Tomorrow marks twenty years since I almost died.
Twenty years since a June night in 2006 when a near-fatal strangulation changed the course of my life forever.
For a long time, I viewed that night as the day everything was taken from me.
Now, I see it differently.
I think that night was the day a seed was planted.
Not a flower.
Not a garden.
Not an oak tree.
Just a seed.
A tiny thing buried deep in darkness.
From June 2006 until June 10, 2019, I was that seed.
For thirteen years, I was surviving. Existing. Trying to make sense of symptoms no one seemed to understand. Trying to function while carrying invisible injuries from trauma and brain injury that affected every area of my life. Trying to find answers while quietly losing hope.
What most people don’t know is that by the time I arrived at a functional neurology clinic on June 10, 2019, I had a plan.
A very well-orchestrated plan.
If that visit didn’t help, I had decided I couldn’t keep living the way I was living.
I was exhausted.
Hopeless.
Broken.
And I truly believed I had run out of options.
But God had other plans.
He put me exactly where I needed to be.
That eight-day intensive changed everything.
I know it is impossible for most people to understand what happened during those eight days because the changes were not dramatic from the outside. There wasn’t a miracle moment where everything suddenly disappeared.
Instead, something happened that was even more important.
For the first time, I understood.
I began to understand the effects of trauma.
I began to understand brain injury.
I began to understand why my body did what it did.
I began to understand that I wasn’t crazy, weak, lazy, broken, or failing.
My brain had been injured.
My nervous system had been trapped in survival mode.
And for the first time in over a decade, I saw signs of life.
I sprouted.
As I sit here writing this, it has been seven years, two weeks, two days, and seven hours since that breakthrough.
Seven years of growth.
Seven years of healing.
Seven years of learning that healing isn’t a destination.
It’s a garden.
Anyone who gardens knows growth isn’t always easy.
There are pests.
There are storms.
There are droughts.
There are seasons when it looks like nothing is happening at all.
I’ve had plenty of pests in my life.
Some people tried to destroy what I was building.
Some relationships needed to end.
Some wounds needed to be reopened before they could truly heal.
But I’ve also had pollinators.
The people who brought encouragement, support, friendship, wisdom, connection, and forgiveness into my life.
I’ve had teachers, mentors, clinicians, friends, colleagues, and fellow survivors who carried hope for me when I couldn’t carry it myself.
I’ve stood on stages, attended conferences, participated in podcasts, and sat in conversations with people who became fertilizer for my growth.
They helped nourish parts of me that had been starving for years.
Today, people often look at me and say, “You look fine.”
Some even tell me, “You’re doing better than me, and I don’t have a brain injury.”
Maybe that’s true.
But what people don’t see are the silent battles.
They don’t see that a tired brain with a brain injury is not the same thing as ordinary fatigue.
They don’t see the evenings when neurofatigue steals my emotional regulation.
The moments when tears arrive unexpectedly.
The moments when frustration appears faster than it should.
The days when I cancel plans because the familiar “drunk on a boat” feeling returns and my body is telling me that rest is not optional.
They don’t see the constant calculations.
The pacing.
The recovery.
The accommodations.
The choices I make every day to protect the progress I’ve worked so hard to build.
People sometimes wonder why I live the way I do.
Why I prioritize sleep.
Why I eat healthy.
Why I limit television and social media.
Why I continue to learn everything I can about trauma, healing, brain injury, wellness, and recovery.
The answer is simple.
Because I know what it costs when I don’t.
Healing became my responsibility.
Not because what happened was my fault.
But because my future became my responsibility.
And somewhere along this journey, I learned something else.
One of the greatest gifts of healing is creating things you can be proud of.
My garden.
My flowers.
My chickens.
My girls.
My canning.
My sourdough.
My speaking.
My podcast.
My blog.
Each one represents something much bigger than the thing itself.
They are pieces of me.
Pieces of my research.
My effort.
My love.
My faith.
My hard work.
My growth.
My legacy.
Every flower that blooms started as something small.
Every tomato began as a seed.
Every jar on my shelf represents time, preparation, and care.
Every one of those things reminds me that growth happens slowly.
Almost invisibly.
Day by day.
The world often holds on to trauma because it’s easier than doing the work healing requires.
Healing is hard.
It is some of the hardest work I have ever done.
But it is also the most worthwhile work I have ever done.
Tomorrow will be twenty years since that night in June 2006.
Twenty years since a seed was planted.
And while I still have healing left to do, I no longer measure my life by what happened that night.
I measure it by what grew afterward.
Some things take years before we fully understand how beautiful, powerful, and miraculous they are becoming.
An oak tree doesn’t become an oak tree overnight.
It grows one day at a time.
One season at a time.
One year at a time.
That is how healing works, too.
I am a lot like an old oak tree.
Most days, the growth isn’t visible.
But when I look back over twenty years, I can see just how far I’ve come.
And for the first time in my life, I am excited to see what the next twenty years bring.
Love,
Paula
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