She didn’t get back the childhood she lost, but she reclaimed the rest of her life, which is freedom. Just before 7 a.m. on August 9, 2016, Lauren woke to her phone buzzing. Her mother was sobbing: her aunt’s house had burned down, and her cousin Andrew hadn’t survived. Lauren hadn’t spoken to that side of the family in years, yet the news knocked the wind out of her, and, strangely, loosened a tightness she’d carried since childhood. She felt scared, and she also felt like she could finally breathe. The reason lived deep in her past.
When Lauren was six, Andrew, only two years older, entered her room while the adults were downstairs. He suggested a game of Truth or Dare. The fun turned dark. That night became a pattern for eight years, almost always after midnight in any house where their families gathered. She stopped sleeping well, dreaded nighttime, and clung to safety at her best friend’s farm because he never went there.
When she was fourteen, the last time was violent. He threatened her. She hid in a locked bathroom until sunrise. He crushed her hand under the table at breakfast, a silent warning. That was the moment she decided to tell. Before she did, she sent him an instant message, “I’m telling my mom right now,” then walked to her mother and spoke about the most recent assault. When asked if there were others, she said no; she wasn’t ready to unpack eight years, and no one asked again. The family exploded into arguments, but her parents took her to the police. She wrote a victim impact statement. He spent time in jail. It didn’t feel like a victory; it felt like a family breaking, and somehow she felt responsible, even though none of it was her fault.
The damage had been showing for years. As a child, she had stomach inflammation from anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, and compulsive picking. In middle school, she discovered alcohol and, for the first time, felt numb relief. Drinking became her way to quiet the noise, blackouts in high school and college, partying around classes, telling herself that if her grades were okay, then she was OK. After her older brother died from an overdose, she said herself she was “not that bad,” added weed and borrowed pills, got a DUI, and kept going. She didn’t know who she was without the numbing.
Then she had a son in 2015. He made her want to do better. When Andrew died in the 2016 fire, something inside her unlatched. She went to therapy because she finally felt safe enough to face what had happened. Still, sobriety didn’t stick until January 10, 2020. A dinner with friends turned into yet another blackout, and the next day she lay in the tub with a brutal hangover while her husband and almost five-year-old had a perfect winter day downstairs. The contrast hit her hard. She downloaded a sobriety app, told her husband she was done, and posted publicly for accountability.
The first weekend was brutal. She wanted to escape her skin. Instead, she sat with the urge, minute by minute, and did it again the next day, and the next. The ache didn’t vanish, but it stopped roaring. She stayed sober. In therapy, she finally opened the locked rooms: complex PTSD, ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Naming them didn’t break her; it helped. She stopped self-medicating, traded bars for early nights, tea, books, journaling, and hikes. She learned that waves pass if you don’t drown them in booze. A year and a half into that steadier life, she and her husband welcomed a long-hoped-for rainbow baby on August 9, 2021. Exactly five years after the call that changed everything, she held her daughter.
The date felt like a full circle drawn by survival, grief, and grace. Lauren isn’t pretending the past didn’t happen. She is someone who lived through it and chose healing anyway. She shows up for her family, herself, and the girl who once hid in a bathroom until sunrise. She knows the ache can visit, and she knows it leaves.
