⚠️ Sensitive Content Warning: This post mentions sexual assault, physical assault, harassment, trauma, and pregnancy loss.

Editor’s Note

I went back and forth on whether I even wanted to share this. Not because it isn’t true, but because some truths are hard to say out loud once they’ve lived inside you for a long time. Some things become part of your bones before they ever become part of your language. But healing has a way of asking for honesty, even when that honesty shakes a little.

So this is me being honest.

There are things about me that a lot of people probably do not know, and it is not because I was trying to hide who I am. It is because some parts of life are not easy to talk about. Some things leave visible scars. Some leave invisible ones. Some become the kind of memories you learn to carry quietly because that feels easier than explaining them.

But they still happened. They still shaped me. And whether I talk about them often or not, they are still part of my story.

For example, I am willing to bet that most people do not know that years ago, while I was walking to an ex-boyfriend’s apartment, a random man grabbed me between the legs and held on for a few seconds before finally letting go and walking away like it was nothing.

Like I was nothing.

Like my body was just there for the taking.

I still remember how violating that felt.

I still remember the shock of it. The disgust. The anger. I remember getting to my then-boyfriend’s place and telling him what had happened, and I remember how angry he was. I also remember him saying he wanted to go find the guy who did it, but he never did.

But even then, the moment itself stayed with me in a way that is hard to explain unless you have lived through something similar. Things like that do not always leave bruises people can see, but they leave something. They settle into your nervous system. They change the way your body holds fear, the way certain kinds of touch feel, and the way safety can suddenly become complicated.

That is the thing about trauma. It does not always show up in obvious ways.

Sometimes it lingers quietly in the background of your life.

Something else most people probably do not know is that I was physically assaulted by that ex-boyfriend’s sister. That happened in my apartment in the early morning hours of May 4th, 2007.

When I say physically assaulted, I do not mean there was some little argument that got out of hand. I mean I was attacked badly enough that my nose was fractured after being punched in the face, and my jaw was kicked so hard that my two front teeth went through my bottom lip from the outside in.

If you look closely enough, you will probably notice that my nose is not perfectly straight anymore and that there is still a small scar underneath my bottom lip.

That is why.

I had stitches, and to this day I can still remember how disgusting the freezing liquid they used on my mouth tasted while they were trying to numb it. I remember trying not to swallow while they stitched me up. I also remember waiting for them to finish so I could finally spit out what was in my mouth, which, even now, still grosses me out a little. It is not something I ever want to experience again.

It is strange what the body refuses to forget.

That night, I called my mom and asked her to take me to the hospital in Williams Lake. She lived about twenty minutes away at the time, which meant sitting there bleeding while I waited for her to get to my place so she could drive me to see a doctor.

I was hurt.

I was shaken.

I was trying to make sense of something that never should have happened in the first place.

And even after everything that happened that night, I continued living in that apartment. I refused to let that one incident take away my freedom or my choice to live on my own, and honestly, I am still so damn proud of myself for that.

Later that same year, in December of 2007, I was sexually assaulted by that same ex-boyfriend. I still remember saying no. I still remember telling him I had a boyfriend. None of it mattered. The only reason I even went to his apartment in the first place - which was in the same building as mine - was because he told me he just wanted to talk. Obviously, that was a lie.

The next day, I walked to the pharmacy and got Plan B, the morning-after pill, because I did not want to get pregnant at 24 by a man who had just ignored my no like it meant nothing.

I never reported that assault, and I never reported the physical assault either. I know some people might judge that, or wonder why I stayed quiet, but the truth is that fear, shock, shame, and survival do not always look the way people think they should. In Canada, sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes. According to the Government of Canada, only about 5-6% of sexual assaults are ever reported to police, and honestly, the reasons why are not hard to understand. So many women stay silent because they are scared, overwhelmed, ashamed, afraid they will not be believed, or because they just want to move on and try to forget what happened.

That is where I was back then. I was scared. I was overwhelmed. And more than anything, I just wanted to get through it and pretend none of it had ever happened.

Survival mode does not always look brave from the outside.

But sometimes surviving at all is the brave part.

Life has a strange way of layering difficult experiences on top of each other.

Another thing people probably do not know about me is that I have actually been pregnant five times, not four.

My third pregnancy ended in a termination at six weeks on July 27th, 2011, when my youngest son was only six months old. At the time I was not ready to be a mom to three children under the age of two.

For a long time I judged myself harshly for that decision.

But looking back now, I have a lot more compassion for the woman I was back then.

She was doing the best she could with what she had.

And maybe that is part of why I think of my daughters as my rainbow babies.

Not everything about me is heavy though.

There are softer things about me too.

Like the fact that I absolutely love teen dramas and not just crime dramas. I have watched every single episode of One Tree Hill more than once, and there are days when I feel like Brooke Davis in ways I cannot fully explain.

Maybe it is her strength. Maybe it is the hurt underneath it. Maybe it is the way she kept becoming more than what happened to her. I do know that there are pieces of her story that hit differently when you have your own.

Some days I relate to Peyton Sawyer.

Other days, Haley James Scott.

I think certain characters stay with us because they reflect parts of ourselves we do not always have words for yet.

I also love 7th Heaven, The OC, Full House, Fuller House, Family Matters, and Gilmore Girls.

There is just something about those shows that feels comforting to me.

Maybe it is the nostalgia.

Maybe it is the chaos.

Maybe it is the reminder that imperfect people are still worthy of love.

I used to be really into hockey too, and honestly, a part of me still is. I just don’t get very many chances to watch games now because my kids usually take over the TV around here.

My favorite NHL teams are the Carolina Hurricanes, the Dallas Stars, the Nashville Predators, the Detroit Red Wings, and of course, the Vancouver Canucks.

Although if I am being honest, I liked the Canucks more when Markus Näslund, Trevor Linden, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Ryan Kesler, and Dan Cloutier were playing than I do now, which may be why they are fifth on my list these days.

And when it comes to football, my favorite NFL team is the Carolina Panthers, and my favorite CFL team is, obviously, the BC Lions.

And even with all of that, there are still parts of my life I am not quite ready to share.

Some things are still too painful. Too private. Or maybe just too unfinished to put into words right now.

I think that is okay.

Healing is not about forcing every wound open for public viewing.

Sometimes healing is just telling the truth about the pieces you are ready to name and leaving the rest alone until they are ready too.

When my children were younger, I used to pray for someone to save me from everything I was going through back then.

Sometimes I prayed to God.

Sometimes I wondered if I was talking to my grandfather.

I do not even know.

I just remember feeling desperate. Desperate for relief. Desperate for rescue. Desperate for someone to come pull me out of the life I was surviving.

But the older I get, the more I realize something heartbreaking and powerful at the same time.

No one was coming to save me.

Not in the way I needed.

The person who was eventually going to have to save me was me.

And maybe that is one of the hardest truths I have ever had to learn. Maybe it is also one of the most important. Because as heartbreaking as that realization is, there is still power in it too.

There is power in realizing that even after everything, I am still here. Still standing. Still writing. Still trying to make something beautiful out of everything that tried to break me.

So yes, there are things about me that people probably don’t know. Some of them are painful. Some are complicated. Some are lighter. Some are still too tender to touch for very long. But they are all part of me. They all shaped me in one way or another. And whether people understand them fully or not, they helped make me who I am.

This is not about pity.

It is not about attention.

It is not about asking anyone to feel sorry for me.

It is just about truth.

It is just about honesty.

It is just about finally saying out loud that I have lived through things I never should have had to live through, and some of those things still echo through my life in ways people cannot see just by looking at me.

There are still pieces of my story I am not ready to tell.

Maybe one day I will be.

Maybe I will not.

But this is one more piece.

And for now, that feels like enough.