Chloe Pye

The woman i became: learning to live beyond survival

For most of my life, mental health has been something I’ve carried quietly. Not because it wasn’t heavy, but because for a very long time, I didn’t know how to put the weight of it into words. My story isn’t one of a perfect childhood, an easy life, or a straight path from brokenness to healing. It is a story of intergenerational trauma, survival, grief, resilience and learning how to build a life that feels like mine. I inherited wounds that I didn’t create. Trauma can travel through generations in ways we don’t always understand. Sometimes it comes through the things our families experienced, the things they were never able to heal from, the patterns they unknowingly passed down, and the things that were never spoken about. I grew up carrying pieces of pain that existed long before I ever had the chance to understand them. And then life added its own chapters. Eighteen years of surviving I survived 18 years of domestic violence. Eighteen years is a long time to live in survival mode. It changes the way you see yourself. It changes the way you see the world. It teaches your nervous system to constantly search for danger, even when danger is no longer standing in front of you. There were moments when I lost pieces of myself just trying to make it through another day. And eventually, the accumulated weight of trauma became more than I knew how to carry. I have survived three suicide attempts. Those words are incredibly difficult to write, but they are part of my story. I don't share them for sympathy. I share them because surviving isn't always the beautiful, inspirational moment people imagine it to be. Sometimes survival is messy. Sometimes it's waking up and having absolutely no idea how you're going to keep going. Sometimes it's simply making it through one more night. But I did. I’m still here. 🌻 Living with what survival left behind. Today, I live with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). It isn't something I can simply switch off. There isn't a magic day where everything I've experienced disappears and my brain suddenly forgets what it learned to do to keep me safe. But I'm learning. I'm learning what my triggers are. I'm learning why certain things can feel enormous when someone else might barely notice them. I'm learning that sometimes my body reacts to something before my mind has even worked out why. I'm learning how to regulate myself, how to recognise when I'm overwhelmed, how to create safety within myself, and how to remind myself that I am no longer living in the chapters that hurt me. Healing, I've discovered, isn't necessarily about becoming the person I was before the trauma. Maybe it's about becoming someone new. Someone who knows what she survived. Someone who understands herself a little more. Someone who can finally say: “What happened to me is part of my story, but it doesn't get to write the ending.” And then there is ADHD As though trauma wasn't enough to navigate, I also live with ADHD. ADHD isn't simply being distracted or forgetting where you put your keys. For me, it can mean an incredibly busy mind, emotional intensity, impulsivity, overwhelm and struggling with things that seem effortless for other people. And then there is rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), that intense emotional response to perceived rejection, criticism or the possibility of being unwanted. When you've spent years learning to question whether you're safe, whether you're enough, whether someone is going to hurt you or leave you, those emotions can become incredibly complicated. Sometimes my brain doesn't whisper. It screams.🤯 And I've had to learn that not every thought deserves to be believed simply because it feels real. That's one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn. Grief has its own place in my story. I've also lost people I love to suicide. Too many. And far too young. There is something uniquely painful about losing someone to suicide. You don't just grieve their absence. You grieve the possibility of what their life could have become. You replay conversations. You wonder what you could have said. You wish you could go back and somehow make the world feel lighter for them. Their deaths have changed me. They have made me painfully aware of how invisible someone's suffering can be. They have made me more determined to speak openly about mental health. Because I know what it is like to smile while falling apart. I know what it is like to tell someone you're okay when you're anything but. And I know how important it can be for somebody to simply sit beside you and remind you: “You don't have to carry this alone.” But I am more than what happened to me. For years, I thought surviving meant simply staying alive. Now I understand that survival is only the beginning. I want to live. Not just exist. Not just get through the day. Not just function. LIVE! I want laughter that comes from my stomach. Music turned up too loud. Adventures. Creativity. Love. Messy moments. Big dreams. Little moments that nobody else would understand the importance of. I want to continue becoming the woman that trauma once convinced me I could never be. I still have hard days. I still have moments when the past reaches into the present. I still have things I'm learning to understand about myself. But I am learning that healing doesn't require me to pretend those things never happened. I can acknowledge the darkness without living inside it. I can carry my scars without allowing them to define my worth. I can grieve the people I've lost without surrendering my own future. And I can be proud of the woman who kept getting back up when life gave her every reason to stay down. This is me. I am not a collection of diagnoses. I am not my trauma. I am not the woman who was hurt. I am not the three times I almost didn't make it. I am not the eighteen years I spent surviving violence. I am not the grief I've carried. I am not every thought my ADHD throws at me. I am the woman who survived all of it. And these days, I'm doing something far more courageous than surviving. I'm learning how to live. One day at a time. One lesson at a time. One breath at a time. And maybe that is what healing really looks like, not becoming untouched by everything I've lived through, but learning that even with the scars, I am still worthy of a beautiful life. 🌻💜 Share