Part 2: From Rock Bottom to Surrender

Because rock bottom isn't an ending...it's an invitation from God to release the version of you that was built from survival, not truth.

I would spend most of my 20s spiraling out of control.

Running from pain, chasing validation, numbing what I didn’t know how to talk about.

The drinks, the drama, the detours… I was in survival mode without even realizing it.

And then… toward the end of my 20s, everything shifted.

I got pregnant with my son when I was 29. (That number, by the way? It plays a huge role in my story and still shows up for me in the most divine ways.)

I had him when I was 30. That sweet boy cracked something open in me. He was light. He was purpose. He was mine. But that doesn’t mean it was all peaceful and magical.

Because the truth is, my emotional state during that pregnancy was rocky as hell. I was excited, yes. But I was also exhausted. Confused. Numb in some places, and overly reactive in others. I was still carrying the weight of my past. The unprocessed trauma. The unresolved guilt. And pregnancy didn’t erase any of that, it magnified it.

I was trying to hold it all together while still falling apart inside.

And on top of it? My (then) 12-year-old daughter? Pissed. AF. She was used to being the only child—and honestly, I get it. Her world had revolved around us, and our world revolved around her, and now it was shifting. Fast. She didn’t ask for a sibling and she sure as hell was NOT OKAY with having a little brother. She didn’t ask for me to be pregnant and emotionally overwhelmed. She didn’t ask to watch her mom try to love a man and build a new life while still figuring out how to love herself. And yet, she stuck with me. Even through the eye rolls and slammed doors and long silences, she stayed. That girl has always had a fire in her, a fierce loyalty underneath the frustration. And while I didn’t always get it right with her (hell, I got a lot wrong), I see now how much strength it took for her to navigate all that change. To keep showing up as my daughter while I was still learning how to show up as her mom.

She didn’t just witness my evolution, she was part of it. And I’ll forever be grateful for that.

The relationship I had with my son’s dad, let’s call him “R," was...

WHEW!

Fun.

Exciting.

Magical.

And also… intense, toxic, and chaotic as hell. It was passionate and painful all at once. We were mirrors for each other’s deepest wounds and it showed. We loved hard. We fought harder. It was the kind of relationship that forces you to grow, whether you’re ready or not. We started going to church together. And slowly, we began to feel something shift. It felt like peace was trying to find its way in…like maybe, just maybe, we could rewrite the story.

But peace doesn’t always stick when you’ve never truly known how to hold it. Life would happen. Triggers would flare.

We’d drift from church. Not because we stopped believing, but because we hadn’t built the inner foundation to carry the healing we were searching for. So the cycle continued. Better. Worse. Better again. Up. Down. Inside out. A whole damn emotional rollercoaster. And then one day…

The rollercoaster abruptly stopped.

Not because one of us stepped off.

But because God pulled R off.

After ten years of chaos, healing, love, dysfunction, laughter, breakdowns, and breakthroughs...

R was gone.

Just… gone.

And what broke me the most wasn’t just losing R.

It was watching my kids lose him. My son and R were inseparable.

They did everything together. They went everywhere together. He was R’s mini-me through and through—same smile, same stubbornness, same big ol’ heart.

Their bond was soul-deep, written into both of their DNA. God, he was such a good dad!

And my daughter? Her connection with him was just as undeniable. Even when R and I were rocky, she still confided in him like he was her biological dad. Because in both of their hearts, he was. He showed up for her in ways no one else had. He saw her, accepted her, loved her.

When he died, their worlds shattered. My son was only 6. My daughter, 18, had just moved away to college, an hour from home.

And me? Well I barely knew my head from my ass.

I honestly don’t remember much from that first year. It's mostly a blur.

I was floating through life in a fog so thick it felt like I was sleepwalking through my own body.

But what I do remember is this:

I would never be the same.

None of us would.

Grief makes people do wild things.

Sometimes ugly things.

Sometimes unforgivable things.

It twists reality. It distorts judgment.

And it leaves people scrambling to find someone—anyone—to blame for the pain they don’t know how to hold.

And unfortunately…for a lot of people in our lives then…

I became that person.

R’s family, who had known and loved our son and watched R love and care for our son so effortlessly and lovingly, stood in front of a courtroom and said they didn’t believe R was his biological father.

Let that sink in.

A child they held. A child they celebrated birthdays with. A child R claimed, loved, protected, and raised. Suddenly, they didn’t believe he was R’s son…like....

What the actual fuck?

I know they were grieving too.

I know their world had just been rocked.

But that kind of accusation? That wasn’t grief. That was cruelty. And what made it worse? R and I had tried for over a year to get pregnant. This child wasn’t some “maybe.” He was wanted. He was ours. He was our prayer in physical form.

But apparently…hurting me gave them something to hold on to in their pain. It was easier to make me the villain than face the gaping hole that R left behind.

And so I did what they wanted me to do…

I shrank myself again and gave into their bullshit.

I ordered and paid for the DNA test. I used R’s mother’s DNA to prove what I already knew.

And after I handed them that proof?

Still nothing changed. No apology. No ownership. No welcome back into the family. Just silence. Cold. Dismissive. Wounding.

My son didn’t know why we had to swab his cheek. I told him it was a COVID test. Because how do you explain to a six-year-old that the people who once called him family, now questioned if he even belonged? It broke something in me I didn’t even know was still holding on.

The grief. The betrayal. The pressure to stay strong for my kids. The complete erasure of the life I thought we were building. I didn’t have tools. I didn’t have language. I didn’t have a nervous system that could regulate the chaos inside of me.

So I did what I’d always done when it got too loud in my head—I numbed it.

I drank.

And drank.

And drank.

Not because I didn’t love my kids. Not because I wanted to die. But because I didn’t know how to live in this version of reality. The one where R was gone. Where my daughter was broken. Where my son was confused and grieving. And where I was the villain in a story I didn’t ask to be written into.

I spiraled into a place so dark, so hollow, that I convinced myself the only way out of the pain was to not wake up at all.

I didn’t write a note.

I didn’t announce it.

I didn’t make a scene.

I just… gave up. Quietly. Internally. With a bottle in one hand and a thousand unanswered prayers in the other.

I slipped into silence.

I wasn’t planning a dramatic exit.

I didn’t want attention. I just… didn’t want to exist in this pain anymore.

And then—headlights.

A car came flying into my driveway. Fast. Unannounced. Reckless.

For a second, I thought someone was coming to confront me. Maybe kick my ass. Maybe arrest me. Maybe punish me for something I couldn’t even name.

But instead…God showed up.

In the form of R’s and I’s pastor (D) and wife (J).To this day, I still don’t know how they knew. I don’t remember calling them. I don’t think anyone else did either. But there they were. Right when I was in the final minutes of what I genuinely believed would be my last night on this earth.

They didn’t bring a sermon.

They didn’t quote scripture or tell me to “just have faith.”

They didn’t shame me for being drunk.

Or messy.

Or ugly in my pain.

They sat with me. They held me. And they held my pain like it was theirs. Their presence… their stillness… their refusal to look away from the wreckage of me—that saved my life. It didn’t fix everything. It didn’t instantly snap me back into joy. But it cracked something open. A crack big enough for the smallest sliver of light to get in.

I surrendered—finally.

Let Jesus take the wheel. For real this time.

I remember praying...begging...for His love to wrap around me so tightly that I wouldn’t have to feel anything. Not the grief. Not the shame. Not the ache of everything I had lost.

I knew the drinking was killing me.

Not just physically.

But spiritually.

Emotionally.

Energetically.

It was pulling me further and further from my truth. From my purpose. From God.

And I asked Him, really asked Him, to help me quit.

I didn’t say “take this away.” I said,

“Make it easy. I don’t want to fight with it anymore.”

And while it wasn’t easy, it was simple.

December 26, 2020.

I put down the bottle.

And I haven’t picked it up since.

Looking back… I barely recognize that version of me.

The one who drowned sacred parts of her soul Michelob Ultra and wasn't allowed to take shots at the bar, because "shots made me violent."

The one who wore shame like skin.

Who sobbed silently into pillows at night, wondering if maybe the world would be better without her.

Who convinced herself she was too far gone to ever be found.

I had to un-know her.

Un-meet her.

Un-become her.

I had to bury that broken, bleeding version of me. Not out of hate…but because I was finally ready to resurrect the woman underneath.

The one who still believed in healing.

The one who still had a pulse beneath the pain.

The one God refused to let go.

And in doing so, I started meeting someone else…

A version of me I had buried under all the coping.

All the chaos.

All the conditioning.

That choice...sobriety...was the beginning of everything.

It slingshotted me into a whole new relationship with God.

A whole new understanding of what healing could feel like.

I started to realize that the connection I had always longed for… wasn’t “out there.”

It had been within me the whole time.

Shortly after, I enrolled in Bible college to study Christian Counseling. At the time, I thought I was chasing a credential. Looking back, I see I was chasing connection.

Craving safety.

Searching for truth.

Wanting to understand God, not just learn about Him.

That season cracked open a new kind of awareness. My relationship with God began to evolve...less about rules and religion, and more about intimacy and energy.

It was the beginning of a shift I didn’t even know was happening.

A shift from fundamentalism to faith.

From shame to self-responsibility.

From fear to reverence.

From performance… to presence.

And I didn’t have language for it yet—but I was starting to understand that spirituality wasn’t separate from God. It was how I experienced Him.

While I was still enrolled in Bible College studying Christian Counseling, something inside me started to shift.

My relationship with God was evolving—moving away from rigid rules and religious performance… and toward something deeper. More personal. More spiritual.

I felt myself craving more than just scripture and theology. I wanted to understand people—really understand them. The trauma. The pain. The patterns. Why we do the things we do. Why we sabotage, avoid, attach, shut down, explode, collapse…

So I transferred out of Bible College and into a different university to continue studying psychology.

Not just because I was curious, but because I needed to make sense of the emotional wreckage I had lived through and the patterns I saw repeating in others.

If I’m honest, I also thought I needed the damn credentials.

The degrees. The validation. The official stamp of approval society uses to say, “Okay, now you’re allowed to speak on this.”

So I chased the qualifications. Because that’s what society tells us gives us “authority.” It’s how we’re taught to find our identity and worth.

And to be clear—I don’t discredit those who’ve earned them. That takes commitment and grit and a whole lot of work.

But for me? It became another mask I was chasing.

So I chased that too.

And I was already in that psychology program when R died.

I didn’t consciously choose to leave school. Life just unraveled. Grief swallowed me whole. And everything else faded to black.

But even in that darkness, something had already been awakened. Psychology gave me a lens to start understanding the patterns. To recognize that most “broken” behavior is just pain in disguise. That trauma responses are not character flaws. That healing isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being honest.

And that realization became a breadcrumb on my path back to myself.

Because somewhere between the textbooks and the tears…God started whispering:

"There’s more!"

And little did I know, that remembering would become my life’s work.