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My favorite movie is “50 Dates” not because her name is Lucy, but because of the core of the movie; how something so dark can be so beautiful, how family will repaint the same room for years just so she can smile her way through the unknown.

When I started writing this blog, I started writing my pain, my darkest moments, my insecurities out for the world to judge, but I did not care until I received a call from my brother. Healing is like an onion, and you get wrap up on your own cry, and at times you are blinded by how people react to your story; when I said I did not care, what I meant was; healing was my choice, it was something I started because I was tired of hurting, or being afraid of a name, or running from my own memories. Hearing as my brother unraveled his perspective on the phone to 104, to his own guilt to his own reality, it really touched me; it made me cry afterwards, because I can’t let them show, I realized that pain hit all of us different even if we don’t show it, he asked me questions I wish my mother had asked me then, he reassured me like I wish my mother would’ve then; the thing about trauma is that after you’ve picked up the most horrific parts of it, and you learn to make it into something beautiful, you are no longer a victim, you become the survivor, you become a different version of yourself and it’s hard to hear the things you once prayed for being spoken.

That call made me realized that my trauma, my perspective was shared and though we never spoke about it, I started healing something for all of us, so deep within that I was taken aback with all the surrounding emotions when the subject surfaced, it was never a secret; the fact that I got raped, it was just a subject that became taboo within my family, and now that I found a way to express and heal it, the subject is being talked about, a lot of details from all of us are now being tied together and the bigger picture looks a lot different than it did with just my details.

Many think that my story starts with 104, my healing started with 104 but my story starts with all of my entries; all of them are about a version of me that I’ve worked hard on, my childhood the way my trauma made me feel like I was hard to love, my fear of love, the way vulnerability made me feel weak; after seeing so much strength, after witnessing how pain murder my innocence vulnerability was never something I ran to, the opposite it has always been something I run from.

Family has never been my safe haven, family for me have never been smiles and vacations, and stories about our adventures; do not get me wrong in between so much pain, there are moments of comfort that are sweet to still remember, so much of my trauma have taught me how to love, that when I started this journey, I doubted it all because it was just too good to be true.

Healing has not only brought me closer to my inner child it has also made me realized how many cycles in our family are traditional; cycles that started long before I was even thought of, and now that I am in the middle of uncovering the canvas in my own basement, now that I am having these conversations with my brothers, now I feel some of those cycles closing with closure. I realized that each of us, though family we have a whole basement where we keep our memories, our fears, our emotions and our pain; I was scared of my own basement for far too long, but the day I started opening boxes and going through the layers of healing, I started to uncover that there is so much room for new beginnings, room for new canvas, for new ways to love, for new memories; and I hope that one day I can sit with my family and truly smile, like smile from my soul, in reassurance that we are all survivors.

My favorite movie is “50 Dates” and though I love the romantic story line, the movie is my favorite because I was surrounded with what I thought was reality, darkness, coldness, bitterness: but once I decided to change small habits, my life became a blank canvas that I am slowly painting, and each day I get to paint it, and each day I get to have conversations I never thought were possible with people I’ve seen endured so much pain, people who I was supposed to have a born right bond with, but life hit us all with curve balls that we are now pitching back as we start to shift, as we start to break down those cycles, and as we start to shift our perspectives.

XOXO

Lucy