THE WORK WASN’T DONE

I was 16. He was 24. Thirty-three years later I thought I was free. I wasn’t.

I received an unexpected message last Saturday from someone I hadn’t heard from in over thirty-three years; someone I had spent most of my life trying to forget.

The message shook me to the core.

For the past eight years, I’ve done a tremendous amount of work on myself. In my early forties, I experienced what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening. I pulled myself out of a darkness I had lived in for most of my life: one rooted in shame, unworthiness, and a long pattern of choices that reflected how little I valued myself at the time.

Since then, I’ve grown in ways I once couldn’t have imagined. I’ve forgiven my younger self for the bad choices I made. I also learned to offer myself grace, considering my age and environment at the time.

I’ve gotten to know and love the real me, and I’ve learned how to stand on solid ground. My life isn’t perfect, but it’s honest, it’s stable and I’m happy. I know who I am and now appreciate my unique gifts, and the value I bring to the world.

I didn’t think there was much that could truly shake me anymore, until his message appeared.

The moment I saw his name, my body reacted before my mind could even process what I was looking at. My heart began to race and my hands shake, as a wave of disbelief washed over me. It was from a man I had an inappropriate relationship with when I was sixteen years old.

He was twenty-four at the time. He was married. He was trouble.

I first met him when I was fifteen, during a period in my life when I was already making decisions that, looking back, reflected how lost I really was. I had started dating a twenty-two-year-old man, something I lied to my parents about. I told them he was nineteen. They were very uncomfortable with our age difference and voiced concern but sensed I was entering a rebellious phase and were afraid if they pushed too hard, I might run.

They weren’t wrong. That was a real possibility.

What no one stopped to ask, however, was why I was making these choices in the first place.

Through that relationship, I was introduced to a married couple who were well known in our community, and not for good reasons. They were volatile, aggressive, often intoxicated and were the town bullies. Fights seemed to follow them wherever they went, and their behavior had already drawn the attention of local law enforcement more than once.

Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, I was pulled into their world.

I wasn’t even old enough to drive, yet my boyfriend and I were suddenly going out to restaurants with them, drinking freely, riding around town, and taking fun trips back and forth to San Francisco. I felt a strange sense of excitement being included, as though I had been chosen to be part of something powerful and adult, and I gained a false sense of status by being seen with them.

But beneath it all, I was still just a teenager.

As time went on, the partying escalated. I began drinking heavily and regularly, to the point where I started losing control of my behavior. I did things that didn’t align with who I was, even then, and the line between discomfort and acceptance became increasingly blurred.

Eventually, the relationship with the husband crossed into something sexual.

It wasn’t something I sought out. In fact, I resisted it. I said no more than once. I was scared as hell, but I was pressured, manipulated, and slowly worn down. What began as discomfort turned into confusion, and eventually into a reluctant compliance that I didn’t fully understand at the time.

When I finally gave in, it came with a complicated mix of emotions; fear, excitement, confusion, and a deep knowing that it wasn’t right. That voice never went away, but I didn’t know how to listen to it. I didn’t know how to get out.

I was in over my head, and I had no idea who to turn to.

The situation came to an abrupt end when rumors about the relationship began circulating around town. His wife found out, and her reaction was swift and violent. She confronted me and assaulted me, leaving bruises that I later had to explain away to my parents as nothing more than a silly girl fight.

But it didn’t stop there.

For the next two to three years, I lived in a constant state of fear. She made it her mission to find me, to hurt me, and to humiliate me. She showed up at parties and attacked me again and again. While none of the incidents resulted in serious physical injury, the threat of what could happen was always present. She was unpredictable, and I never knew how far she might go if she caught me alone.

I never went to the police. I didn’t want to appear weak, but the truth is, I didn’t know how to ask for help.

Eventually, I left for college, and with distance came a sense of relief. I had gotten my act together by then and was living a normal, college student life. I never looked back.

I did what many people do. I buried it.

I didn’t talk about it. Not with friends, not with family, not even with my husband of twenty-one years. I carried the shame quietly, believing it was mine to hold. After all, I had made the choice. I participated. I told myself that it was my fault.

It wasn’t until last year during a psilocybin retreat, about thirty-two years after the ending of that relationship, that everything resurfaced.

During the journey, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. What began as tears quickly turned into uncontrollable sobbing and a physical release (movement and shaking), as years of suppressed trauma came rushing to the surface. I was no longer thinking about it, I was feeling it all over again.

Through that experience, something major shifted.

I saw my younger self clearly, with compassion instead of judgment. And I found myself repeating the same words out loud, over and over again: “It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid.”

That realization lifted a weight I had been carrying for decades. My body had been holding onto the trauma all this time, so the energetic release was beyond profound. I left the retreat feeling lighter, freer, and more at peace with my past than I had ever been.

Which is why receiving his message felt so jarring.

The message itself was long, over a thousand words, and difficult to follow. It jumped between vague apologies, attempts at sounding reflective and profound, and deeply unsettling statements. He spoke about violent thoughts, about how he managed his urge to hurt people, and then, in the same breath, made explicit comments about my appearance.

And at the end of it all, he said he would love to hear from me.

After thirty-three years of silence.

Reading it made my skin crawl and my stomach churn.

Not just because of what he said, but because of what hadn’t changed. The tone, the manipulation, the undercurrent of darkness- it was all still there. It felt violating and threatening.

And I was PISSED! I was angry that he apologized for all the wrong things: “you deserved better and more from me than my circumstances could allow”. What about for pressuring a teenager into a sexual relationship? No apology there?

Because of the nature of the message, I felt it was important to share it with my husband, not only for my own safety, but for the safety of our family. There was also a very real concern that if his wife were to see that message, it could reopen a chapter of my life I had worked so hard to close.

Telling my husband the full story was harder than I expected. I had always believed I had been honest with him about my past, but as I spoke, I realized how much I had left out, details shaped by years of shame and self-blame.

I told him everything.

Understandably, he was shocked to hear what I had gone through and saddened that I hadn’t shared it with him. But instead of judgment, I was met with support and the simple truth that I had struggled to fully accept for so long:

This was not my fault.

After working through what came up at the retreat and finally forgiving myself, I thought I had completely overcome it. But I was still hiding it from others, which meant I was still holding onto shame.

Sharing this now, publicly, is helping me to finally release that shame. This wasn’t just a “bad decision.”

I was a minor. He was an adult.

There was a clear imbalance of power, and he took advantage of it.

That’s the reality. And it’s a reality far more common than people are comfortable admitting.

For years, I carried the weight of that experience without realizing how much it was shaping me- how it influenced the way I saw myself, the way I moved through relationships, and the ways in which I held myself back. How I played small.

This is the work.

Not the polished version of our lives. Not the highlight reel. But the parts we buried. The stories we’re ashamed to tell. The moments that made us question our worth.

Being vulnerable enough deeply look at our pasts and openly talk about it is where everything shifts. That’s where we reclaim ourselves.

As I step into this next chapter, coaching high-achieving women in midlife, I see more clearly than ever how many of us are carrying versions of this. Different stories, different circumstances, but the same undercurrent of shame, silence, and disconnection.

Women who look like they have it all together… but don’t feel their lives are fully aligned.

Women who have been conditioned to push through, perform, and achieve, while subconsciously abandoning parts of themselves along the way.

I know that pattern. I lived it. It’s a pattern that continued well into my forties when I thought I was past it all. And I also know what it takes to come out the other side.

Not perfectly. Not all at once. But honestly.

I didn’t realize there was still work to be done, but getting his message showed me there was.

One of my favorite quotes by Peter Crone perfectly illustrates this: “Life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you’re not free.”

Now I want to be there to support women. To be a place for them to open up the dark parts of themselves and examine the truth about their lives, sometimes for the first time. Where they can untangle what they’ve been carrying, reconnect with themselves, and start making choices from a place that actually feels true.

This experience doesn’t define me.

But it is part of what allows me to do this work with depth, with clarity, and with compassion.

If you see yourself anywhere in this, whether in the past you’ve carried or the way you’re feeling now, you don’t have to keep holding it alone.

Acknowledging it, forgiving yourself for it, and releasing the energy that your body has held onto as a result of it, can be the key to opening the door to a new, authentic world for yourself.