up, and told me not to worry, but she was going back to work. The way she spoke, her entire presence, was off. It wasn’t her usual self. I didn’t understand she was drunk. I just felt pure, childlike concern.

This confusion was only the beginning. As I grew older, the challenges multiplied. The embarrassment of comparing my home life to my friends’, the isolation of a family that never spoke about the elephant in the room, and the lack of safety in my own home left me feeling utterly alone.

I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to any adult. My dad wasn’t approachable, and my mom wasn’t emotionally available. I felt like I had to solve everything on my own.

The Roles We Play 

In the chaos of addiction, children often take on roles to survive. For me, these roles became my identity. I became the peacemaker, mediating between my mother and younger sister. I became a second mother, guiding my sister in ways my mom couldn’t. And I became the “good daughter,” believing that if I loved my mother enough, I could save her.

I thought that by loving her more, investing my attention in her needs, and avoiding confrontations, I could make her feel better. But it was an impossible burden.

My relationship with my father also suffered. I blamed him for allowing my mom to continue her behavior and for not doing anything for us. He became the enemy, and I pushed him out of my life.

The Long Shadow of Childhood Trauma 

The impact of my mother’s alcoholism didn’t end in childhood. As an adult, I found myself repeating patterns in friendships and romantic relationships. I’ve struggled with codependency, boundaries, and trust issues. I’ve had manipulative partners and found myself drawn to selfish, narcissistic people.

But my journey toward healing began when I hit rock bottom. I was drinking excessively, showing up to work after long nights out, and even driving drunk. I dated a partner who was emotionally abusive and almost physically violent—and my parents had no idea.

A pivotal moment came during a surprise party my sister organized before I left to study abroad. I arrived hungover and exhausted, and when everyone shouted “surprise!” I had an anxiety attack. It was the first time I realized how many feelings I’d buried—sadness, frustration, anger, and underneath it all, a deep, overwhelming grief I had never allowed myself to feel.

The Path to Healing 

Healing didn’t happen overnight. It began with therapy—though my first experience was far from ideal. That therapist was deeply narcissistic, mirroring the types of people I’d been drawn to all my life. But I didn’t give up. I found another therapist, and she’s been my steady guide for seven years.

Through our work, I learned that I was not alone and that I could reach out for help—and trust that help. I also learned to recognize what trust feels like, to move away from extremes, to distinguish love from codependency, and to take responsibility for my part in my experiences. At twenty-seven, I was finally ready to stop blaming others and take accountability—not just for my present, but for all the years I had abandoned myself. I began to reframe my past, not through the lens of a victim, but from the perspective of the self-aware adult I’d become.

One of the most profound breakthroughs came when I decided I was ready to confront my mother. Preparing for that moment shifted everything—it marked the beginning of reclaiming my voice and stepping into my own power.

Support groups like Al-Anon also played a crucial role. When I arrived at Al-Anon, I started crying within minutes. For the first time, I heard people speak openly—almost casually—about having a loved one with alcoholism. I had never experienced that kind of openness in such a “normal” environment.

Listening to the speaker share their story, I realized I wasn’t alone. We were all carrying the same grief, frustration, and helplessness. In that room, I felt seen. I felt like I belonged.

Through therapy, meditation, exercise, and books, I began to rebuild my sense of self. I learned to be with myself in a peaceful, serene way. I stopped looking at my mom as someone weird or lost and started seeing her as someone with a disease. I took off the impossible burden of having to save her.

Surrendering to Hope 

One of the most profound lessons I learned was the power of surrender. For me, surrender meant admitting I needed help—that my own resources weren’t enough to handle the situation I was facing at home. It meant being humble enough to admit that this was bigger than me, that trying to fix my mother was not only ineffective but was also destroying me.

In my daily life, surrender meant walking away from arguments, especially when my mother was drinking, letting go of the exhausting mission to make her happy, and accepting that her happiness wasn’t something I could guarantee.

There’s a phrase in Al-Anon that became my mantra: “I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it.” I surrendered my expectations of who I wished my mother would be and allowed myself to grieve the mother I didn’t have. That surrender saved my life.

My journey is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. When you choose to surrender, everything will start feeling better. It’s a leap of faith, and trust me, you’re not alone.

Today, I’m still on my healing journey, but I’m no longer defined by my past. I’m learning to trust myself, set boundaries, and embrace my worth. My story is a reminder that even in the darkest moments, there is hope—and that healing is possible, one step at a time.

About Teresa López

Tere is a journalist and advocate for mental health. Through her personal journey of healing from childhood trauma, she has found solace in therapy, meditation, and support groups. She hopes her story inspires others to seek help and embrace their own path to peace. Connect with her on Instagram @terelandia.

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post includes a brief mention of childhood physical abuse and may be triggering to some readers.

 “The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.” ~Unknown

It’s Christmas morning. I’m seven years old. I sit on the hardwood floor with my sisters, in my nightgown surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper. I grab the next present to open. I tear off the paper. It’s a ballerina costume with a pink leotard, tutu, and pale pink tights.

As soon as I thank my adoptive parents, I leave the room with my new gift, keeping it hidden behind me. I get upstairs to my bedroom and stand in front of the mirror, rushing to get it out of the package and put it on, struggling to get the different fabrics to cooperate.

When I finally get it on my body, I run back downstairs with a big smile, excited to surprise everyone and maybe even earn some laughs. My heart races with excitement. I enter the living room. My adoptive parents look at me. I scan their faces for smiles. The smiles don’t come.

“What the hell did you do! You ain’t supposed to put it on yet!” Mom yells.

My heart’s beating loud. Why are they angry? I can’t understand the mean words my parents hurl at me. Dad gets up from his chair and attacks me. When he’s done, my face is hot and my hair disheveled. I hang my head and go back upstairs to my bedroom to change out of the costume. I look in the mirror at myself. ‘I’m so stupid.’ I think. I will never misread them again.

I was taken from my birthmother at ten months old and placed with foster parents who abused me, and despite this being common knowledge, they were allowed to adopt me.

Adoptees, even without abuse from adoptive parents, become experts at adapting. We know our family arrangement came to be because our birth parents weren’t up for the task of holding onto us; the reason doesn’t matter because children can only point inward. Beneath the surface, many adoptees carry an unconscious belief that sounds something like this:

“I am bad and unlovable. That is why I was not worth keeping the first time. If I can become whoever my adoptive parents want me to be, I will prevent being abandoned again.”

So, adoptees learn to bend and shift, careful not to incite disappointment or anger from their adoptive parents. For example, I didn’t dream of being a dancer as a child. I’d never taken a ballet class or even expressed an interest in it. So when I opened that costume on Christmas morning, I saw it as a clue. My eagerness to be a show pony in a ballet costume was an instinctual reaction because it meant earning a higher approval rating from my scary adoptive parents. But obviously, I read it all wrong.

This life-saving skill of adaptation permeates any relationship that poses a risk for leaving adoptees with a broken heart. It can become so pervasive that by the time adoptees enter adulthood, they’ve had little to no experience exploring their own needs, wants, or desires—because they’ve spent their entire lives becoming who the person in front of them wanted them to be.

My husband and I gave our daughter a “yes day” a couple of years ago, where she created a list of fun things to do, and within specific parameters, we had to say “yes.” This involved her choosing our outfits for the day, a trip to Dave and Busters, a silly string fight, designing specialty chocolates at the Goo Goo Cluster shop downtown, and a candy buffet for dinner. My husband and I delighted in her joy that day.

Later, when my daughter asked, “Mom, what would you want to do if you had a ‘yes day?’”

I felt a burning in my chest, realizing I couldn’t answer her. And when an idea did come, like seeing a concert or dining at a specific restaurant, I knew I’d feel guilty for asking the rest of my family to join me because it wasn’t their thing. My inability to tell my child what I like was a powerful teaching moment, and a call for change.

I began therapy in my early thirties, intent on resolving the thick layers of trauma and loss that created this barrier between the me that operated out of fear of abandonment, and my true self. Traditional talk therapy with a therapist specializing in trauma, EMDR, EEG neurofeedback, and accelerated resolution therapy slowly chipped away at that barrier. With every victory, I learn more about myself and feel more at ease in the world.

Resolving trauma is dissolving shame. For me, shame has kept me from knowing myself and focusing solely on the happiness of the people around me for fear of being left or in danger if I fail.

Loneliness is a consequence of being a chameleon who doesn’t know who she is. How can I expect genuine connection if I’m not allowing people to accept the real me? As a shame-filled person, I chose relationships with people who mirrored my low self-worth back to me. How can I expect genuine connection in relationships like that?

Authentic relationships are a natural consequence of dissolving shame. Being seen, loved, and accepted for our true selves is the antidote to loneliness.

For anyone out there who bends and shifts to maintain connection with the people they care about, ask yourself, “If I had a yes day, how would I spend it? Do the people in my life care enough about me to come along and delight in my joy?”

If that question feels uncomfortable—if the people who come to mind would groan, flake, or dismiss it—I see you. I’ve been there. But healing begins with allowing yourself to imagine something different. Imagine being surrounded by people who celebrate and cherish the real you. Imagine what it would feel like to be loved that way.

Because that kind of love is possible, and you deserve it.

About Kelly Jean Torres

Kelly Jean Torres is an author, essayist, and singer/songwriter in Nashville, TN. Her book, Saving The Lost Girl: A Memoir of Healing, was released this April. Visit her website to learn more:
https://kellyjeantorres.co/

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