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, 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 isn't blame or regret. This is my truth. Raw. Everything I've been through, the pain that nearly broke me, the lessons that saved me. Sometimes it felt like life was working against me. But I see now it was guiding me home. To who I really am.
I believe we're all here for one reason: to remember what we've forgotten. To wake up to the truth of who we are. Our paths may look different, but we're all walking each other home.
If you've ever felt alone in your struggles, if you've questioned your place in this world - this story is for you. Because none of us are truly separate. We're connected in ways the mind forgets but the heart always knows.
So I'm letting you into my story. Not just to read it. To feel it. Maybe you'll recognise yourself in some of this.
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 surrounded by chaos and love all tangled together. I was the second eldest of five kids in a house that was never quiet, always filled with drama and noise. My parents have been together for as long as I can remember, and even now, through everything life has thrown at them, they remain by each other's side.
Life is very different now. I now live in Welshpool with my partner Brad. My Dad now cares for my Mum, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's back in 2021 and cannot walk or talk anymore - a reality none of us were prepared for. It's truly heartbreaking watching someone who once took care of you slowly fade into someone who needs your care instead.
With five kids crammed into not much space, there was always noise, always something happening. That's probably why I crave quiet spaces now more than ever. My studio has become where I go to breathe and reconnect with myself. My little camper van serves as my escape pod, a space where I can just exist without explanation.
And then there's nature, which has been my one constant companion through it all. When I'm happy, it amplifies that joy beyond measure. When I'm falling apart, it holds me with a kind of healing I struggle to put into words.
This is where my story begins - not just in a physical house or village, but in the spaces that shaped me, the people who stood beside me, and the quiet places where I slowly uncovered who I truly am.
Growing up with all those siblings was anything but quiet, but for me it often felt profoundly lonely in ways I couldn't articulate.
There were moments of genuine joy, memories that still bring warmth to my heart. But underneath it all, I carried this heavy weight I didn't understand. Deep down, I felt invisible, unheard, and fundamentally unwanted. It wasn't just a passing feeling - it was something that settled into my bones and shaped how I saw myself in the world.
I know my parents did their best with what they had. They weren't deliberately trying to cause us harm. But understanding their limitations doesn't erase the pain I felt or rewrite the past. It doesn't undo the emotional wounds that have lingered long after my childhood ended.
As Gabor Mate put it: "love isn't enough."
Love is essential, but it needs to be expressed through genuine attunement, safety, security, and unconditional acceptance. It requires permission to feel, healthy attachment, proper guidance and boundaries. Around 90% of us grew up in dysfunctional homes where we were exposed to chronic stress, leaving us more dys-regulated and less resilient later in life, struggling with various physical, emotional and mental difficulties.
Our parents can have the best intentions and love us fiercely, yet still be wildly dysfunctional. Sometimes we don't realise this until years after childhood because that dysfunction became our version of normal.
Some memories are ingrained so deeply within me that they never fade. I remember my mum casually retelling stories of her pregnancies, mentioning how my dad would joke that she should "chuck us in the bin." Even as a child, I understood those words weren't meant literally, but that didn't soften their impact on me. He'd double down with laughter, telling us how without us kids, he could've had so much money, a massive house, multiple Ferraris.
He thought it was all harmless fun. But when you're a desperate child craving love and acceptance, those aren't jokes - they're confirmation of your worst fears. Proof that you're nothing but a burden, that you were never truly wanted in the first place.
Words carry tremendous power, even the casual ones thrown around carelessly, the ones wrapped in laughter and delivered without conscious thought. Repeated over and over, they burrow deep inside you, shaping your sense of self in ways you won't fully understand for years to come.
The first time I remember feeling abandoned, I was only three years old.
It was school photo day at playgroup, what should have been an ordinary moment.
I watched as my mum carefully positioned my two siblings together for their picture, then placed me off to the side on my own. It might seem like a small, insignificant decision, but to my three-year-old mind, it felt monumental. The message was crystal clear: You don't belong with them. You don't matter enough to be included.
I felt this deep ache settle in my chest, a crushing sense of isolation that I had no words for. I desperately wanted her to truly see me - not just glance in my direction, but really notice the sadness in my eyes, the loneliness radiating from every part of me. Instead, she simply told me to smile. The photographer echoed her instruction: "Smile for the picture." But inside, all I wanted was to disappear completely.
That photograph still exists somewhere, and when I look at it now, I see so much more than just a little girl. I see a child carrying emotions far too complex and overwhelming for her young mind to process, a child with no caregiver available to help her understand or soothe those feelings of rejection and abandonment. That moment didn't just pass by - it froze inside me, lodging itself deep within my nervous system where it would remain for decades.
My developing brain, unable to comprehend or cope with such intense emotions, did what it needed to do to protect me - it shut down completely. This became my default survival pattern throughout childhood and beyond. Whenever I felt unsafe, which was almost constantly unless I was completely alone, I would slip into what's called a dorsal vagal shutdown or freeze response. My body would go completely numb, my mind would go blank, and sometimes even the simple act of someone looking at me and saying my name would leave me struggling to form coherent sentences.
I didn't understand what was happening to me back then. All I knew was that something felt fundamentally wrong with who I was, that I was somehow irreparably broken. This belief only deepened with each passing year, reinforced every time I was shamed, blamed, or misunderstood simply for experiencing the emotions I couldn't help but feel.
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 completely. If they tell you you're bad, selfish, or unworthy, then it must be true. If they withhold their love, then surely you must not deserve it.
This was the reality I lived in.
As children, we'll always align ourselves with our caregivers beliefs and views because we need to feel connected to them to feel safe. If we don't, it feels like a direct threat to our survival since we depend on them for everything.
Unlike my siblings, I seemed to carry the weight of my parents' disapproval in ways that felt uniquely crushing. It was like I'd been marked somehow, singled out as the one who always carried the blame. If something went missing - food, money, anything at all - the assumption was immediate: Darcia must have stolen it. I became labeled as "the selfish one," "the sneaky one," "the deceitful one." Whenever one of my siblings got upset, the conclusion was always the same: It must be Darcia's fault. She's the nasty, sneaky bullying one.
Over time, these labels stopped being just things they said to me and became things I believed about myself. I absorbed every harsh judgment until it felt like undeniable truth buried deep in my bones. These became part of a shame-based identity I internalised at such a young age. I carried this constant, debilitating shame, completely convinced there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something broken at my very core that made me unworthy of love.
But even as I internalised all their words, somewhere deep inside, a part of me quietly resisted. There was this subtle voice whispering that this wasn't the complete truth, that there was so much more to my story than the role I'd been forced to play.
It wasn't until years later, through extensive talk therapy, body-based work, somatic healing, meditation, and deep self-exploration, that I finally began to understand something profound: my parents weren't all-knowing gods at all. They were deeply wounded people carrying their own unprocessed traumas. Because they hadn't done the work to heal themselves, they unconsciously - and sometimes very consciously - projected all their pain and trauma onto us. This is what we call generational, ancestral, or developmental trauma.
I can see that clearly now. But back then, all I could see was the constant blame. All I could feel was that overwhelming shame. All I wanted was to be loved in the way I'd always desperately longed for.
There were moments when I felt like I was drowning in a storm I couldn't escape from - completely trapped in this vicious cycle of confusion, self-doubt, and unbearable emotional pain. The weight of everything I'd suppressed for so many years felt absolutely suffocating, pressing down on me until I genuinely questioned whether I even wanted to exist anymore. I longed for someone, anyone, to truly see me for who I was, to hold space for all the chaos swirling inside me, to tell me I wasn't alone and that my life actually mattered. But time and time again, I was met with nothing but abandonment and rejection. It felt like no one was really there, like no one truly cared about my wellbeing.
So I learned to wear a protective mask, adapting who I was just to survive each day. I carried my pain in complete silence, burying it so deep inside myself that even I began to forget it existed. But pain, I've learned through hard experience, has this persistent way of demanding to be felt. No matter how desperately I tried to outrun it, it always managed to find me.
And yet, somewhere deep within me, beneath all those wounds and heartache, there was this small but undeniable knowing: This is all happening for me, not to me. This is actively shaping me into the person I'm meant to become in this lifetime. This is an essential part of my purpose on this earth.
And now, here I stand - not as someone who remained untouched by pain, but as someone who's been completely transformed by it. Every single wound, every dark moment I've endured, every traumatic situation has become a stepping stone leading me toward something infinitely greater. Toward genuine healing and toward my true purpose. What once felt like nothing but pure suffering has now become my fuel, my inner fire - igniting this fierce passion within me to help others navigate their own darkness, to guide them toward their own healing journey, and to remind them they are never, ever truly alone.
I share my story not just to release what I've been carrying all these years, but to remind you of this fundamental truth - you are not alone in your pain & healing is possible for you.
I understand now that healing isn't just about me as an individual - it's about all of us collectively. It's this shared journey that binds us together through our common struggles, through our deep longing for wholeness and authentic living. When we finally find the courage to embrace our pain instead of constantly running from it, we unlock its most precious hidden gift: the profound power to heal not just ourselves, but each other as well.
Because pain, when it's met with genuine love and deep understanding, doesn't have to mark the end of our story.
It can become the beginning of something truly beautiful.
And maybe - just maybe - our pain was never actually meant to break us into pieces.
Maybe it was always meant to set us completely free.
"Don't get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure." - Rumi
“Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
~ Rumi