Reclaiming Me

Epigraph This book is a reckoning. A reclamation. A remembering of every part of me I had to abandon to survive. This is my journey, through pain, awakening, soul retrieval, and the radical act of coming back home to myself. It is a story of post-surgical PTSD, but it is also about the invisible wounds we carry as humans, as souls, as seekers. It traces the way pain settles into our cells, and how we begin to lose pieces of ourselves without even noticing. It reminds us that trauma leaves marks even when the skin remains untouched. How pain gets layered, surgery after surgery, heartbreak after heartbreak. And how sometimes, it's not one big thing that breaks us, but the last, smallest thing on top of everything else, that we break too. But this book isn’t just about breaking. It’s about returning. Returning to my body. Returning to my truth. Returning to the sacred knowing that healing isn’t linear, but it is possible. This is my offering. To the hearts who’ve been silenced by pain. To the ones who’ve smiled through surgeries and swallowed their grief. To the souls who feel broken beyond repair. If you’ve ever felt broken, unseen, or afraid that your pain will never make sense…you’re not alone. However, as I see it now, you were never lost, just separated from yourself. And you are not beyond healing. This is my story, a journey through pain, trauma, and the deep unravelling of everything I once thought I was. But woven through it is a deeper return, a remembering of the soul that existed long before the world touched me. This is not just a memoir. It is a map. A sacred one. Each chapter an invitation to uncover the parts of yourself that were left behind. To trace your trauma, not to relive it, but to retrieve yourself from it. To grieve, to remember, to reclaim. To sit with your body like a temple and ask it: "What have you held for me all this time?" This is not simply a book about medical PTSD. It is an invitation into the deeper landscape of trauma, how the body remembers, where the soul splits, and how we learn to inhabit our own life again. It is a remembering of the soul you were before the world placed its fingerprints upon you. It is written for the souls who have been broken, the ones who have watched their bodies become something unfamiliar, who have felt the weight of hands that did not hold them with care, and those still learning how to breathe again. It's for the ones who've cried into pillows after being dismissed, who have had to fight to be believed, who survived the surgery, the diagnosis, the fear, the loss, and are still here. Inside these pages, I share a raw, unfiltered truth of my journey, from the surgeries that left me permanently scarred, to the intimate betrayals that shattered my trust, to the deep spiritual healing that has allowed me to reclaim my body, my power, and my life. I will take you through the layers of trauma, the moments of despair, the awakenings that changed everything, and the practical tools that helped me rise again. Some of these pages will be painful to read. Some will challenge the way you think about healing. But all of it is real. Because healing is not a single moment of transformation. It is not linear, not easy, not always light-filled, but it is possible. It is sacred. It is a lifelong commitment to yourself, a gentle returning, again and again, to your own truth. And my deepest hope is that, by the time you reach the final page, you will see that no matter where you are in your journey, you are not broken. Because even in the darkest nights, even when the path feels lost, there is always a way back. And this book, this story, is proof. You are becoming. You. Are. Still. Here. And that, is enough. This is where my story begins, in the moment everything I thought I'd healed came undone. The reckoning didn't arrive as an insight or awakening. It began with a fall. Chapter One The Fall That Shattered Everything It is strange, the thing that finally breaks you. Because it is never just that one thing. It is everything that came before it, waiting to be felt. At the time, I thought I was healing. I had only just found my way back to my husband after a painful separation, a rupture triggered by online betrayal. I was planning my dad’s 90th birthday with my family, pouring my heart into making it perfect. But the pressure was building, the expectations, the tension, the unspoken emotions that always seemed to rise when my family gathered. I wanted it to be beautiful for him, to make up for all the years I had felt I had let people down due to my surgeries. But underneath the organising and smiling, I was already unravelling. My body was tired. My nervous system was threadbare. I did not know it then, but I was standing on the edge of collapse. And then, I rolled my ankle. Torn tendons. A simple injury. But my body knew. It was too much. That was the moment I truly broke. The physical pain was awful, yes. But it was the emotional flood that scared me the most. I could not stop crying. I could not catch my breath. My reactions did not make sense, for something so small. But something deeper had been triggered. I started to not recognise myself, and that is when I knew something deeper was happening. It was not just physical; the emotional unravelling told me that something deeper was happening. I was coming out of one of the hardest years of my life, the slow, painful recovery from rectal removal. Healing was not linear. It was brutal, intimate. And it often left me gasping for air.