I did not know that there was going to be yet another wild ride of healing ahead. This stage is much more intimate. Sensitive. Fragile. My emotions are fluctuating more quickly and intensely. I am triggered by stimuli constantly. I am trying to put my own words to the feelings I am experiencing in my body. Hence, my silence here these months.

I am working through something that I did not expect to bubble to the surface in the way it has. To more completely heal, to elevate my level of self-awareness and consciousness; I have to try to decipher what my body is signaling to me. My words have been bubbling to the surface since Labor Day Weekend of 2021, but then I got silenced. Silenced because another traumatic experience happened. Silenced by fear.

Traumatic experiences we endure, compound, often unbeknownst to us. The body really does keep the score. It adapts to keep us safe from traumatic experiences. I was diagnosed with PTSD at the very end of the 2021. This was a direct result of a repressed memory that resurfaced after 2 decades and was triggered by the trauma experienced during the discovery stage of my IVF litigation.

September 27, 2020 | Sunday morning at 6am; a month to the day after I turned 36, in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic and a year of increasingly crippling chronic pain; I went to the surgical center in downtown Chicago for my egg retrieval | nearly 2 weeks past harrowing, unthinkable self-injections that went wrong every step of the way. I never could have fathomed how much worse the story got. And this is just one story, amidst so much else.

My fertility doctor & surgeon for my egg retrieval, who I called my hero the morning of the 27th; when I first met him in person, after the nurse finally got my IV into my uncooperative right hand, tears streaming down my face, laying in a hospital gown on a gurney, alone, being wheeled down the empty corridor to the sterile room that my egg retrieval occurred in.

This is the same doctor who told me on the second consult at the beginning of my IVF journey that he was not talking to me like a patient, but like his daughter. He called me blocked the Friday after Thanksgiving 2020 to discuss the litigation filings and attempt to apologize. Blame was deferred from their fertility clinic on to me, the patient, by saying that the clinic makes recommendations for thousands of dollars of fertility medications, but they do not research or vet the referrals they are making to their high paying clients. Clients that are already navigating a very delicate dance of trying to create life, against uphill challenges.

It was a direct punch to the gut, but by then I was numb. My trust in humanity crumbling each new hit I took from various medical institutions and other foundational institutions. I called him my hero that day because I had advocated like one wild woman to keep pushing for my one and only shot at motherhood. I lost that shot and so much more 2 years ago.

I did not know then that the 2 weeks of over a hundred injections that I self-injected were gray market drugs.

I let tears slip down my face at 6am in the 900 N Michigan Avenue Surgical Center for what I still thought was an egg retrieval from a quasi-normal, but I am used to being the one in a million having things go wrong.

Shortly after, my psychiatrist who had helped me start to mentally heal in 2019, diagnosed me with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A repressed memory from decades prior surfaced for the first time right before the end of 2020. When ready, I will share more about memory was uncovered and what it is like living with profound and/or repeated trauma to the psyche at stages of your younger life. How this trauma is stored in your mental body and then results in illnesses that we all succumb to at different points. Understanding how to heal your pain, profound or small, is the first step in such a richer life. That is what this healing journey and emotional roller coaster out west is illustrating so clearly. If you look. Pay attention. Notice the smallest signs.

The truth is, I have stopped wondering “why me” when horrendous experiences happen to me. They have happened regularly starting the summer before I turned 16. They have happened on this trip. The same trends. I think the why me is because I can handle almost anything at this point. I have had to. For a long, long, long time. Quietly.

I have done a lot of treatment for my now, 3 years of not being inflicted by depression, but always knowing I have to be aware that I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder. I then developed rapidly evolving chronic pain that has changed my entire life trajectory. I was supposed to have titanium plates put in my back in October 2021 at Mayo Clinic. I healed physically in 8 physical therapy sessions and my personal healing remedies. I am actively, every day, healing new parts of my hurt being that are exposing themselves to me gently and tenderly.

I never thought I could be this strong. Empowered. Liberated. Content. Joyful. Alive.

But every moment since I started actively doing the work to heal; first my mind and then within 6 minutes of mentally strengthening, my chronic pain journey began.hen my body.

It anchors me to know the depths of despair I can rise from. No matter what.

It is incredibly liberating. Own your narrative. Set your soul on fire.