Trigger, Trauma, Truth: The Shadow Work I Didn’t Mean to Do Today
- Nov 30
- 6 min read
I didn’t plan to write about this today.
I just clicked on something trending on X (Twitter)… “Pentagon” and suddenly, I was deep in memory, in emotion, in reflection. Somehow, a trending topic led me down a rabbit hole of 9/11, heartbreak, and the deepest questions about my worthiness and my life.
That day wasn’t just about towers, planes, or the Pentagon. For my generation, it was a collective loss of innocence and our sense of safety in the world. And for me personally, it mirrored the moments of betrayal and heartbreak I would experience decades later. Moments that cut into the core of my trust, my joy, and once again, my sense of safety in the world.
Innocence Lost.
I remember that day vividly. I was working along when the office controller busted in, wide-eyed: “An airplane just hit one of the Twin Towers.” We all scrambled to find updates, refresh pages, watch, absorb the horror. This was an accident of such a major scale.
But when the second plane hit, it was like a click went off in my brain: this is intentional.
I’m sure as anyone would tell you, we couldn’t believe the horror unfolding before the world’s eyes. A tragedy so unimaginable but at the same time you knew it was indeed happening. We watched, unable to take our eyes off it as we witnessed the moment our world changed forever.
It wasn’t just the tragedy in the towers, the Pentagon, or Pennsylvania. It was the moment our generation’s innocence was lost. Like many, for days I was glued to the 24-hour news cycle, taking in every horrific, heartbreaking detail.
And I was four days away from my wedding.
Flights were grounded. One of my brothers couldn’t make it home. I remember standing in the paradox of celebrating one of the happiest days of my life while the world was grieving. We held a moment of silence during the blessing of the meal because it was the only thing we knew to do.
To prepare for a joyful milestone while the world felt like it was collapsing… it was emotionally contradictory in a way that never fully leaves you.
But how in the heck did I go this evening from clicking a trending topic on X to ending up down this rabbit hole? I didn’t expect to access something so deep today. I clicked on “Pentagon was trending,” not “let me unravel 24 years of global instability and my own somatic memories.”
But trauma memory doesn’t show up when we schedule it. It shows up when a thread gets pulled.
When I started thinking about the Pentagon earlier and then 9/11, the emotions moved. My mind pulled the thread and the rest came back with it, the wedding, the TV footage, the fear, my brothers, the moment of silence before the meal.
And as I was recalling all of this I began to cry. I’ve never cried when telling that story, so why now? How did scrolling Twitter send me down this emotional path? And I wasn’t just crying; I felt nauseous, my head began to hurt, and I was trembling. I filled with dread.
This is memory energy.
The kind that surfaces when something reminds your body of a moment when the world stopped turning for a heartbeat. This is my nervous system pulling a fire alarm because I touched two moments in my life that represent the collapse of safety:
9/11 → the world is no longer safe
2020 → my world is no longer safe.
What I didn’t expect was how my body would respond. My body is reacting because these two events sit in the same emotional file folder inside me: The moment everything changes and nothing is the same after.
And by talking about one, I accidentally opened the other.
The Day I Died.
Fast-forward to 2020, and my world shattered again, not from a plane, but from someone I loved and trusted.
That year started off the top with me confirming my husband was having an affair. We had been together for thirty years – nineteen of those married – and for that reason we decided to try and salvage the marriage. It was eleven months later, on December 1st that he would make the decision to leave his family for his affair partner.
He left, and with him, so many parts of me died: the mother, the woman who trusted, the woman who believed in small, beautiful things. I missed years of my child’s life as I tried to survive the aftermath, years I can never get back. My sense of joy, safety, and belief in love – all gone.
And the wife died.
She wasn’t perfect but she loved him. She was loyal. She was committed. She trusted the foundation beneath her feet. She expected to grow old with him.
When he walked out, he didn’t just leave the marriage, he murdered the version of me who believed she was safe in love. The version of me that never believed she would experience the worst pain in her life from the person she trusted the most to protect her.
The woman who believed in him, in us. The woman who didn’t think she could be betrayed like that, not by his hands.
She died the moment she discovered he was living a second life behind her back. That woman didn’t just change. She ceased to exist.
Finding the Core Wound.
That realization doesn’t just break trust in him; it breaks trust in the entire world. This isn’t paranoia, it’s trauma logic. It’s my body protecting me from ever being blindsided again by reminding me what it felt like.
The grief is not about losing him, it’s about losing the version of myself who lived in a world where love felt safe, where loyalty meant something, where betrayal felt impossible because the bond was that deep. But I don’t miss him, I miss her.
I miss:
The woman who could trust.
The woman who felt chosen.
The woman who believed she was safe in someone’s heart.
The woman who felt held.
The woman who knew her partner would protect her, not destroy her.
Her death was catastrophic. Because when betrayal comes from a stranger, you flinch. When betrayal comes from the person with the most access to hurt you, you learn that no one is safe and that realization rewires the nervous system permanently - unless it’s healed intentionally.
This is the core of my struggle. Not fear of heartbreak or even of betrayal. It’s the fear of being fully me and still not being “worthy” enough. The deep human ache that asks, “What if even the most radiant version of me is overlooked or cast aside?”
I’m also realizing I’m not afraid of vulnerability, I’m afraid of insignificance and that fear hits where betrayal hits hardest: worthiness.
Seeing the Lesson Clearly.
So the big questions I asked myself tonight were: ‘Why is this coming up now? What is my body trying to release?’
The woman I was, and the woman I am becoming, is not broken. Are there moments where I wish my life could go back to the way it was? Sometimes, but those moments are far and few in between now because I know going back to that life would require me to kill off the woman I have become since. That’s a trade-off I’m not willing to make.
The lesson for me, and for anyone reading this, is that worthiness is not dependent on someone else’s choices. It is inherent. Our power, our softness, our brilliance, it will always be enough. The right people will recognize it, rise to it, and choose it. The ones who don’t? That isn’t a failure or a flaw. It’s an alignment.
And until then we choose us. Our sovereign, unbroken, unapologetic selves.
Who knew a trending topic on X could lead to such a powerful shadow work session?
I sure didn’t, lol.
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