🖤 I’m Still Here

A Personal Story of Survival, Chaos, and Choosing to Try Again

I’ve survived some shit.

I don’t even know how many times I’ve whispered to myself that I am still here.

Not shouted it. Not celebrated it. Just... quietly acknowledged it.

I’m still here.

Some days, that’s been the biggest win I could claim.

I’ve survived things I didn’t think I would—things I wasn’t sure I’d ever even talk about out loud. Abuse. Abandonment. Loneliness so dense it felt like another atmosphere wrapped around my body. The kind of trauma that doesn’t just leave scars—it rewires you.

There’s a particular exhaustion that comes with having to stay alive in a world that keeps asking you to function like nothing ever happened. You learn how to wear a mask of capability while your insides are folding in on themselves. You keep parenting. You keep showing up. You keep smiling when you’re supposed to.

And people praise your strength… not knowing it comes from necessity, not ease.

There were days—hell, whole seasons—where I didn’t know how I’d make it through. When getting out of bed felt like trying to swim through cement. When I’d be in the middle of making a grocery list and suddenly find myself crying, not because of any one thing—but because my nervous system had been holding its breath for too long.

I’ve dealt with medical systems that made me feel like a case file instead of a human.
I’ve navigated diagnoses that didn’t come with roadmaps. I’ve been told to “just focus on your goals” by people who didn’t understand that executive function is a privilege, not a given, when you’re carrying trauma in your body.

And through all of it… I kept going. Sometimes gracefully. More often messily. But forward, somehow.

And not because I’m extraordinary. But because I didn’t want to disappear inside the overwhelm. Because I had children. Because I still believed—somewhere underneath all the rubble—that I was allowed to build a life that made sense to me.

That belief became a thread. A lifeline. A reason to find structure—not as a form of control, but as a form of care.

I started to understand that goals aren’t about pressure. They’re about naming what matters. They’re about finding your way through grief and fear and fatigue, and choosing to keep going—gently, intentionally, and with someone walking beside you.

That’s what I am offering now to others. Not performance. Not perfection. But real, grounded support for people who are trying to make a new life after everything they’ve lived through. We all make mistakes, but we cannot live in them.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re too much… or not enough… If you’ve ever felt like you should be farther along… If you’re tired of trying to fix it all by yourself…

I get it. I’ve been there. And you don’t have to keep doing this alone. This work—the coaching, the structure, the space to breathe—it isn’t just a job for me. It’s a form of love. A quiet rebellion against everything that told me I had to stay small or stay silent or stay broken.

I’m still here.

And if you are too, even just barely... Come as you are.

I’ll meet you where you are and we can walk together to a place where you feel safe.

—Dawn