Season One-Episode Ten: The Beginning of Healing/Finding my Way Back

 Freedom doesn’t always mean you’re healed.
 In this episode of Wonderland Rewritten, Kristen Elizabeth shares the part of healing no one talks about, the disconnect between moving on and still feeling stuck.
A story of surrender, self-awareness, and learning to heal from the inside out. 

Transcript

Elizabeth 0:11

Some moments feel like freedom, like the door finally opened, like you can breathe again, like everything is about to change. And for a second you believe you are ready. You are ready to move forward, ready to take on the world, ready to leave everything behind, but what no one tells you is freedom doesn't mean you're healed because no one tells you. Your body doesn't forget just because your mind decides to move on. You can be standing in a brand new moment with a completely different life in front of you, and your body will still respond like you're back there. Same tight chest, same racing thoughts, same instinct to brace yourself even when nothing is actually wrong. And that confusion, that disconnect between, I'm safe now and why don't I feel safe? That's where healing really begins. Some rabbit holes don't end when you climb out of them because parts of them stay with you in your body, in your thoughts and the way you react. To the world around you, welcome to Wonderland Rewritten. I'm Kristen Elizabeth, and this is where we take the stories we've lived, the ones that shaped us, stretched us, and sometimes stayed with us longer than we expected, and we learn how to heal through them because today's episode. It is about the part of healing no one prepares you for. At the beginning, I felt ready, like I had been released from something that held me for so long. I wanted to go from zero to 100 immediately. I thought I'm free now. I should feel different, but I didn't understand why I was still hurting, why my shoulders still felt heavy, why anxiety would hit me and my face would go numb. My heart beating so hard, I could feel it in my throat, and I remember thinking, what is wrong with me? I am finally out, so why does it still feel like I can't fully walk forward? And the questions didn't stop there. It turned into, why can't I just move on? Why am I still feeling this? Why does this still have power over me? And the more I asked those questions, the more I started turning on myself. Like healing, had a timeline and somehow I was failing it. And I think this is where we get it wrong. We're taught to expect change to happen instantly, to fix it, move on, be better. But healing doesn't work like that. It takes time. It takes grace and it takes understanding that just because you've stepped out of something doesn't mean it's fully left you. Healing didn't happen overnight, but neither did breaking In the middle of that, there was something beautiful. My relationship with my husband was thriving in a way. It hadn't in years, we were close again, talking for hours, opening up in ways we hadn't before. There was a safety there, a connection, and inside that space, I felt like myself again. Inside our home, everything slowed down. Conversations felt safe. My guard dropped. I could breathe again. But the moment I stepped outside, it was like my nervous system didn't get the message. My mind said, you are okay now. But my body whispered. Stay alert and outside of it. I was still struggling because every time I stepped into the world, I felt it, the weight, the sensitivity, the way I held onto everything, people's words, their tone, the energy in the room, and I would replay it over and over again for days, letting it sit in me. Letting it grow until it started pulling me back towards that familiar place. The rabbit hole. It was like my mind had a rewind button and no off switch. I would replay conversations word for word, analyzing tone, reading between the lines. That may not have been there. Creating meaning out of moments that were never meant to hold that much weight. And somehow I always made it mean something about me. And then there was a moment where everything been holding came out. All at once, I broke mentally, emotionally, I projected that pain onto someone else, and in that moment they said something to me that hit me harder than anything else they told me. I needed to stop blaming others and start working on myself. And it wasn't loud, it wasn't aggressive, it was calm, direct, honest, and somehow that made it hit even harder because there was no way to defend it. No way to deflect it, just the truth sitting right in front of me because deep down. I knew they were right. That was the moment everything changed because I realized this wasn't about everyone else. This was about me and what I was caring, what I hadn't faced, what I had pushed down for years. And I could feel it clearly. My need for external validation was clouding my self-awareness. I had been looking outward for something that had to come from within, and that's when I made a decision to stop running, to stop avoiding, to turn inward and to fully surrender to God. And surrender didn't look like peace. At first, it looked like letting go of control. Before I knew what would catch me, it looked like sitting in the unknown and trusting that God was still there even when I couldn't feel him the way I wanted to. And that meant facing everything, not just what was recent, but everything, childhood, teenage years, young adulthood, the things I had buried, the things I never processed, the things I kept moving past because life didn't stop. I unpacked it. Piece by piece, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done because healing isn't just moving forward. Sometimes it's going back and finally feeling what you never allowed yourself to feel. Some moments, I didn't just remember them, I felt them. All over again, like I was standing back in versions of myself that I had abandoned just or survive, and this time I didn't walk away from her, but something started to happen. As I released those layers, I started to see myself more clearly, not who I thought I had to be, not who the world shaped me to be. But who I actually was, and I realized something simple, but life changing. I needed to love myself, not based on what others said, not based on what I achieved, not based on how I was perceived, but fully. And I remember one moment standing in front of the mirror just looking at myself. Not fixing anything, not judging anything, just seeing me and realizing I had spent so much of my life trying to become someone else that I never actually learned how to be with myself. And I begin to understand I can't control others, but I can control how I respond. And slowly what used to loop in my mind started to change. Instead of holding onto everything, I started letting it go, like leaves in a stream, watching them pass, not grabbing them, not replaying them, just letting them move, and it didn't happen perfectly. There were still moments where I wanted to grab onto those thoughts, but instead I would pause, breathe, and let them pass anyway. And that is where the shift started. And for the first time, I felt lighter and I made a promise to myself. I would not let anything or anyone pull me back into that rabbit hole again because I had finally seen what life looked like outside of it, and I wanted to stay there. Wonderland has always been a part of my story, but before I was lost inside of it, now I'm rewriting it. From the outside, letting people see me, hear me, know me, the real me, Kristin, and I'm giving myself grace because I know now this doesn't happen overnight. I'm not the same person who walked out of that chapter. I'm someone who walked through it, felt it, faced it, and chose not to stay there. Some people might not understand this journey. They might not understand how, God had been there all along, and that's okay because this isn't about convincing anyone. It's about living it. And if you're somewhere in your own journey, just know this. You're not behind, you're not broken. You are becoming with the support of the people I love, through surrendering to God through therapy, through choosing to face myself, I am rewriting my story, and for the first time I can say this with confidence. It's beautiful. Healing didn't happen overnight, but neither did breaking. Thank you for being here with me. If this episode met you somewhere real, I hope you'll come back next time as we continue rewriting this story together. This is Wonderland rewritten. Until next time.