STORY ONE: THE WOMAN WHO LEARNED SILENCE TOO EARLY

We all carry injuries we don’t speak about. Some of us have wounds we’ve normalized. Some of us have trauma we never recognized as trauma.
Some of us learned to internalize everything, the pain, the fear, the questions, the shame, until silence became our second skin.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a woman whose story has stayed with me. She gave me permission to share it, not to expose her, but to help someone else recognize themselves. She told me that as a child, a family member molested her. She didn’t have the language for betrayal, she only had the instinct to hide. So, she learned to sit in silence. She learned to shrink. She learned not to make noise, not to take up space. She decided without saying a word that her voice did not matter. And that childhood silence followed her into adulthood. She grew into a woman who avoided confrontation.
Not because she lacked strength, but because she had spent decades surviving by staying quiet.

She lived in her thoughts, in her room, in her inner world trying to make sense of a pain she never felt safe to name. She is 49 years old now. Forty-nine.
And only this year did she say the words out loud: “I think what happened to me still affects me.” And as I listened to her story, I found myself wondering…

How many of us are adults carrying childhood rules we never broke?
How many of us believe silence is safety? How many of us learned to disappear before we ever learned to speak? How many women, men, daughters, sons, leaders, intercessors, mothers, fathers are functioning flawlessly while bleeding internally? This is why healing must become personal.

Because if trauma can shape a life silently for 40 years, then healing must step in loudly. As I looked at her a woman with wisdom in her eyes and wounds in her soul I realized something:

So many of us are living stories we’ve never told. And the telling is part of the healing. This is not just her story. It is the story of many who will read this. It is the story of the quiet child still living inside countless grown adults. And December this final month is inviting us to no longer carry what is destroying us. This month is asking you to stop performing strength and finally feel what you survived.

This month is asking you to acknowledge that some of your behaviors are not “just how you are” they are echoes of how you survived. And God is saying:

“This year, I’m not only healing the adult, I’m rescuing the child within.”

PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT (Between Story #1)

Trauma is not always loud. It does not always scream. Sometimes it sits quietly in the corner of your personality, shaping how you speak, how you love,
how you work, how you protect yourself.

Here’s the truth: Some behaviors are not your personality; they are your survival patterns.

• Avoidance.
• Overthinking.
• Isolation.
• People-pleasing.
• Emotional numbness.

These are not “just you.” They are the unhealed parts of you still trying to feel safe.

But Heaven is whispering in this season: “I’m not just healing your memories. I’m healing the version of you trauma created.”

STORY TWO: THE BOY WHO STOPPED CRYING

He told me he was eight the last time he cried in front of anyone. Eight years old, standing in a small bedroom as his father walked out the front door and didn’t come back. Tears streamed down his face fear, confusion, heartbreak tangled together. But before he could reach his mother, she looked at him with exhaustion in her eyes and said:

“Stop crying. Be a man.” And something in him closed. He learned that emotions were dangerous. He learned that tears were weakness. He learned that vulnerability was a liability. He grew into a man who held everything together: responsible, dependable, strong but emotionally unreachable.

He became the protector, the fixer, the quiet storm no one could read. But last month, at 38 years old, he finally broke down and said words I will never forget:

“I didn’t know healing was allowed for men.” And in that moment, I realized how many boys grew into men with dried tears and silent traumas.

I looked at him and said, “Healing is not gendered. Pain is not gendered. Trauma is not gendered. And God certainly doesn’t divide deliverance by sex.”

This story is not just about him. It is about every man who learned to be strong too early. Every man who became the protector while unprotected. Every man who learned silence as survival. Every man whose tears dried before his healing started.

PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT (Between Story #2)

Men are taught to survive through suppression:

• Don’t cry
• Don’t feel
• Don’t talk
• Don’t break
• Don’t need

But suppression is not healing. It is delayed collapse. Here’s the truth: Emotional neglect in boyhood becomes emotional numbness in manhood.

But God is calling His sons , not just His daughters back into wholeness. He is saying:
“Your softness is not weakness. Your heart deserves safety. Your healing is allowed.”

A Message for Both Stories

These two lives a woman of 49 and a man of 37 tell the same truth through different wounds: The child you were is still shaping the adult you are.
And December is asking you to finally pay attention. God is not just healing memories.
He is healing patterns. He is healing identities. He is healing what silence tried to bury. He is healing the parts of you that had no witness. He is healing the “you” behind the you that people see. Because this month? This final chapter?

It’s Personal.

Reflection Questions

1. Which part of the woman’s or the man’s story felt familiar to you?
2. What childhood rule or survival pattern do you still carry into adulthood?
3. Where in your life have you mistaken trauma for personality?
4. What emotion have you silenced because you were taught it was “too much”?
5. If your younger self could speak today, what would they say they needed?

Take a moment with these. Write. Breathe. Let your heart speak.

 END OF PART ONE

Part Two continues the journey:
Why trauma shapes personality, why healing is urgent, and why December is Heaven’s intervention.