Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings

There are things I carry that no one can see.

Not in the lines on my face or the curve of my spine—though they’ve left their marks there, too. Not in a diagnosis code or a medical chart, though my body has often tried to speak the truth before I had the language for it.

These are the things that live in my nervous system. That hum in my bones. That sit heavy in my chest on quiet mornings when I should feel peace but instead feel the quiet flicker of dread, as if I’ve forgotten something important or done something wrong. Again.

I carry the sound of slammed doors. The silence that followed.

I carry the memory of being told I was too much—too loud, too needy, too emotional. And then, in the same breath, not enough. Not good enough, not strong enough, not worthy enough to be chosen or believed.

I carry the desert. The heat that baked my skin in that place I was sent to be “fixed.” I carry the weight of waking up each day wondering if I would survive another.

I carry the way it felt to scream into the void and have no one listen. To sit across from a doctor while my body unraveled and hear, “You’re probably just anxious.”

I carry the smell of hospital antiseptic. The buzz of fluorescent lights. The sterile cold of trauma dressed up as care.

I carry the ache of knowing my daughters have seen too much. That they’ve watched me crawl through flare-ups and panic spirals and medical gaslighting. I carry the ache of every moment I couldn’t protect them from the ripple effects of what I’ve lived through.

I carry good things, too.

I carry a cracked, dog-eared copy of Little Girl Lost, the first time I saw myself in someone else’s story. I carried that book with me through Cross Creek Manor, hiding it like a secret weapon. It whispered, “You’re not alone,” when everything else screamed otherwise.

I carry the sound of my daughters’ laughter, echoing in the kitchen, reminding me that healing happens even in chaos.

I carry the weight of my own voice—the one I fought to find again after years of silence. The one that writes these words, trembling maybe, but steady.

I carry community. The slow-building, often-scattered village of survivors who speak the unspeakable and sit in the dark with others until the light returns.

I carry dreams, too. Fragile, but mine. Of writing books that make people feel less alone. Of healing spaces that don’t retraumatize. Of a future where no child is punished for being hurt.

I carry the belief that softness is not a flaw. That survival is not a personality. That somewhere, buried beneath all this, is joy worth fighting for.

I carry all of this. Still. And I am learning that it doesn’t make me weak. It makes me real.