Coming Home to Ourselves After Abuse
"Knowing ourselves is a sacred journey"
Original photograph: Chesterman’s Beach, Tofino, B.C. by B. Littleton
Leaving an abusive relationship is not just a decision. It’s a cellular reorganization. Even the nerve gap junctions of our body must begin to reorient, rewire, and relearn a new rhythm of safety. The shift is both radical and deeply human. It is our version of the caterpillar’s quiet decomposition inside the cocoon, a place where we drop into silence, isolation, and unseen transformation.
And the outcome? It’s astonishing. Some call it spiritual. Others call it religious, quantum, alchemical. But it is also poetic in its unfolding. When the cells of our being begin to align toward health, they reflect back to us an ancient truth: we know, deep down, what we need in order to heal. Trusting our gut, naming the pattern, honoring the inner nudge to say, “this is not love”—this is where healing begins.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
—Cynthia Occelli
Falling apart from love, from betrayal, from loss, offers a rare opening. Within the wreckage of a broken heart lies something precious, something long hidden. What was once buried in shadow becomes available for integration. We start to live more fully, more truthfully.
There’s a saying that when we crack open, divine light can shine into us. I believe that when we crack open, our divine light also shines out—into the world, and then back up into the cosmos. That light, once hidden beneath fear and pain, begins to glow again. It is our offering. It is the healing of the divine self, the remembering of who we’ve always been.
Come find those moments where your soul shines through the cracks, where you glimpse the real you. I call these “Sights of Perfection”—moments where clarity, courage, and grace arrive unexpectedly. These glimpses remind us of our essential nature, of the inner reservoir of strength that lives in the bones and breath. They call us back to belonging.
When we connect to these moments, we begin to trust ourselves again. Interior trust is a quiet but powerful form of resilience. It is foundational for emotional, somatic, psychological, and spiritual healing.
Detoxing from an abusive relationship isn’t only about saying no to pain. It’s also about creating new patterns of beauty, safety, and connection. Dr. Gabor Maté writes:
“The essence of trauma is disconnection from the self. Therefore, the essence of healing is not just uncovering the past, but reconnecting with the self in the present.”
When we begin to live from soul-guided choices rather than trauma-informed reactions, we find it easier to loosen the grip of old protective patterns. We no longer need to contort ourselves to survive.
As Marion Woodman said:
“When we give up perfectionism, it’s as though the soul gets to breathe.”
Even in moments of panic or deep fatigue, your connection to your soul remains. It waits. It watches. And when the time is right, it rises.
“So long as we are not in contact with our own potential, we are vulnerable to being controlled by others. If we do not know ourselves, we cannot stand to our own truth and are, therefore, in constant danger of invasion by others.”
—Marion Woodman
And yet, knowing ourselves is a sacred journey. Dr. Maté reminds us:
“Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection.”
This connection—to body, to breath, to your own sacred intuition—is the medicine. It is how we come home to ourselves. It is how we remember we are whole, even after heartbreak.
Let the shell crack. Let the light in. But also let the light out.
Essay written by Brenda Littleton
Original photograph: Chesterman’s Beach, Tofino, B.C. by B. Littleton
Tin Flea Press c. 2025