The Day I Stopped Surviving and Started Reclaiming My Life
From decades of crisis and loss to taking my first steps toward peace, health, and a home I can breathe in.
I can’t remember a time when my life truly felt “normal.” My whole life has been one trauma, one tragedy, one storm after another. I guess things before 1983 were not so horrible. Yes, my parents didn’t have the happiest marriage, and it hurt us kids sometimes, but it was not an abusive household. My parents were just passionate and very different from each other. There was a lot of fighting, and I often kept myself locked away, but I stayed busy. I had activities, friends, and a somewhat normal life for the most part. Even then, I felt small, unseen, and lacked self-esteem.
That changed in 1983 when I went away to college. Not long after classes began, I started dating a senior. After we had been together for a couple of months, he lured me off campus to visit some friends and sexually assaulted me. I was a virgin. At that time, I believed life was supposed to follow a simple, predictable path: go to college, meet someone, get married, build a career, have children. A normal life. But from that day forward, my life veered off course, and it never returned to the path I thought I was meant to follow.
In 1985, at 20 years old, I joined the Navy, hoping the military would give me direction and stability. Instead, during my first two years of service, I endured multiple sexual assaults. In 1987, I entered my first marriage not out of love or readiness, but because I had been manipulated and pressured into it. I didn’t feel worthy of real love, and I feared no one would ever ask again. My mental state was fragile, and that marriage only reinforced my belief that I was not enough.
From there, the storms never stopped. The years that followed brought a cascade of hardship. I have felt worthless and unworthy most of my life, with a constant voice, sometimes external and often internal, telling me that I could never do enough or be enough. I am not here to blame anyone, but I can say that growing up under a constant cloud of criticism shaped the way I viewed myself for decades. That belief colored every choice I made and every relationship I entered.
Then, on October 28, 1989, my world shattered when my father was killed in an automobile accident. He was not just my father. He was my best friend, the person I could always count on to listen without judgment and offer steady guidance. Losing him was more than a tragedy. It devastated me in a way I had never experienced. That grief seeped into every part of my life, leaving a hole that nothing and no one could fill.
Fast forward to the 2008 economic crash. I was living in Georgia at the time, and when jobs dried up, I was forced to pack up everything and move to Seattle to try to find work. Those years were about survival, not growth. In 2011, I returned to Georgia and went back to college. I worked hard and graduated with honors in December 2016. In May 2017, I started working for a well-known company and believed I was building toward stability. Then in May 2018, I was restructured out of my position, and overnight my steady income disappeared.
From that day forward, I was constantly searching for work, applying to jobs all over the United States, sending out résumés, and making calls. Instead of receiving polite rejections, I was met with silence. No responses. No returned calls. No acknowledgment. At one point, I even considered a position in Saudi Arabia through a friend who was set to lead a project and had invited me to join his team.
In February 2019, believing this would be a new start, I began preparing to leave the country. I sold and gave away almost everything I owned, keeping only a few essentials in storage. My last day in the apartment was February 28, 2019. On March 1, I became homeless and was living in my car while focusing on the move overseas. Midway through March, the opportunity was first delayed and then ultimately fell through due to increasing political unrest in Saudi Arabia.
I spoke to my therapist at the VA and asked her, “What’s the difference between being in my current situation here and being in the same situation somewhere else?” She told me there wasn’t one. I said that in that case, I was going to Florida because I had wanted to live there since I was a child and I had family there. She told me to go to the VA as soon as I got there, and I did.
By July 17, 2019, I entered a VA program in Florida that offered me a lifeline. It was the first step toward rebuilding my life, but even then, the storms continued. Back in April 2019, I had developed a hiatal hernia that steadily worsened. In October of that year, surgery was first recommended and then withdrawn. I would live with that pain for nearly three years.
In November 2019, I moved out of the VA program and started working at a senior living facility that had promised me a position in process improvement. Instead, they placed me as a security guard and concierge, far from the career path I had invested more than $50,000 in education to pursue. That job ended in January 2020 when the stress of going there outweighed the benefit of a paycheck.
Then came the pandemic. In March 2020, I was still waiting to start my position as a field supervisor for the 2020 Census when I tried to renew my car registration. Because of shutdowns, the process was chaotic. On March 23, shortly after my birthday, I went to the DMV, broke down emotionally, and called a friend from the VA. I went straight to the VA hospital emergency room and told them I felt unsafe in the world and that the only place I felt safe was there.
In July 2020, the Census Bureau finally began training, and I moved into the role of training my team. When that position ended in October, I had saved enough to try to buy a home, but my student loan debt pushed my debt-to-income ratio too high. Instead, I decided to visit family. I flew to Michigan, rented a car, and spent time with my son and his family, seeing firsthand how the pandemic was affecting them. That’s when I decided to invite them to Florida so I could help them find stability.
I drove from Michigan through North Carolina to see my nieces, then on to Tennessee to see my sons, and finally to Georgia to visit my mother before returning to Florida. In January 2021, my son and his family began arriving, making multiple trips to move their belongings into storage. During that time, my grandchildren stayed with me.
When I couldn’t find a permanent place for us to live, I sought housing help and we were placed in a hotel, unaware it was overrun with drugs, prostitution, and crime. We kept to ourselves in separate rooms, but on April 16, 2021, the state arrived and demanded we hand over the children. Not knowing our rights and believing we had no choice, we complied. That single decision, triggered by false allegations from a disgruntled family member, launched the darkest battle of my life.
In July 2021, I began working at the VA hospital. On August 12, 2021, I nearly collapsed at work and was hospitalized for a week. The hiatal hernia, which had been worsening for years, was now severe and would eventually move up into my chest before I could get surgery.
By October 7, 2021, I was granted temporary guardianship of my granddaughter, but not my grandson, a loss that still cuts deep. From that moment on, we lived under relentless scrutiny. The privatized organization running Child Protective Services fabricated claims, set impossible rules, and looked for any reason to remove her from my care. The case manager had people following us and neighbors spying on me.
The strain of these restrictions, combined with the worsening hernia and the demands of school drop-off and pick-up, made it impossible to maintain my schedule at the VA hospital. On November 10, 2021, I made the painful choice to resign.
In March 2022, I finally had the hernia surgery. That July, we moved from Clearwater to Tarpon Springs, but the harassment followed. In late 2023, my Tarpon Springs landlord spoke to the judge by phone during a hearing and falsely claimed my granddaughter’s parents were secretly living with us. The lie had no basis in reality, yet it was treated as truth.
In March of 2024, I underwent shoulder surgery. Before I could even start physical therapy, eviction threats forced us to move again. This time, I returned to my hometown in Georgia.
In late 2024, the day before Thanksgiving, I contracted COVID for the first time. It developed into pneumonia that kept me sick through Christmas and New Year. By spring break in 2025, I had recovered and was feeling better, so we took a trip to Florida to visit my granddaughter’s parents. While there, I learned they would have to leave their home because the landlord had decided to sell. We began planning their move back to Georgia. In May, my son and his wife returned, and I helped both financially and by unloading the moving truck into storage. Around June 17, I was struck with shingles, leaving me with severe nerve pain that still lingers. On top of that, my granddaughter’s ongoing medical needs required constant attention, including two hospital visits, one for mild DKA and one on the cusp of it. Then in July 2025, about the 20th, puppies were born into our household. Two weeks later, the mama dog could no longer nurse, and I had to hand-feed seven puppies every three hours, day and night. That was the moment the chaos, the exhaustion, and the constant demands finally pushed me to my breaking point.
Standing in that chaos, I knew something had to change. I could not keep living in survival mode, reacting to every crisis until it swallowed me whole. The clarity came in an instant. I needed help, and I needed to start in a way that would give me the strength and confidence to keep going. I sat down and crafted a message to my doctor, asking for help to lose the extra weight, the body clutter, because I knew that feeling better physically would give me the energy to face everything else. I set up an appointment to see him this Friday.
My consultation for eye surgery to remove the heavy lids has been scheduled since May, and I finally got in. The surgeon told me I am a candidate for the procedure and that it is medically necessary because of the eye strain it causes. Right now, my right eye is aching. I look tired all the time, and I feel tired all the time. They are now working to get the procedure approved through insurance.
I also booked a hair appointment for Friday. I have not had my hair colored, styled, cut, or trimmed by anyone since 2022. None of these things will magically erase the clutter in my home or my mind, but each one is a stake in the ground. This is me beginning to take back my life.
Now comes the real work. The physical clutter in my home mirrors the mental clutter that has been weighing me down for years. I am ready to tackle it, one space, one decision, and one victory at a time. What follows are the steps I am using to reclaim my space and my peace, and they are the same steps you can use to start reclaiming yours.
If my journey resonates with you, or if you know someone fighting to rebuild their life after years of storms, please share this. You never know who might need the reminder that no matter how deep the chaos runs, it’s never too late to take the first step back toward yourself.
Here’s what I did first:
I admitted I could not do everything alone.
I created a daily plan I could actually keep, reclaiming control in small, steady steps.
I made rest non-negotiable.
I started with one small space, creating visible progress I could build on.
I set clear boundaries with people and with my own habits.
I gave myself permission to ask for help without guilt.
Here’s where you can start today:
Change one thing in your environment right now, no matter how small.
Protect one block of time each day that belongs only to you.
Remove what drains you, whether it is physical clutter or commitments you cannot sustain.
Stop thinking you have to earn rest. You need it to survive.
I share this because I know what it feels like to lose yourself in the storm. I have lived there for decades. If I can begin to climb out, so can you.
If this spoke to you, I would love for you to stay connected. Subscribe to The Phoenix of Conasauga for more real stories, practical steps, and encouragement to help you rise through your own storms. My journey is far from over, and yours does not have to be walked alone.
Let’s take the next step together.