A little panic, very little disco

If you’ve ever lived in a constant state of fight or flight, you know that existing within that space is basically a lot of panic…very little disco.

When I was a little girl, my family always used to joke that I was “feral”...and I never quite grew out of that. 

At 14, I bought and moved into my first tipi. I taught my good horse, Cappy, to haul a travois, and together we drug that lodge across my family’s property. Camping, trapping, learning edible plants and setting deadfalls, swimming in the river and waking up to the sound of crows and owls perched in my lodge poles.

Life was beautiful. 

Our family had moved back to the states from overseas, and initially, I missed the continent of my youth terribly. The lifestyle my folks let me pursue taught self-reliance, capability in skills that were quickly disappearing and the ability to continue homeschooling while writing my own story in the mountains and hills I loved. The solitude, peace and freedom it allowed me fostered even more independence, and I grew up feeling like a cross between a princess and a mountain man from the stories I read set in the American Fur Trade era. I loved shooting my flintlock rifle, brain tanning hides, forging for food and sleeping under the stars. Moving with the seasons. 

Life changed dramatically when I was a teenager, and if you know a little bit about my story, you know the things that happened around this age were something that facilitated a story that is as old as time later down the road. Abusers are drawn to people who have experienced the things I did, and as a young woman, the impact of domestic violence became more than I thought was bearable.

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men in the United States will experience domestic violence at some point in their life, and my story is just one of too many. This isn’t even counting the tragedy of what is happening on reservations across the country, the back-logged rape kits and ignored crisis of indigenous women.

This isn’t counting the lost souls, the children, the ones who never make it out….or the ones who do, but carry the history and memory of a life lived in fear in quiet ways the world can’t see.

For years, my nervous system learned to live in survival mode. I became hyper-aware, always scanning for danger, always preparing for the next bad thing to happen, the next threat that promised to show up at a show or rodeo or some problem I would have to fix that would remind me of just how powerless I was. 

In a way, at least in my experience, you learn to become small to be safe. 

You learn to shrink. You learn to negotiate with chaos. You learn to make yourself small enough to survive the day…even if it means disappearing from yourself.

Which was something I always fought with while trying to continue singing, touring, pushing out music and thoughts and words to the world. It was the weirdest way of living TRYING to find balance, and simply always feeling out of control. I was on stage, trying to “hide” and trying to live out my purpose and do well in my career simultaneously. It was a broken way of living, and it made sense because I saw myself as something that was broken and beyond repair. 

Not worthless, but not worthy.

Not a victim, but never safe.

Not confident, but never not-performing.

And yet, somewhere inside that “feral” little girl, the one who knew how to build fires, field dress a buffalo and set traps…something stayed alive. 

That part of me refused to believe fear was the only home I was ever going to live in. 

I just KNEW it had to be better. It had to get better. 

It couldn’t just be “THIS” for the rest of my life. 

Looking back now, the truly wild thing is that healing didn’t come in a lightning bolt.

It came slowly. 

Like, over YEARS slowly.

It came in therapy sessions where my hands shook and I said difficult things to people I loved. 

It came in the mornings where I forced myself to breathe again after reminders from the past made me freeze. 

It came in forgiving my younger self for not knowing what she didn’t know.

It came in learning to say no.

It came in learning what I actually wanted to say yes to.

It came in learning that strength isn’t always gritting your teeth. 

Sometimes, it’s choosing safety. 

Peace. Stepping away. Your health. Privacy. 

Sometimes, it’s letting someone help you. 

Sometimes it is just being willing to be open and honest and feel your feelings and sit with them. Realizing that they are going to arrive, and that they will pass. 

Sometimes, it’s allowing yourself the ability to hope again. 

To give yourself permission to step out of survival-mode and into LIVING again. 

Sometimes it’s the realization that it’s okay to be happy, it’s okay to move on, and that is what is required of you, if you are to step into the next chapter you’ve been asking God to open up.

You have to be WILLING to be joyful. 

You have to be WILLING to move on.

You have to be WILLING to take of the familiar load of pain, set it down, and leave it in the past.

You have to be willing to move on, and allow the joy that threatens to take hold to grow.

It turns out, the wilderness teaches you something important: everything that has been broken can also grow back. 

Maybe differently. Maybe scarred. But alive.

I don’t know who needs to hear this. Maybe it was simply that little girl I used to be that needed to be heard on the page. Maybe it’s someone reading this right now. I might know you, I might not. You may have a similar story to mine, or you may be fighting battles I know nothing about.

All I know is that you matter, your life matters and you deserve peace and joy and a life lived in safety and JOY. 

And you will never have that if you continue to deny yourself the gift of letting go and accepting the blessings on the other side of all that hard work to achieve peace. 

So, dear friend. 

If you have ever lived in fight-or-flight, if you have ever loved someone who hurt you, if you have ever questioned whether joy would find you again–I want you to know this:

You are not weak for surviving.You are not ruined by what happened.And your story is not over.

There is life beyond the panic.

There is softness after the storm.

Your JOY will grow and bring more blessings than you can ever imagine if you just make room for it by setting down the pain. 

There is a version of you who is steady and unafraid. 

That version is worth fighting your way back to.

I promise it will be worth it. 

And I promise that one day, without even noticing when it happened, the world won’t feel like constant survival anymore.

There will be peace.There will be safety.

And, there might also finally be…a little disco.

I love you. You’re worth loving, don’t ever forget it.