When Healing is More Than an Inside Job
Understanding the Impact of the Environment in My Healing Journey
There’s a painful truth I’ve come to accept. It’s not anything new, and I’ve known it on many levels for a long time. But now, I’m feeling the full weight with a deeper clarity than I ever have before. And it hurts my heart more than I ever thought possible.
After all the healing, the therapy, the yoga and meditations, the plant medicine, allowing myself to feel and learn from my emotions, and the continual peeling back of layers that never end, one thing remains….
I don’t feel safe.
Not because I haven’t healed.
Not because I haven’t tried hard enough.
But because my soul is still living in a place that vibrates with everything I’ve been working to release. A place that for me, holds the frequency of fear, not freedom. A place my nervous system cannot fully relax in.
It’s like a heaviness that never quite lifts completely, a low level alert system that hums beneath everything I do. And if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve been living this way for a long time. I’ve adapted, shrunk, and shaped my life around it. But recently, after the experience I had and wrote about in Still Rising, I see just how much it’s cost me.
"To heal is to touch with love that which was previously touched by fear."
- Stephen Levine
A Maze of Triggers
I now completely understand that no matter how much I’ve healed on the inside, there are times my body still recoils when I step outside. My energy contracts. My intuition whispers, “not here, not anymore.”
The truth is, with the exception of walking my dog, I’ve become someone who rarely leaves the house unless I have to. Grocery store runs are carefully timed for early mornings when the city feels a little quieter and less threatening.
Crowds still overwhelm me, noise overwhelms me, and danger feels like it’s hiding around every corner. The city I live in feels like a maze of triggers. A maze that I sometimes feel lost in and struggle trying to find my way out of.
Some days, I’ll take my dog and go to one of the few urban trails that feel relatively safe. But aside from that, my world has grown very small.
I used to be someone who would hop in the car and drive out of the city without a second thought. Just me and my dog, chasing sunsets and wandering through nature. Watching the sunset felt like a beautiful ritual that I loved. Nature was my sanctuary, and still is even though I don’t spend as much time there as I would like.
Exploring new places brought me so much joy. But now, a lot of times the thought of doing those things makes me uncomfortable. That spontaneous, adventurous version of me feels far away, like a distant memory.
I miss some aspects of that version of me, the one who didn’t live in fear and trusted the world enough to explore it. And lately I feel like I’m grieving those aspects of me.
I’m Not Who I Used To Be
This realization is wrapped up in layers of sadness. I feel like I’ve given up on more than I care to admit. Not just on experiences, but also on expressing myself. I used to care about how I dressed and how I presented myself. But now, I feel like there’s no point when I rarely go anywhere.
The long awaited warm weather has arrived on the prairies, making this more obvious to me than ever. As the sun shines and the world blooms, I often feel like a prisoner in my home. Not trapped by the walls, but by energy. By the invisible residue of everything I’ve endured here.
And yet, I know I’ve come a long way. I am not who I used to be. I’ve made my way through the darkness, and I’ve come out the other side with strength, self-awareness, and a level of healing I once thought was impossible. I have recovered in so many ways, and I am so grateful for that.
But my sense of personal safety? That part remains only partially healed.
I understand that it’s not me. It’s the environment. It’s this city. My nervous system doesn’t feel safe here. And I’ve realized that no amount of inner work will ever change that.
I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. But there are some wounds that aren’t just emotional, they’re environmental. Some traumas get woven into the places where they happened, and this city is like a tapestry filled with mine.
My Nervous System Remembers
The work I once did here, especially my time as a Community Corrections Worker, took me into the heart of danger. I wasn’t working from behind a desk or behind locked doors. I was out and about in the community, meeting with high risk sex offenders in public spaces and driving them around the very streets I now avoid.
This city has become like a map of deeply ingrained memories I never asked to carry. A dark web of places where I was taught, over and over, that safety was not guaranteed.
I’ve carried this for so long, trying to rise above it, and I have in many ways. But rising above it doesn’t mean trying to stay rooted in the ground my soul has already outgrown.
"When a flower doesn't bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower"
- Alexander Den Heijer
Everywhere I go, I’m reminded. My body remembers. My nervous system remembers. And some days I still feel the exhaustion from being on high alert for so long.
I’ve heard the saying, “You can’t heal in the same environment that made you sick,” and I feel the truth of that deep within me. Leaving the work environment wasn’t enough though. Because it isn’t just the job. It’s the city. It’s the surroundings and the heavy energy.
Choosing Different
So I’m choosing something different. Very soon I’m planning to be somewhere new. Somewhere that doesn’t carry the same memories. Somewhere that allows me to breathe. Somewhere that feels more like life and less like survival.
I don’t expect the move to be a magical fix. I know healing doesn’t work like that.
But I do believe in energetic alignment. I believe in sacred new beginnings. I believe that where we are matters, and that the soul can only thrive in places where it is free to breathe. I feel like I’ve come as far as I can where I am.
So, I’m ready to find that place where I can soften even more and feel fully alive again. And not just behind closed doors, not just in fleeting moments, but fully and completely.
I want to feel the sun on my skin without fear. I want to take a drive and watch the sky change colours. I want to experience the kind of safety that doesn’t require me to be hypervigilant.
"The soul always knows how to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind."
- Caroline Myss
Thriving Doesn’t Look Like Fear
Most days, I do feel like I’m thriving because in most ways I am. But lately when I leave my house, the truth that I’m not thriving in all the ways I want to be hits me like a cold, harsh wind. Because thriving doesn’t look like fear. Thriving doesn’t avoid sunlight. Thriving doesn’t live inside a fortress of survival.
But I believe I will thrive completely, and in every way again.
I believe that my soul is guiding me toward what, and where I need to be.
It's become painfully clear that I won’t fully heal where I was broken.
And I know now, with absolute certainty, that I can’t get there by staying here.
If you’re reading this and something inside you quietly whispers, me too, I want you to know you’re not alone.
Maybe your healing is asking for something more. Maybe your nervous system is trying to tell you that the place you’re in no longer matches who you’ve become. Or maybe you’ve done the inner work, but the outer world still doesn’t feel safe enough for your soul to rest.
Whatever your truth is, listen to it.
Not everything can be healed in stillness. Some things need movement. Some wounds need new soil, new air, new energy.
Give yourself permission to explore what freedom might look like for you. To imagine what it would feel like to wake up somewhere your soul feels safe. You don’t have to rush.
Just start by listening.
That’s where healing begins again.
As always, I am so grateful you’re here. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support my work, it’s as simple as clicking on the little heart at the bottom of this post. And if you feel called to buy me a coffee, the link is below ⬇️🌻
Thank you, Darcy, for that beautiful vulnerability of yours. I too know the feeling of being trapped in my own life, my own home. It’s amazing that capacity of our body, and nervous system, to remember things beyond our consciousness. I read somewhere that when you suffered a traumatic event, every year at the same precise moment, your body remembers it and let the emotions linked to it back to the surface again until you heal them.
Doing something out of my routine is still very uncomfortable for me: yesterday I went to the beach with my family and spent a great day there. Though I knew I would, the day before part of myself, my ego, kept sending me signs I would be better, safer in my ego’s language, at home avoiding all the fuss of going to the beach. Despite the whole healing I did in that matter, that constriction in my body and mind keep showing up each time. I sit with it again and again to let it pass through and explain everyone, my ego and body, that we are safe and are going to have a good time, they’re still there but their grip is strong less, diminishing every time. I don’t think they’ll go completely but addressing them with love makes them easier to pass through. I used to never go out of my house apart from a few events related to my work and, one year after my burnout, I started taking daily walks close to my home. That was my first step out. Now, I do readings, signings and ITWs for my children book and my ego still shows up but I deal with it, reassuring it with love.
Making my peace with death helped a lot. I used to be terrified at the idea of dying prematurely, leaving my daughter behind and not knowing what was on the other side. Now that I « know », through my awakening process, I’m not afraid anymore and when that fear shows up again for it still does when I’m sick or endure a new pain in my body, I ask myself what I fear exactly and consciously remember that the worse that could happen is for me to die and I am ok with that, though not willing to for now. It makes the fear go away instantly.
I have no doubt you’ll find peace on your path for you’re already walking towards it, knowing that you need a change of scenery to fully heal your safety issues. Meanwhile, just breathe the fear and the anxieties out, let them past through with love, they’re just ghosts of the past. Lots of love.
Darcy, I so appreciate your vulnerability. It’s taken me over three years after some serious trauma to start feeling safe again. I often wonder if I will ever return to the same mental level of confidence I had pre-trauma.