Content Warning: The following story contains personal experiences encompassing trauma, drug use, and the path to healing. Reader discretion is advised due to potentially emotionally charged content. This narrative expresses my personal journey, reflections on addiction, and the coping mechanisms I created. It’s essential to acknowledge that this article does not supplant existing resources or professional advice. If you are contending with mental and emotional health challenges, addiction, or coping difficulties, remember that your well-being matters, and assistance is accessible. Don’t hesitate to reach out; isolation is not the answer.

Your well-being is important, and there’s help available for your journey towards healing.

The Survival Instinct (Part 1)

My Rock bottom wasn’t the moment I lost everything.
It was the moment everything I had been holding inside broke open.
It was the collapse of the walls I had built, the limits I believed, and the cages I had locked myself in just to keep going.

For so long, I believed I could do it all by myself. That it didn’t matter. That this was life, and this is just what you get—so deal with it.
I was building walls with my trauma when it came to my emotional needs. I believed I could handle anything because that was how I coped.
I told myself I was doing fine because I was still here, still functioning, still living.

But I also told myself that I hated life as I knew it.
That I was alone.
That I didn’t know who I was.
And I always questioned—is this really life? seriously? why?

I know now that even back then, deep down, I wanted more.
I wasn’t really showing up for myself—
I was showing up for the experience, going through the motions, trying to hold it all together.

I felt it in my body:
The weight in my chest.
The fog in my mind.
The anger in my throat.

I knew what I was hoping for, wishing for, aching for.
I knew I was struggling with life.
But my mind told me to just survive it.

I kept asking myself the same quiet questions—
the ones that come when you’re too tired to keep pretending,
but still trying to survive.

Why can’t I be strong enough?
What’s wrong with me?
Why am I like this?

Looking back, I see now—those questions came from the unhealed parts of me.
But I can also imagine what the healed parts would say.

Why can’t I just be strong enough?”
You are strong enough.
You have carried what feels unimaginable.
Now, it’s time to be vulnerable enough to hold yourself with kindness.

“What’s wrong with me?”
There is nothing wrong with you.
You have been disconnected—
from yourself, from safety, from softness.
You were in survival mode, not failure.

“Why am I like this?”
You have been battling your heart and mind.
Your experiences have shaped you.
You are here because life has changed you.
You have felt everything deeply—
without always knowing how to process it all.

At the time I avoided the healing parts of me reaching out.
The healing voice that was trying to wake me up—
Not with blame or pressure,
But with truth and presence.

That part wasn’t asking me to push harder.
It was asking me to listen.
To see myself.
To come back to me.

We all have motivations. A drive to be loved. A need to not be alone. A fear of failing. A longing for happiness. Our motivations often come from the things we don’t want to happen—or the things we desperately do. And those motivations become shields. We use them to survive. I certainly did.

I made choices that matched the beliefs I carried: that life was hard, that I was alone, that no one stayed, that I had to be strong or else everything would fall apart.
I avoided, I ignored, I blamed. I convinced myself that facing it all would be too much. I thought the past was just something I had to carry, not something I could understand or release.

And I was exhausted.
Exhausted from carrying it all.
Exhausted from trying to keep it all together.

I feared that if I changed my life, everything would fall apart even more—and I had already been through so much change, I had started to associate change with trauma.
So I stayed in what I knew. I stayed in what was familiar, even if it was hurting me. I knew how to survive pain.

In my personal reflection, surviving pain becomes an automatic response.
We don’t always choose it consciously—it’s conditioned.
In the world we live in, survival is normalized.
We become desensitized to what we’re actually feeling, because we’re trained to keep going no matter what.

I’m sure you’ve seen it in others.
Maybe even in yourself—
Getting by, functioning, appearing fine on the outside, while holding so much on the inside.

I remember being told:

“Naomi, you just have to push through and find a way. Life isn’t easy. There are worse things that can happen, so suck it up and just go.”

That became my pattern.
Survival.

And for a while, it works.
Until it doesn’t.
Until your body, your mind, your heart reach a point where they can’t keep doing it.

And the wild part?
We still keep going.
Until we hit another limit.
Then another.
And then another.

Because we were never taught how to stop and actually feel.
We were only taught how to keep going.

The truth is, my rock bottom didn’t start at 33.
It started way before that.

It started when the foundation of my mom’s childhood family fell apart at 14—trauma and abuse tearing through everything she knew.
It started when my family foundations crumbled too when I was 14.
It started when I watched my mother shatter to pieces in front of me.
It started in the drug use, in the unsafe gangs and peers where you took the abuse to have a safety and security.
It started when I lost my son to stillbirth one week before his due date, I was just 16 years old.

And it didn’t stop there.

It continued in the empty relationships, the heartbreaks, the betrayals, the losses, the moments of happiness that felt like flickers—and then the divorce, the one that shattered the family I had built with one of the greatest loves of my life.
It continued in the homelessness.
In the moment I had to say goodbye to my sons and leave them with their grandma and papa—because I couldn’t take care of them.
In the tears I cried alone.
In the pain I carried silently.
In the way my entire being had reached full capacity.

And I carried all of it.

Every memory.
Every loss.
Every piece of pain I told myself didn’t matter anymore—or that I didn’t care about.

Because if I held it, I could survive it.
If I held it, I could control it.
And if I could control it, maybe I wouldn’t fall apart completely.

That’s how surviving became my identity for many years to come.

And lets not forget the system we live in.
It doesn’t support the full healing experience.

You’re expected to get up, go to work, pay the bills, and chase the idea of a “good life.”
You see celebrities and influencers living large—and maybe you don’t even want that kind of life.
Maybe what you really want is the safety it seems to offer. The external validation of what you think you need to survive.

But what are we actually living for?

At 14, I wasn’t asking these questions.
But by 20, they were hitting me hard.

The pressure to keep up.
To survive.
To be someone.
To make something of yourself—
Because if you don’t, you risk falling to the bottom.

So how does this contribute to our pain, our disconnection, our constant survival mode?

It feeds it.
It normalizes it.
It teaches us that struggling silently is just what people do.

And that became the backdrop of my life.

I found some reprieve when I met my late ex-husband.
Our relationship had its ups and downs over the years.
There was love between us—
But we didn’t love ourselves.
And when you don’t love yourself,
you don’t really know how to love each other,
or how to pour love into the relationship in a healthy way.

We built a life together.
Had a family.
Got a home.
Did all the things we thought we were supposed to do.

And in many ways, we were trying.
I was clean from drugs for 8 years.
But I hadn’t healed from the version of me that had survived everything up until that point.

I didn’t know how to show up for myself.
So I didn’t know how to fully show up in my relationships or in my life either.

But as they say—
I did what I could from where I was.
Which, let’s be honest about what that means.
It was survival. Not healing. Not presence.
Just getting by the only way I knew how.

At 33, two years after my divorce, I was spiraling. I had two boys and was just going through the motions.
Everything I tried to feel, build, or become kept crumbling under the weight of what I was still carrying—the parts of myself I kept ignoring, avoiding, drowning out, or silently suffering through.

I found comfort in another deep, connected relationship—but that fell apart too. I didn’t see it clearly at the time, but I do now: I had a pattern.
I kept choosing things that would eventually fall apart, because I knew how to survive that.
If I could save it, maybe I could save myself.
If I could fix it, maybe something in me would finally feel okay.

Inevitably, I went back to drugs.
Not to numb out—but because they gave me the illusion of feeling empty when everything inside me was at full capacity, ready to burst.
That false sense of emptiness felt more manageable than the emotional overload I was carrying. Drugs gave me what I called hope.

And if you know me, you know I don’t love that word. Hope often feels too uncertain—too tied to doubt.
It says things like, “I hope it gets better,” or “I hope I can handle it.”
And the drugs?
They said “me too, I hope so too”—from the unhealed pieces of me.

Now let me be clear: this is my perspective, my truth, my lived experience.
I was a drug user—off and on—for about 14 years. Long stretches of use, then stretches of none.
I never identified as a drug addict.
I understand that might not align with everyone’s definitions or clinical labels—but I’m not here to speak for everyone. I’m speaking for me.

What Is Addiction? A Definition vs. My Truth

Addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing disorder marked by compulsive substance use or behavior despite harmful consequences. It often includes psychological or physical dependence and can result in withdrawal symptoms when stopped ((Dictionary Definition))

That’s the textbook version. It speaks of compulsion, repetition, and harm. And while it’s not wrong, it’s also not the whole picture—at least not for me

My Definition

Addiction, in my truth and lived experience, is not just about the substance. It’s about the person who keeps reaching for something—over and over again—not because they’re weak, but because they’re trying to survive something inside themselves.

It’s not the repeat use of a substance.
It’s the repeat return to the version of yourself who chooses the pain you know—because surviving that pain feels easier than facing what you don’t.

For me, addiction was choosing what felt familiar, even if it was destroying me.
I wasn’t addicted to drugs.
I was addicted to the relief that came from feeling “empty” when I was at full emotional capacity—when everything inside of me was screaming but nothing would come out. The emptiness gave me space to breathe.

And I believe this is true for many.
We aren’t just addicted to substances.
We’re addicted to survival.
To suffering.
To the pain we’ve normalized, because we’ve learned how to carry it.
Because it’s what we know.

Addiction becomes the pattern of choosing what brings relief—even if it’s temporary—because the alternative (facing the pain, the grief, the shame, the truth) feels impossible when you’re already full.
So we reach for what lets us carry the weight inside.

And I say carry on purpose.

Because from my experience, I wasn’t avoiding anything. I was keeping my head above water.
I felt everything. I heard the screams inside, every single day.
There was no turning away—just trying to survive what never let up.

I was able to quit using drugs when I “put my mind to it”—and I did, many times. I went through withdrawal, and some of the worst came from pain meds. The physical withdrawal was awful. not going to lie. What was more excruciating was the emotional reality—the pain, the suffering, the heaviness of what had been buried.

It wasn’t about the cravings or the habits. I could make the choice. I could take the actions. I could think the “right” thoughts. That was never the hard part.

The part I couldn’t quit was myself.
And that—was what kept bringing me back to the drugs.
How do I hold all this pain?
Where do I start to find myself?
How will I survive?

They call it recovery and relapse.
I call it the unhealed within me living my life.

The unhealed holding onto hope.
The repeated belief that I could just survive it.
I was a survival addict—addicted to the harmful patterns I had internalized.
Addicted to unworthiness, shame, judgment, old beliefs, and self-sabotaging narratives.

The drugs were just one of the ways I coped with all the ways I had learned to turn against myself.

As Dr. Gabor Maté says:

“The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain?”
“It’s not what happened to you. It’s what happened within you.”

And what happened within me was this:
I forgot my own truth.
I abandoned my own needs.
I carried pain like a shield, because I thought it was the only way to keep going.

My perspectives, my beliefs, my reactions, thoughts, and emotions—they were all aligned with the pain I had normalized.
And honestly, that pain felt easier to hold.

Anger felt easier than grief.
Avoidance felt easier than facing the fear of losing happiness, love, comfort… or ending up alone.

“Easier”—what a concept.

For me, back then, easier didn’t mean ease or lightness.
It meant doable.
It meant tolerable.
It meant I could function, even if I was carrying a heavy emotional load.

It was a survival mechanism—choosing what felt less overwhelming, even if it wasn’t healing.

I wasn’t choosing what was best for me.
I was choosing what kept me from breaking.

That was my version of easier.
Not freedom.
Not peace.
Just something I could get through without falling apart.

And you know what?
With the weight of the traumas I carried—how they shaped my thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and even my connection to myself—seeing any kind of light at the end of the tunnel felt almost impossible.
Having any kind of plan or vision? That felt out of reach.

People often think you can just “heal,” just “get over it” or “work through it.”
That’s what we’re conditioned to believe: push through, don’t complain, be strong, move on.

But let me offer a real perspective…

If you truly looked within—at all the shadow places where you’ve stored your hurt, pain, anger, grief, resentment, shame—you’d probably find yourself at full capacity. Maybe you already have.
And maybe you didn’t even realize it.
Maybe you brushed it off, slapped a “it’s fine” over it, told yourself you were strong.
Maybe you were surviving without even knowing it.

I didn’t realize I was surviving.
I just thought I was living the life, you know that one we are told “that’s life”

I thought the way I felt was just that, the way I felt. No room for anything else but that.
I thought the way to cope was the way to get by.
I thought being broken was just a part of life.

But it wasn’t.
It was a part of survival.
And survival is not the same thing as living and healing.

What I had been avoiding was the truth of what I felt.
The truth of what I wanted.
And the truth that I didn’t want to abandon myself anymore.
I wanted to know I had my own back—not just for a day or a season—but for good.

When I look back now, I see it all so clearly.
I wasn’t just surviving trauma—I was disconnected from the truth of who I really was.
I was disconnected from the power, the light, the love, and the truth within me. The miracle.

I wasn’t weak.
I was exhausted.

Tired of living in fight-or-flight.
Tired of pretending.
Tired of not knowing who I really was.
Tired of the system and all its messages telling me I should be stronger by now—
“Why don’t you just stop already?”
“You did this to yourself.”
“If you really wanted to change, you would.”
“You’ve got kids—what’s wrong with you?”
“Other people have been through worse and they’re fine.”
“Stop making excuses.”
“Grow up.”
“Get a real job.”
“Fix your life.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Nobody’s coming to save you.”

I heard it all.
And the truth is, I told myself some of those things too.
Because that’s what we’re conditioned to believe: that healing is about willpower and mental strength.
But when you’re carrying the full weight of trauma, the emotional overload, the loss, the shame, the grief—those statements don’t help.
They bury you deeper.
They make you believe that surviving is all you’re good for.

And the moment I stopped trying to escape it all—and started listening, really listening—I finally heard myself.

That’s what breaking open gave me.

Not destruction.
Not shame.
Not punishment.

It gave me a door.
It gave me choice.
It gave me the most painful, necessary, beautiful wake-up call I’ve ever had.

It gave me back me.

I broke into pieces. Shattered in a way that was beautiful.
What I mean by that is—who I was did not align with who I truly am.
I didn’t want to choose the shadow anymore.
I wanted to choose the me I could hear so loudly beneath the surface.
The me that didn’t just say “keep going, push through,” but instead said:

“Stop. Heal. Grow. Transform.”

The me I’ve heard loud and clear every day since I was 14 years old—
but never truly held space for her truths and intuitions.

And here’s something I’ve realized that might be different from what we’re often told:
I don’t want to be called a survivor.

Because when I was surviving, I was drowning.
When I was surviving, I was barely living.
When I was surviving, I couldn’t breathe.

So no—I don’t identify with being a survivor anymore.

I am a healer.
I am a change maker.
I am the Naomi I decide to be.

I didn’t survive what I went through.
I lived it.
I felt it.
And I transformed it—into something meaningful, into something real, into something that no longer controls me.

I healed with it.
I let it release.
I surrendered the hold.
And I found the Universe within me.

I Chose Healing

I’m 44 now. And I see myself with such clarity. I don’t need to lie to myself anymore. I don’t need to hold it all inside. I don’t need to say, “I’m fine,” when I’m not.

I get to be who I am. And it’s enough.

But that clarity didn’t come from just surviving. It came from choosing something deeper.

I started building a new world—
One within me.

The past me? She was beautifully shattered—truthful, raw, and real. She just needed me to hold her, support her, and choose to create life with her. She wanted me to choose healing, and to understand what life truly meant for me.

I reclaimed my innocence. I chose to acknowledge the little girl within me who felt so much and saw so much. I chose to go to her and remember her wisdom. She was the one who saw things—she was the medium, the seer, the empath, the holder. Without her, I wouldn’t be here. So I had to hold her, support her, and reclaim her power.

I understand now that what I needed back then wasn’t the home, the job, the car, or the “push through it” mentality—I needed to create a home within myself.
A safe place I could rest and return to.
A love that didn’t move mountains—but instead moved me.

And I did that. I built that world inside me.

A world that could support me, empower me, and connect me—not to escape reality, but to meet it with more strength and truth.
Because life is still life. The world is still the world. The system is still the system.
And survival? It’s everywhere.

From making sure you have a roof over your head, to showing up for your kids, to holding down a job or just trying to find some kind of peace—you see it in every corner of life.
And I got tired of it.
Tired of chasing “better.”
Tired of trying to be good enough.
Tired of keeping up.

So I chose differently. I became conscious of the world inside me—how it moved me, how it held me back, and how I could shift it.

I realized I could choose not just my thoughts, but my responses.
If I wanted to feel safe, I could choose safety.
If I wanted healing, I could give myself permission to heal.
I could tell my mind, my heart, and my body: we are safe now, and we’re going to live like it.

But most of all, I found my spirit.

That’s what changed everything.
That connection to the miracle of life. The energy I could feel deep in my bones that told me there was more meaning than what I had been handed.
That was why I kept choosing to heal.

I wanted to know life—not just survive it.
I wanted to feel it.
I wanted my children to know me—not a version of me lost in pain, but the real me.
The one who could pass forward love, empowerment, connection, and support.

So I chose.
I didn’t wait for someone else to hand me peace—I claimed it.
And that’s what choice really is.
Not just an action.
But an embodiment of your deeper truth.
The one that expands you and changes your life.

I know the Universe walks with me. I know my Spirit Guides, Ancestors, and Loved Ones passed are near.
They’re not pushing me to create a life “out there”—they’re showing me how to live from the inside out.

This is the new world.
The one within.
The place where peace is built. Where connection lives.
Where my energy becomes a language I speak to myself with daily.

Some might say that sounds silly.
But what’s sillier is pretending we’re okay with pain.
Pretending we’re stuck in survival forever.

If you really listen, you’ll hear it too—that voice within you saying,
“You’re right. You don’t want this. So let’s choose something new.”

When you align with your spirit—your true life force—everything opens.
The broken pieces?
They didn’t break you.
They broke the walls around you.
So the version of you that’s always been there could finally rise.

I quit drugs.
But more than that—I recovered from the version of me that was living in trauma.
I didn’t just heal because I stopped using—I healed because I chose to take a journey through my spirit.
I chose to face the parts of me that were surviving, hiding, aching—and I began to offer them peace.

This wasn’t a journey I simply just did—it was a journey I ignited, and to this day, I keep the fire burning.
I heal what comes to me to be healed. I choose higher ground. I work through my emotions, feelings, and thoughts.
I speak to the Universe, my guides, and my Loved Ones passed, and I ask them to surround me, support me, and show me the path each day.

I found new ways to heal that went beyond what we’re told to do.
I leaned into the spiritual, the soulful, and the deep connection to self.
I gained higher perspectives. I began telling my truth story.
I redefined what healing really meant to me.

I chose to let the pain, trauma, and suffering be part of the old story—because I couldn’t change it, go back to the past and rearrange it, nor could I ask anyone else to do the same.
So, I laid it to rest—a chapter of my life that held so much growth and evolution.
And I chose to write a new story, plant new roots, and speak my world into existence.

I didn’t just recover—I reclaimed my life.
I found a new way of living.
And that changed everything.

I got my life force back. My boys back. My power back.
I went to the past and spoke to those I had hurt. I owned my part of the story.
I taught my boys that pushing through is never the answer—and that life can happen to you or for you. We are the storytellers.

I have created a life not from the shattered pieces, but from the healing pieces.
I have a home in my heart that belongs to my spirit.

I am Naomi. And I am a healer.

Part two will be released next month. You will discover more about my “why” and how I uncovered the path to healing

Little Naomi

Let’s always keep in mind that within each of us resides an inner child seeking love, sustenance, empowerment, guidance, and care. Our entrance into this world is marked by innocence, yet we find ourselves navigating within systems fractured by their imperfections. The histories of our parents, grandparents, and our familial lineage are intertwined with the struggle to persist within these flawed structures of survival. Trauma isn’t solely a product of our families; it’s also the legacy of their efforts to decipher life’s purpose while forging a path for themselves within a world in need of transformation.

Me today..

I am always healing, growing and learning. I bring my whole story with me and honour my traumas in the light. I decided to reclaim my spirit and understand the meaning of life to me.