I want to tell you something I learned in therapy this week that I was not expecting.
At 47 years old, I realized I am afraid of adults.
Not strangers in the dark. Not crowds or dangerous situations. Adults. Regular, everyday adults. And the moment I said it out loud I understood why so much of my life has looked the way it has. Why I have kept my circle small. Why I have cocooned myself in my house. Why asking for help feels almost physically impossible. Why stepping into everything God is calling me to do has felt like walking through fire.
It all traces back to one wound I never fully named until that session.
I never had a safe adult.
What No Safe Adults Taught Me
I did not have a father who protected me. I did not have a mother who shielded me. I grew up without the foundation that children are supposed to have, the kind that tells a child you are covered, you are seen, someone is watching and they will not let anything happen to you.
That foundation was not there.
And then there were the seven women. Seven adult women who found out that children in our circle were being sexually abused. Seven women who had the power to change everything. Seven women who knew and said nothing. Not one of them came to our aid. Not one of them stood between us and the harm being done. All seven of them chose silence.
What that silence communicated to a child's mind was permanent and devastating.
Adults cannot be trusted. Adults will not protect you. You are safer alone.
So I did what any child does when the adults in their world fail them. I stopped trusting. I stopped needing. I stopped depending. I learned to survive inside walls I could control, with a circle so small that very little could get in and hurt me. That was not weakness. That was wisdom for the season I was in.
The problem is that survival strategies do not know when the season has ended.
When Survival Becomes the Prison
Here is where this gets real for me personally and why I believe it may be real for you too.
God has been calling me to build something. A movement. The nonprofit, a platform. A podcast that creates safe spaces for survivors who have nowhere else to take their pain. Journey 2 Free Imc. The Jamaica retreat we have hosted for years for girls who have been sexually assaulted etc.
Every single piece of that calling requires me to do the one thing I taught myself never to do.
Go to adults, talk to adults, ASL adults for help. Be vulnerable in front of adults. Be seen by adults.
And so without ever consciously choosing it, I have been sabotaging my own calling. Not out of laziness. Not out of disobedience. But out of a wound that I never fully understood because I had never fully named it.
I want to ask you something and I want you to sit with it honestly.
Where are you hiding?
Maybe it is not adults specifically for you. Maybe it is authority figures. Maybe it is groups of people. Maybe it is the moment someone asks you to speak up or step forward or be seen. Maybe you have been telling yourself you are an introvert, or you are just private, or you are not ready yet.
What if the walls you have built around yourself are not personality traits? What if they are protection strategies? Survival mechanisms your younger self built to keep you safe in a world that was not safe?
What if the thing you have been calling your personality is actually your wound?
This is not just my story. For many survivors, especially those of us from Caribbean households and diaspora communities, growing up without safe adults is not the exception. It is the pattern. A mother who was physically present but emotionally unavailable. A father who was in the house but whose words cut deeper than his absence ever could have. A community that protected its reputation over its children. Adults who knew and said nothing because that is just how things were done. That silence has a culture behind it. And it has a violence behind it too. It has produced generations of adults who learned early that being close to people means being in danger. And so we learn to survive alone.
The Revelation and the Shift
Here is what I know today that I did not fully know before this session.
I did not have a choice as a child. I did not get to pick who was around me. I did not get to vet the adults I was placed in the care of. I was a child and they failed me and that was not my fault and I have been carrying the weight of their failure as if it were my own for four decades.
But, I am not a child anymore.
I am a grown woman with agency and discernment and the Holy Spirit. I have the ability now that I never had then to choose. To vet. To be selective about who gets access to me. That is not the same as the powerlessness I experienced as a little girl.
And here is the shift.
Little Larissa needed a safe adult and never got one. She has one now. She has me. I am her safe adult. I am the one who shows up for her. I am the one who says I've got you. I see you. You don't have to lead anymore. I'm taking it from here.
That is not bypassing the pain. I am still in therapy. The wound is still real. But that is me stepping into the fullness of who God made me to be and choosing to move forward anyway.
2 Timothy 1:7 says for God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. The fear I carry is not from God. The power, the love, the sound mind, those are mine. Those are available. And that is what I am choosing to walk in.
Proverbs 3:5 through 6 - says trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight. I am not doing this alone. I am doing this with God leading, making the path straight even when I cannot see where I am going.
Three Things I Am Committing to Starting Today
I did not want to just sit in the revelation. I wanted to move. And I want to give you something to move with.
Number one: Presence. When I am with people I am going to actually be there. Not performing. Not scanning for danger. Not managing everything in the room. Just present. Looking at them. Listening. Being in the space.
Number two: Naming the discomfort without fighting it. When fear rises, and it will, I am not going to run from it or push it down or distract myself. I am going to say out loud or internally, I am uncomfortable right now and I am still safe. I am still choosing to be here. That is me talking to my nervous system. That is me rewiring the response.
Number three: One small choice every day to be visible. Not the whole mountain. Not all the funding conversations at once. Just one small moment where I choose to show up instead of hide. That is the practice.
And here is the declaration I wrote for myself. I want you to write it down too if it speaks to you.
I am 47 and I am taking it from here. Little Larissa is safe with me now. Today I practice presence. I am choosing to name my discomforts without fighting them and to make one small choice to be visible. I am uncomfortable and I am safe. I can do this.
Write your version of that. Put your name in it. Put your age in it. Read it every morning for the next two weeks and watch what shifts.
You Do Not Have to Do This Alone
Maybe you came to this post because something in the title recognized you. Maybe you have been hiding too. Maybe you have been telling yourself it is just who you are when really it is what happened to you.
The walls are not permanent if you choose them not to be.
You survived what happened to you. That took everything you had. Now it is time to survive the healing too. And the most beautiful thing about that is you do not have to do it alone.
If this post brought something up for you, go listen to the full episode of the Awaken to Purpose Podcast. The link is below. And if you are in a place where you need support, please reach out to a licensed therapist or counselor. The work we do here is real but it is not a substitute for professional help.
If you are in crisis please reach out
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
Jamaica Child Protection and Family Services Agency: 1-888-776-8328
Reassign the shame. It was never yours to carry.
Jamaica Child Protection and Family Services Agency: 1-888-776-8328
Listen to the full episode here: (https://youtu.be/ugZS1hVdSiE?si=a8_y4WBo6lf8G-wf)
Learn more at journey2free.com
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