What exactly does life after trauma look like? There’s no one answer. The truth is everyone survives trauma differently. What does healing look like? What does it mean to be healed? At what point can I claim that I’ve arrived? I don’t know what that answer looks like for everyone, but I have seen a glimpse of what it looks like for me. These past weeks have been filled with opportunity after opportunity to see the immense progress that has been made in my journey post-assault.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at a Pennsylvania Law Enforcement training on a victim’s perspective of Law Enforcement. As such, I shared, alongside the ADA who prosecuted my case, the facts surrounding my assault, I broke down why it took me three months to report the crime from a mental and emotional standpoint, and touched on what it’s like to relive the crime as you comb through every detail again and again for the report, investigation, and testifying. They were an incredibly attentive group of officers and I was humbled by their hunger to know how they could better serve the future victims of crime they would undoubtedly encounter. Perhaps the most incredible moment of the whole day, though, was the moment I left the building and walked to my car. I began my self check, something I believe vital after revisiting traumatic experiences. I sat in the silence of my vehicle, expecting to feel the emotional exhaustion and mental instability which often accompanied sharing my story. But, it never came. To the contrary, I found, much to my surprise and delight, that when evaluating my emotional, mental, and physical state following the day of training, I felt energized, free, and so so good! Over the next few days, I would check in every so often with myself expecting the depression to creep in, as it so often did over the past years, wrapping it’s tentacles around my mind and suffocating my spirit, but it never did.

For me, this was a sign of true healing, a testament of true freedom.