Becoming the Safe Place I Never Found

Photo: Capturing a sacred moment, and a safe space on a beautiful nature trail. Michigan (2024). Copyright SJPhotography

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Becoming the Safe Place I Never Found

For many of us, the world can feel like a place full of sharp edges. Childhood is a time when we should be held and nurtured and instead may encounter chaos, manipulation, or neglect. Safety is a warm cocoon of care and love that can feel like a far-off dream – if we dare dream of it at all. I have spent much of my life searching for safety – for places, for people, for corners of the world where I could rest and simply be. But what I found more often than not was an unkind reality: the world can be lacking in safe places.

There were many moments when I reached out for help only to be met with silence or the backhand of denial. It is a heart-wrenching thing to seek shelter in a terrifying storm and find the doors locked, the windows boarded up, leaving you out in the freezing cold to weather the storm alone. As someone who has lived through the harrowing ordeals of trauma, I know the weight of that isolation, of endlessly searching for safe spaces that don’t seem to exist.

But something happened along my healing journey – a realization that started as a tiny seed and blossomed into something powerful: I can create the safety I never found.

I am not just a survivor of trauma; I am a builder of safe spaces

If the world won’t offer refuge, then I can be that place of respite, and safe haven – for myself, and for others who have walked through similar storms.