One night, when I was 15, I woke up to find my little sister standing beside my bed, holding a steak knife above me. It’s one of the few times in my life when I’ve felt the sharp edge of fear—real, primal, and immediate.
I’m one of six kids. I have one biological older sister, and four younger siblings who were adopted. The sister with the knife—probably around six at the time—is developmentally delayed. Severe mental illness runs in her biological family. She spent her early months in foster care, without the stability or attachment every infant needs.
So while terrifying, the knife wasn’t totally unexpected. She was known to wander at night. Her door was secured with a hook lock from the outside for that reason. She’d tear toys apart, smear feces on the walls, and break windows. She also had long, animated conversations with her beanie babies, who, from her perspective, talked back.
That night, I screamed for my mom, then scooped my sister into my arms and carried her upstairs. Somehow, she had pulled the hook and eye lock out of the wall. My mom said she’d fix it in the morning, so I laid down on the hallway floor with a pillow and blanket and stayed there until morning—guarding her door.
That’s one of the only moments in my life when I’ve truly feared for my safety. But fear, in other forms, was ever-present.
It took shape as self-doubt.
Am I doing the right thing?
Am I going to mess this up?
Do they even like me?
I was shy. So shy I could barely talk to my grandparents. I often worried I had nothing important to say.
I also feared heartbreak. I didn’t want my kids to experience the pain of divorce like I did. I didn’t want them to feel the ache of abandonment or the chaos of uncertainty.
Death, though? That never scared me. If anything, I was curious about it.
Yes, fear has a role—it alerts us to danger. If a bear is chasing you, fear floods your body with adrenaline so you can run. But it’s loud. It drowns out everything else until you’re safe again.
Fear is an intuition killer.
The everyday fears—the anxious thoughts, the overthinking—they keep us in a constant state of fight or flight, even when there’s no bear. That was me for years, especially after my divorce. The life I imagined crumbled, and I scrambled to preserve calm for my kids in the middle of a tornado.
I went to therapy. I could speak rationally about what I was facing and the tools I used to cope. I was discharged after a few sessions. But I wasn’t healed. I was surviving. Functioning. But not listening—to myself, to my body, to anything quiet. I couldn’t hear the whispers of intuition that would have softened my path and reminded me what truly mattered.
But all the talk therapy in the world couldn’t quiet the storm inside me.
I was surviving—checking boxes, caring for my kids, doing what needed to be done.
But I wasn’t living. I wasn’t listening.
Not to myself. Not to my intuition.
Then something happened.
Something that silenced the noise.
Not gradually—instantly.
What happened next changed everything.
It marked the end of fear, and the beginning of trust.
🌀 Keep reading to hear the story I’ve never fully shared—until now.
