Remembering What the Body Always Knew

The work I do with women is work I have done and continue to do for myself.

Not because I knew I needed to heal.
For a long time, I didn’t.

Living with aphantasia, I didn’t have images or memories rise the way others describe. I thought I had moved on. I believed I was functional, capable, resilient.

I didn’t realise that healing doesn’t always announce itself as pain sometimes it hides in adaptation.

A few months ago, I sat in a session with another facilitator in my profession. That part matters. We need to practise what we preach. And it is a gift that within this work, we have community people who can hold us when we are no longer meant to hold everything alone.

The session was using Emotion Code a form of kinesiology that works by tapping into the subconscious, into what the body remembers even when the mind has learnt to survive by forgetting.

When the facilitator named the root belief, I felt confused.

Abandonment.

It wasn’t a word I would ever have chosen for myself.
It didn’t feel like my story.

And yet, from that moment, things began to drop in not as images, but as truths. Understandings my 16-year-old nervous system never had the capacity to hold. Pieces of my life rearranged themselves in a way that finally made sense.

I began to see how deeply this belief had shaped me.

I had spent my life over-compensating with my sister, who was born into significant trauma. I carried an unspoken sense that I owed her that I was somehow responsible for her pain and suffering. I showed up endlessly, silenced my own needs, absorbed blame and hurt, believing that this was love.

We were very different children. She was born from trauma and carried that weight. I understood parts of that, but not the whole picture.

When “abandonment” was named, something clicked for the first time.

My brother grew up without me.
My sister resented me.

They were told a story that I had left them. That I was the problem. Even my aunt later confirmed what had been said: my mother painted me as difficult, as trouble.

I now see that my mother, in her own unresolved trauma, shame, and survival, redirected what she could not face. Not intentionally malicious — but deeply harmful. She did not see the cost.

I did not leave home at 16 because I chose to.

I let that story become the narrative, because believing I chose safety felt safer than remembering the truth. I was grateful to leave, yes — but it was never my decision.

And now, I remember.

In my twenties, my uncle finally told me that my leaving had nothing to do with the sexual abuse I endured as a child — nor the ongoing trauma that followed.

They had no idea.

I was sent interstate at 16 because I was told my relatives wanted me.

What I now know is this:
My mother told the family I was a bad child.
That I needed help.

What was never spoken was that I knew about her infidelity while my stepfather was at work. That she secretly allowed the man who sexually abused me to enter our home while we were out. That I caught her out.

What many people don’t know is that I was removed by child services. Someone who cared for me reported her. There was court. The perpetrator was let off. A restraining order was put in place.

He respected it , until she sought him out again.

The rest of that story is for another time.

My mother involved family so she wouldn’t be exposed and so I couldn’t call her out.

My siblings learned to believe I deserted them.

Even I began to believe it.

That I chose safety over family.

But I remember now.

The harm.
The pain.
The loss.

And most importantly the truth.

I share this not for sympathy, but for integration.

Because when the body is finally allowed to speak, what was once confusion becomes clarity. What was once shame becomes context. And what was once held in silence can finally be processed and released.

This is why I do this work.
This is why I believe it is essential.

Not to relive the past, but to reclaim ourselves from the stories we were never meant to carry.