Cracked Open: How Life’s Challenges Brought me Back to my Self (Part 1)
This story is not to shame or blame, but to bring awareness to how trauma, unhealed wounds, pain can be passed down through generations. And although I understand that my parents had the best intentions, I also understand that intentions alone don’t always prevent harm. The pain they carried — often silently — shaped the way they showed love, expressed fear / emotion, and dealt with hardship. I now see how unspoken grief, cultural expectations, and survival mechanisms were passed down, sometimes disguised as protection. This story is part of my healing, and by telling it, I honour the complexity of their journey while choosing to break the cycle for those who come after me.
Have you ever felt completely lost—like life was tearing you apart, only to later realise it was actually pulling you back to yourself?
I have.
This is not a story of blame or regret. This is my truth - the raw, unfiltered journey of everything I’ve endured, the pain that nearly broke me, and the lessons that ultimately saved me. At times, it felt like life was working against me. But now, I see it was all guiding me home - to a deeper understanding of who I truly am.
I believe we are all here for one reason: to remember what we have forgotten. To wake up to the truth of who we are. And while our paths may look different, I know that in some way, we are all walking each other home.
If you’ve ever felt alone in your struggles, if you’ve ever questioned your place in this world - this story is for you. Because I know now, more than ever, that none of us are truly separate. We are connected in ways the mind often forgets but the heart always knows.
So, I invite you into my story. Not just to read it - but to feel it. Because maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a piece of yourself in these words.
Every story has a beginning, and mine starts in a little Welsh village in north Wales.
Just a few miles from the tourist town of Llangollen, I grew up in a home filled with both love and chaos - the second eldest of five siblings in a household that was never short of noise, laughter, and the occasional sibling rivalry. My parents have been together for as long as I can remember, and even now, through life’s many ups and downs, they remain by each other’s side.
I still live in the very same childhood home, though life within its walls has changed. My dad now cares for my mum, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a reality none of us could have fully prepared for. It’s a heartbreaking shift - watching the person who once took care of me slowly fade into someone who needs my care in return.
With four siblings close in age, our home has always been full - sometimes too full. Growing up, there was little space for solitude or deep reflection, which is why now, more than ever, I treasure the places that give me room to just be. My studio space is my sanctuary, a place where I can retreat into my own energy, and my little camper van has become an escape - a cozy little space where I can explore both the world around me and the depths of who I am.
And then, there is Nature.
Nature has been my quiet companion through it all. In my happiest moments, it has amplified my joy, and in my darkest times, it has held me - offering comfort, safety, and a kind of healing that words very often fail to express.
This is where my story begins. Not just in a house or a village, but in the spaces that have shaped me, the people who have stood beside me, and the quiet places where I have slowly uncovered who I truly am.
Growing up in a house full of siblings was anything but quiet, but for me, it often felt lonely in ways I struggled to put into words.
There were moments of joy, of course - memories that still bring a smile to my face - but beneath it all, I carried a weight I didn’t fully understand at the time. Deep down, I often felt invisible, unheard, and profoundly unwanted. It wasn’t just a fleeting feeling; it was something that settled deep within me, shaping the way I saw myself and my place in the world.
I know my parents did the best they could with what they knew. I don’t believe they set out to hurt me or my siblings intentionally. But understanding their limitations doesn’t erase the pain I felt - it doesn’t rewrite the past or undo the emotional wounds that lingered long after childhood.
As Gabor Mate put it “love isn’t enough.”
Love is essential but it needs to be expressed through attunement, safety, security, unconditional acceptance, permission to feel, healthy attachment, guidance and boundaries. Around 90% of us grew up in dysfunctional homes, where we were exposed to long term stress. And as a result we end up more dysregulated and less resilient to stress later in life, with an array of physical, emotional and mental difficulties.
Our parents can have good intentions and love us fiercely, yet still be wildly dysfunctional. And sometimes we may not realise this for a long while after our childhood years because dysfunction was or is our “normal.”
Some memories are ingrained so deeply into me that no amount of time can erase them. I remember my mum retelling us stories of her pregnancies, casually mentioning how my dad would joke that she should “chuck us in the bin.” Even as a child, I knew those words weren’t meant to be taken literally - but that didn’t soften the blow. And as if to drive the point home, my dad would double down, laughing as he told us that without us, he could have had "so much money, a massive house, and multiple Ferraris."
I know he thought it was funny. But to a child yearning for love and reassurance, those words weren’t a joke - they were confirmation of what I had feared all along. That I was a burden. That I was never truly wanted.
Words have power. Even the ones spoken in passing, the ones meant to be harmless, the ones wrapped in laughter. And those words, spoken again and again, shaped me in ways I wouldn’t fully understand until much later.
The first time I remember feeling abandoned, I was only three years old.
It happened on what should have been a normal, ordinary day - our school photo day at playgroup. I remember standing there, watching as my mum placed my two siblings together for a picture, then turned to position me on my own. A small, seemingly insignificant decision you might think. But to me, it felt like a quiet confirmation of something much bigger: You don’t belong. You dont matter.
I remember the ache in my chest, the weight of isolation settling in even at that young age. I wanted her to see me - not just look at me, but really see me with her full presence. To just notice the sadness in my eyes, to sense the loneliness lingering beneath the surface. But she didn’t. Instead, she simply told me to smile. The woman behind the camera repeated the same instruction. “Smile for the picture.” But inside, I just wanted to disappear.
That photo still exists. And when I look at it, I see more than just a little girl. I see a child carrying emotions too big for her to understand, a child who had no caregiver to soothe them and show them a way to process the overwhelming feelings of rejection and loneliness. That moment didn’t just pass - it stayed, freezing inside me, lodging itself deep into my nervous system.
My young brain, unable to understand or cope, did what it had to do to protect me: it shut down. This became my survival pattern growing up. Anytime I felt unsafe (almost always, unless I was on my own) - whether emotionally or physically - I would go into a dorsal vagal shutdown state known as the freeze response. My body would go numb, my mind would go blank, and sometimes even if someone simply looked at me and said my name, I could barely string a sentence together.
I didn’t understand it back then. I only knew that something about me felt wrong. That I was somehow broken — (common feelings when in a freeze response leading to the development of a shame based identity) And that belief only deepened as the years went on - reinforced by every moment I was shamed, blamed, rejected, or misunderstood simply for feeling the way I felt.
Bessel van der Kolk once said, “Trauma is when we are not seen and known.”
As children, we see our parents as gods - omniscient, flawless and the ultimate authority on what is right and wrong. Their words don’t just shape our world; they define it. If they say you’re bad, selfish, or unworthy, then it must be true. If they withhold love, then surely, you must not deserve it.
This was the reality I lived in.
As a child, we will always take the perspective of our caregivers, because we need to feel aligned with them to feel safe. Because if we don’t, it feels like a threat to our survival as we solely rely on our caregivers to look after us.
Unlike my siblings, I felt the weight of my parents' disapproval in a way that seemed uniquely heavy. It was as if I was marked, singled out, the one who always carried the blame. If something went missing - food, money, anything - it was immediately assumed that I had stolen it. I became “the selfish one,” “the sneaky one,” “the deceitful one.” If one of my siblings was upset, the conclusion was always the same: It must be Darcia’s fault. She’s the nasty, bullying one.
Over time, these labels weren’t just things they said to me - they became things I believed about me. I absorbed their judgments until they felt like an undeniable truth buried deep inside my bones. These statements became a part of the shame based identity that I internalised within myself at a very young age. I carried a constant, debilitating shame, convinced that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something broken at my core that made me unworthy of love.
But even as I internalised their words, somewhere deep inside, a part of me resisted. A quiet, subtle voice whispered that this wasn’t the whole truth. That there was more to my story than the role I had been forced to play.
It wasn’t until years later, through talk therapy, body based work, somatic healing, meditation, and deep self-exploration, that I began to understand: my parents weren’t all-knowing gods. They were deeply wounded people, carrying unprocessed traumas of their own. And because they hadn’t done the work to heal, they unconsciously - and at times, consciously - projected their pain and trauma onto us. Also known as generational / ancestral / developmental trauma.
I see that now. But back then, all I saw was the blame. ALL I felt was the shame. And all I wanted was to be loved in the way I had always deeply longed for.
There were moments when I felt like I was drowning in a storm I couldn’t escape - trapped in a cycle of confusion, self-doubt, and unbearable pain. The weight of everything I had suppressed for so long felt suffocating, pressing down on me until I questioned whether I even wanted to exist at all. I longed for someone – anyone - to truly see me, to hold space for the chaos inside me, to tell me that I wasn’t alone and that I mattered. But time and time again, I was met with abandonment and rejection. I felt like no one was there and no one truly cared.
So, I learned to wear a mask. I adapted who I was to survive. I carried my pain quietly, burying it so deep inside that even I began to forget it was there. But pain, I’ve learnt, has a way of demanding to be felt, and no matter how hard I tried to outrun it, it always found me.
And yet - somewhere deep within me, beneath all the wounds and the heartache, there was a small but undeniable knowing: This is happening for me. This is shaping me into the person I am meant to become. This is a part of my purpose.
And now, here I stand. Not as someone untouched by pain, but as someone transformed by it. Every wound, every dark moment, every traumatic situation has become a stepping stone leading me toward something greater. Towards healing and towards purpose. What once felt like pure suffering has now become my fuel, my fire - igniting a passion within me to help others navigate their own darkness, to guide them toward healing, and to remind them that they are never truly alone.
I share my story not just to release what I’ve carried, but to remind you - you are not alone in your pain.
I now understand that healing isn’t just about me - it’s about us. It’s a collective journey, one that binds us together in our shared struggles, in our longing for wholeness and authenticity. And when we finally embrace our pain instead of running from it, we unlock its hidden gift: the power to heal not just ourselves, but each other.
Because pain, when met with love and understanding, doesn’t have to be the end of our story.
It can be the beginning of something beautiful.
And because maybe - just maybe - our pain was never meant to break us.
Maybe it was meant to set us free.
“Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
~ Rumi