You tell yourself it shouldn’t still affect you.
You know how old you are. You know you’re not in that house anymore. You know the people in front of you aren’t the people who hurt you.
And yet something happens.
A tone of voice.
A familiar smell.
The sound of footsteps.
A certain look on someone’s face.
Before you’ve even had time to think, something inside you is already there.
People often wonder why this happens.
They try to find the memory that explains it. The one event that started everything. If they could just understand it, maybe the reaction would finally make sense.
But life isn’t lived in one defining moment.
It’s lived in thousands of ordinary ones.
A child doesn’t just grow up in a house. They grow up in hallways and kitchens. Around dinner tables and bedroom doors. In the silence after asking a question. In the feeling of waiting for someone to come home. In all the ordinary moments that slowly teach them what to expect from the world.
Most of those moments don’t seem important by themselves.
Until one day they are.
Over time, people begin saying things that are difficult to explain but somehow feel completely true.
“Part of me is still there.”
Not because they’re broken.
Not because they’ve been permanently divided.
Because there are moments in life that ask more of us than we know how to carry.
Sometimes a part of us keeps standing watch there.
The child couldn’t leave.
So a part stayed.
Not to hold us back.
To help us survive.
Years pass. Life keeps moving. Careers begin. Families grow. People fall in love. They build homes. They laugh. They grieve. They become so much more than what happened to them.
And still, every once in a while, something opens a door.
A part that has been faithfully standing watch steps forward as though no time has passed at all.
Maybe that’s why healing doesn’t always feel like learning something new.
Sometimes it feels more like returning.
Not to relive what happened.
Not to become the person you were before.
But to turn toward the places where parts of you have been waiting.
Some stayed behind because there was no other way to survive.
Some because remembering hurt too much.
Some because they carried feelings you couldn’t bear to feel.
Some because looking back felt impossible.
Maybe that’s why certain places, certain people, or certain moments can still make it feel as though time folded in on itself.
Maybe nothing in you has ever been asking to be fixed.
Maybe some parts have simply been waiting for you to turn toward them.
Maybe there really are little pieces of you everywhere.
Not lost.
Just waiting to be met.
Embracing Shadows, Illuminating Hope,
Chelsey Fjeldheim, LCSW
Empowering Souls on the Path of Healing
Copyright © 2026 Chelsey Fjeldheim, Courage Speaks Counseling
