Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Art of Healing Out Loud
The Evergreen Echo
There are seasons when life gets so loud, whispering stops working. You stop tiptoeing and walking on eggshells around your own truth. You stop shrinking to make other people comfortable. You stop pretending you're “fine” when your soul is over there banging pots, trying to be heard and have that hurt validated. At some point, you match the volume. That’s where I’ve been — healing OUT LOUD. Not in a reckless way, not in a messy way, but in a “my heart said testify” kind of way.
And right when I was trying to tuck my pain (and embarrassment) into a quiet corner, one of my big sisters in Georgia, Sharee Smith, dropped a line that snatched the last blanket off my silence. She said:
“You stop being the victim of a story you never chose and become the overcomer of the one you survived.”
That sentence made me stop hiding. It pulled me out of the shadows and reminded me that surviving isn’t shameful; it’s evidence. Evidence of strength, evidence of God’s covering, evidence that my story didn’t end where it tried to break.
About a week ago, I shared a simple post. Nothing inflammatory. Nothing incriminating. Just one woman naming her truth:
I was a wife above reproach, so the betrayal wasn’t mine.
Eight years of loyalty. Eight years of covering a man who hid behind a mask he never earned. Then one day, the truth got heavy… and snatched that mask clean off his face like it was tired of participating in the illusion.
That was it. That was the whole post.
No names. No timelines. No screenshots. Not even a shady emoji.
And still? The post went off.
People I hadn’t spoken to in years, people I’ve never met, and people who had to squint to remember how we even became Facebook friends…all of them flooded in. Support messages. DMs. Prayers. Paragraphs. Voice notes from area codes I’m not convinced are real.
It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t gossip. It was recognition.
The wave was so overwhelming and beautiful it almost made me forget I had cried in my black SUV that same morning. Almost.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about “healing in public”: You’re not asking for attention. You’re asking for connection.
And somehow, the whole country heard the holler beneath the humor.
The messages that grabbed my heart the most were the quiet ones, the women and men who whispered, “Your post put words to something I never said out loud.”
Sis, bro…same.
People act like betrayal is a badge of shame, but I learned quickly that shame only sticks when you think you deserved what happened to you. And I didn’t. My conscience is clean!
I sleep at night. No nightmares. No regrets. No looking over my shoulder for plot twists.
My character is intact. My peace comes from God. And I don’t have to show a single receipt to anybody.
Don’t get it twisted—I have them. A whole filing cabinet of clarity. I just choose peace over printouts. Growth over salacious gossip. Healing over humiliation. You want maturity? That’s maturity.
Me (blur intentional)
The Evergreen Echo
