My grandmother, brilliant, loving, and profoundly resilient, carried decades of unspoken pain. Years of domestic violence and isolation left her battling severe anxiety and depression. Nicotine and alcohol became both her escape and her undoing. As grandchildren, we gave her love, hope, and the will to keep going but only after she passed did I fully understand just how much she was carrying, and how deeply she needed a safe place to release it.

My mother and I share a similar history of domestic violence, though I was fortunate to leave early and seek support. I live with PTSD, but I also live with the knowing that storytelling, reflection, and intentional rest saved me. Journaling became my lifeline, the space where I could breathe again, process my truth, and slowly reclaim the parts of myself I feared were lost.

My healing taught me something powerful: personal expression is a form of survival. Or as Joyce Meyer once said:

“If you can't learn to control your thoughts, you will never learn how to control your behavior.”

Writing gave me that control. Reflection gave me clarity. Rest gave me life.

And yet, the need for emotional space in my family extended beyond the women. The young men in my family also faced pressure to be strong, silent, and unaffected. Some were ridiculed for enjoying quiet, for having soft hobbies, or simply for being different than the broader family expected. Their desire for solitude was misread as weakness instead of seen as emotional intelligence. Watching them shrink themselves taught me that healing requires community, and expression must be normalized for everyone, not just those society expects to be vulnerable.