(Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I have no formal education or degrees—only my own experiences and the insights I’ve gathered along the way.)

Have you ever been injured—physically, I mean—and noticed something strange? You feel an intense pain in one area, and all your focus goes there. Then, once that pain dulls or starts to heal, suddenly you realize… there’s another pain underneath. Maybe it’s in your shoulder, or your back, or a part of your body that you didn’t even notice hurting before.

It turns out, the body often prioritizes the most acute pain first. It’s a protective response. If we had to feel all the pain from multiple injuries at once, it could be overwhelming. So, our system numbs or delays the signals—only revealing other injuries after the worst has been dealt with.

And I’ve come to believe healing from emotional trauma works in exactly the same way.

For many of us, emotional wounds get buried—not because we’re weak or avoidant, but because we simply can’t deal with everything all at once. There are feelings that go underground, quietly waiting, unprocessed and unresolved. Then one day, something big happens—something painful—and suddenly everything comes flooding back.

This recently happened to me.

I experienced something deeply painful. Emotionally traumatic on multiple levels. And every instinct in me screamed to do what I’d done before: bury it and move on. But here’s the problem with that choice—it’s like planting seeds from a rotted fruit. You didn’t eat it in time. You didn’t process it. So those seeds lie dormant, buried in the soil of your soul, just waiting for the right (or wrong) conditions to sprout again. And they do. Sometimes with more pain. Sometimes with new pain.

I mentioned in a previous post the book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol Truman. It’s a title that has stayed with me because it speaks a difficult truth. Avoiding emotional pain doesn’t make it disappear. It just delays its reckoning.

This time, I made a different choice. I faced it.

It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been comfortable. But it’s been full of surprises—good surprises. The healing journey has taken me places I didn’t expect. One of my first steps was tracing things back to gain understanding. That part actually felt good, empowering even. But what I dreaded most was talking about it. Admitting what had happened. Not to strangers, but to the people closest to me.

At first, I kept it to the edges—letting those around me know just the bare facts. Many still don’t know the full story unless they’ve read my blog or listened to my podcast appearances.

Oddly enough, it was in the act of speaking—of naming what had happened—that I found the most healing. And science supports this. It’s called affect labeling: the idea that when we name our emotional experiences, we reduce the intensity of the emotion itself. It’s a kind of emotional exhale. A release.

The first time I said it aloud—well, wrote it—was in an email to my publisher. I admitted that I had been scammed. I was terrified of her judgment. But instead, she responded with compassion and support. That alone started something in me.

Later, I had a chance conversation with a kind business coach who gifted me 20 minutes of her time and encouraged me to reach out to do guest podcast appearances. At first, I resisted. I had so many reasons not to do it. But eventually, I said yes.

And something amazing happened. The more I shared my story—not just the facts but the feelings—the more I healed. And the more I healed, the more I understood myself. My patterns. My buried beliefs. My strength.

And here’s what I learned, above all:

Healing isn’t just about letting go. It’s about letting out.

We all have pain. Some of it we can name. Some of it hasn’t even surfaced yet. But if we give ourselves permission to face it—to speak it, to feel it, to walk through it—it can transform us. Just like the body knows how to heal, given time and care, so does the inner person.

You don’t need a degree or a therapist to start (though both can be helpful). You just need honesty. And the willingness to say, “This hurt me. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.”

I hope that wherever you are on your healing journey, you choose not to bury it. Not again. Not this time.

Because when we face our pain, we don’t just heal—we grow.

Thank you for being part of my journey. If you’d like to hear more of my story or read about the tools I’ve created to help others heal, my books are available on Amazon. And feel free to check out my guest podcast appearances—links are in my bio.