Fix You

When I walked into therapy for the first time as an adult, it was the end of January of this year. I ended 2024 with hope in my chest and confidence in my bones. I really believed this was going to be the year I caught my breath and finally flew, even with the turbulence that comes with simply existing. I had a job I loved. My house was alive with love and chaos. And with kids ranging from twelve to twenty-four, let me tell you, the energy in this house shifts every five minutes, even with only two of our offspring still under our roof. It felt like maybe, just maybe, we were stepping into a good season.

Then the second week of 2025 came in like a wrecking ball.

And look, I have walked through some things. Real things.

I was pregnant at seventeen. And then I wasn’t. That chapter shaped me in ways I didn’t have the words for back then. Two years later, at nineteen, I had my daughter. Still technically a teenager. Still trying to figure out how to keep my own head above water while keeping another tiny human alive. It was messy. It was loud. It was real.

Years later, I watched my own daughter face a teen pregnancy of her own. That cracked something open in me. It was like standing in the echo of my past and watching it replay in real time. Generational pain and generational strength are a strange little pair.

Then came the moves. I packed up everything I knew and hauled it across state lines. I left behind friends, community, and a wedding photography business I built from the ground up. That business was not just what I did. It was me. My heart, my art, my late nights and big dreams. But moving here taught me a lesson I never asked for. What works in one place does not always work somewhere else. New state, new culture, new market. No fairy tale fresh start moment. Just a lot of starting over. Again.

I have lost people I thought were permanent. It turns out some people are only meant for certain chapters, not the whole book. And then there is my family story. My parents, both married multiple times, love to act like I just got lucky with my marriage. Like two and a half decades of grit and grace is a magic trick instead of work.

So when I say this year has been hard, I do not say it lightly. I have lived through storms before. Real ones. But this year? This year did not just throw punches. It dragged me out into deep water and dared me to swim.

I walked into therapy in January thinking maybe this was how I would find my footing again. How I would untangle the knots. How I would breathe again without feeling like my lungs were made of lead. It felt like one leg was tied to an anchor and I kept reaching for something to hold, but the surface was slipping farther away.

I was not looking for therapy. Not really. I was reaching for something to hold, anything that would keep me steady while the current pulled at my legs. The storm that hit in the second week of the year did not just shake me, it split through my family like a wave. You know the kind. The ones that don’t ask permission to crash. The ones that follow no pattern. Random. Ruthless. Unforgiving. We were taking on water faster than I could bail it out. So I started patching myself together in the middle of the flood. Just enough to stay afloat. Just enough to keep breathing..

And the thing is, I know how to float. I know how to keep myself above the water when everything around me is breaking. I have been doing it for years. Floating is not brave. It does not shine. It is quiet, stubborn survival. A slow kind of strength that doesn’t make a scene but keeps you breathing.

But I did not go to therapy to float. I went because I wanted to dive. I wanted to feel the weight of the water wrap around me and still choose to keep going down. I wanted to strap on a tank, slip beneath the surface, and face whatever waits in the dark. I wanted someone to meet me below, to help me map the wreckage, to name the monsters, to brush my fingers over the old bones, to collect the broken pieces, and rise again with something true in my hands.

I have always been the one who shows up. The one who rolls up her sleeves and refuses to let the current decide the ending. I fight to make things work. I dig in. I believe that if you push hard enough, you can find your way through the storm. So believe me when I say, I wanted therapy to work. I believe in people finding what heals them, and I will always cheer for that kind of fight. I did the hard things. I showed up even when disappearing would have been easier. Floating became my lifeline. Quiet, stubborn, necessary.

But therapy also taught me something else. Sometimes it is okay to let go of what is not meant to carry you.

And for someone like me, the woman who has always stayed, the woman who held on to church life long after it lost its promise, that was no small thing.

Before I could even exhale, I got hit with a diagnosis. Not a conversation. Not a pause to be seen. Just a box checked for insurance.

Nothing quite prepares you for walking in cracked open and walking out with a label pressed against your soul.

We picked a system to follow, and I did what I do best. I came ready. Homework done. Notes in hand. Heart wide open. I arrived to dive, to sink below the surface, to explore what had been sitting in the dark corners for too long. And every week, instead of stepping off the dock with me, she stayed on shore, reading from a manual about how to swim.

I did not need a syllabus. I needed a dive partner.

What broke me was not the way she lectured. It was the way she tried to convince me to stop feeling. As if healing meant staying at the surface with a forced smile and hair that never got wet. But that is not who I am. I was made for the deep. I want to feel it, turn it over in my hands, let the weight of it pull me down, and rise again with something real.

She was not built for the deep end. I am.

Here is the truth. I did not walk into therapy to be fixed. I have been diving into dark waters since I was seventeen. I have swum through storms that could have swallowed me whole. I have carried people through currents that should have pulled us under. I have followed the small flicker of my own light when the sea floor was cold and quiet and endless.

I do not need anyone to fix me. I have rebuilt myself out of the wreckage more than once.

What I needed was someone who could step off the edge, follow me into the deep, and not flinch. Someone who would not treat my feelings like a spill to clean up. Someone who could look at the storm and say, yes, let us dive.

But she was not built for the deep end. And maybe that was the lesson.

The things that tried to break me, teen pregnancy, loss, betrayal, uprooting, rebuilding, the chaos of this year, did not fix me either. They forged me. They made me the woman who does not just survive storms. She charts them. She dives into them. She comes back to shore with a map.

They said lights will guide you home. But the lighthouse was never out there. It has always lived inside me.

When the water gets dark, I know where to look. And if anyone ever tries to fix me, they better understand. I am already the light.