After I left my abusive marriage, I went shopping for toothpaste.

It doesn’t sound like a big deal. But it was the first time in years that even something that small was mine to decide. The brand, the flavor, the price - tiny things, but unfamiliar.

As I stood in the toothpaste aisle at Walmart, looking at hundreds of boxes, and I realized I had no idea what kind of toothpaste I liked.

I stood there, completely overwhelmed by the options in front of me and before I knew it I was crying. Loud, snotty, full-body sobs. Everything came at me all at once. How had I lost so much of me? How was I ever going to move forward?

All the choices, all the permission, all the pain and past and stress. It cracked me wide open.

How Healing Happens

You don’t have to know what you want. That’s the part that surprised me.

I used to believe that healing meant just getting over it. Making the right choices. Knowing exactly what I needed and becoming the kind of person who never doubted it. Because really, there's no reason why I shouldn't be that person, right??

But that’s not how healing works. Especially not for someone that spent years adapting to someone else’s rules.

When you've had to live inside someone else’s preferences, someone else’s moods, someone else’s version of safe, you create patterns of safety and tolerance and we forget what freedom feels like.

The effects of gaslighting and emotional abuse create a loss of trust, not just in the other person, but in ourselves. We forget how to want, or express our needs and desires. And in the space after, even small choices can feel deafening.

Because when you’ve spent years adapting, pleasing, bracing, or surviving, the freedom to choose something for yourself can feel like a threat.

Your mind may freeze. Your chest may tighten. You may hear yourself thinking, “What if I get it wrong?”

That’s your subconscious doing exactly what it was trained to do—keeping you in familiar patterns, even when those patterns no longer fit.

And those patterns run deep. Not just in your thoughts, but in your body. In the part of you that knows how to keep the peace. Stay quiet. Stay small. Stay safe.

Change starts when you do something unfamiliar on purpose… and survive it.