My Trauma Was Writing My Drama

 This is part 3 of 5. Read Part one here  |  Read Part two here

After last week's blog, "What the Fire Actually Took," my inbox filled in ways I hadn't expected. Messages poured in: tender, brave, mirrored back to me from strangers and friends alike. And what I realized, sitting inside all that reflection, is this:

Vulnerability doesn't isolate us. It gathers us.

In the stillness of my quiet room, where I begin most mornings with intention and listening, something else came into focus with startling clarity:

My trauma had been writing my drama.

For much of my life, I didn't think of myself as "traumatized." I thought I was resilient. Capable. High-functioning. The one who handled things. It wasn't until November of 2021, when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, metastasized from my original cancer in 2016, that the word trauma stopped being theoretical.

From diagnosis to surgery: 23 days.

Tests. Bloodwork. Experimental radiation. Putting my house in order. Finding the words for my children. No space to process. Only to comply, endure, survive. The tumor was ultimately benign, yet still classified as Stage 4 because of its origin. And when my oncologist said, "Your cancer doesn't follow rules," it felt like the most honest sentence I'd heard in years.

After the surgery came the meals, the blankets, the cards, the kindness. And somewhere between gratitude and exhaustion, a quiet truth surfaced:

I had been surviving long before cancer ever entered the story.

In the spring of 2022, at the urging and gift of a friend, I walked into a therapist's office and began a deeper kind of listening. That's when another truth emerged: the roots of my endurance traced back far earlier than illness. To a childhood shaped by an emotionally abusive, alcoholic mother, and a sibling whose cruelty I learned to normalize before I ever learned to question.

That past year, the fire year, opened something else entirely. The flames didn't just burn down my home. They burned through the denial that still lingered in my body.

And that's when the pattern revealed itself:

Unresolved trauma was drawing familiar energy into my life. Again and again.

When I finally paused, when I truly stopped doing and began being, I saw it clearly. A final relationship entered near the end of my old life, subtle in its harm, coated in professionalism and ego. Ego masked as leadership, quietly eroding my sense of worth.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't explosive. It was dismissive. Consistently minimizing, quietly undermining, the kind of energy that chips away at you while smiling to your face.

And it was that behavior, more than anything else, that finally forced me to stop. To step back. To listen to what my body had been whispering long before my mind was ready to hear it. In that forced pause, the truth rose without distortion.

And suddenly, the thread was visible: the same dynamics, different faces.

The moment I named it, it lost its power.

For the first time, I didn't negotiate with the pattern. I didn't rationalize it. I didn't stay.

The cycle ended with me.

And that's what I mean when I say trauma becomes drama, until it is witnessed, named, and released. What we don't heal keeps repeating. What we refuse to see keeps choosing us.

Until we choose ourselves.

This year, these 365 days, has dismantled me and rebuilt me all at once. I entered it thinking I knew who I was. I exit it knowing:

• I no longer need chaos to feel alive
• I do not confuse intensity with intimacy
• I stop at red flags instead of explaining them away
• I choose peace without apology
• I am not defined by who hurt me
• I am guided by what I now protect

Loss cracked me open. Truth rearranged me. And clarity, born from that sacred pause, has become my new compass.

Your trauma, my trauma. We all carry different stories, but the same invitation: to stop mistaking survival for connection.

So I'll end where I always want to begin, with you:

What did this year teach you about the patterns you are finally ready to break?

With love, reflection, and deep gratitude,

Susan

P.S. This is part 3 of 5. Read Part one here

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