The receiver is hard to my head. My mother screams it again, “Why can’t you just get over it like other people do? Look at you, you’re a mess.”

I can hear the suction of sweat cupping my ear, smell my morning breath on the mouthpiece. I fill my lungs and yell out at her, “Do you think I will heal like a broken leg? I am broken all over. If you unzipped me, I am black-and-blue from head to toe.”

And that was truth, metaphorically and metaphysically speaking. Did I feel broken when I said those words in 1999, in regard to the childhood sexual abuse I had experienced? Yes. But was I actually broken? No.

You may feel like you are in pieces, your mind scattered, your memories buried. But the idea of being broken to the point of non-fixable has been created by fear and perceptions. When you say you are broken, you are placing a label on yourself. The label says you are damaged. From that perception of yourself, you manifest qualities that draw people and situations to you that are also perceived to be unfixable and broken.

What you are not:

You are not broken.

Your future has not been ruined.

Your soul has not been destroyed.

Nothing has been taken away from you.

Broken. Victim. Scarred for life. What do you feel when you hear these words? What if none of it were true? What if your belief in these perceptions has been a contributing factor to the toxic victim vibe?

What if all along you have been loved and cherished by a Universal source you never believed in? Maybe there have been opportunities to raise your consciousness above the toxicity of the abusive situation you experienced, but you never took them because you never trusted. And what if those who conditioned you to believe you were a broken mess were the real baseline problem of your trauma?

Now ask yourself...are these the words that will encourage me to heal, or will they grow more fear and keep me stuck?