Healing out loud with Jocelyn

Healing out loud with Jocelyn I’m Jocelyn…A sober mom navigating anxiety, motherhood, and life’s chaos.

I share the real, raw moments, the lessons I’m learning, and the laugh out-loud chaos that comes with raising neurodivergent kiddos and healing myself.

04/24/2026

Two people in recovery living side by side is a different kind of hard.

Because we’re not just healing ourselves.
We’re healing a history we built together.

There was a time when it was both of us,
feeding the same thing.

If it wasn’t him, it was me.
If it wasn’t me, it was him.

Back and forth.
No one pulling the other out.

And from the outside,
it looked like it was mostly me.

I’m strong.
I’m loud.
I make decisions.

He’s quieter.
Goes along.
Doesn’t push back the same way.

So it became this story people believed…

that I was the one suggesting it.
I was the one leading it.
I was the one making it all happen.

And I let that sit.

Honestly, when I was at my lowest,
it was easier to let people believe that
than to explain the truth.

But the truth is,
it took both of us.

There were many, many times it was him suggesting it…
and me going with it.

There were times I pushed,
and times he did.

It wasn’t one person.

It was a cycle.

And he was the one who brought it into my life in the first place.

That part never really got seen.

And if I’m being honest,
there’s a small part of me that has carried some resentment about that.

That he could stay quiet
while I took the weight of how it all looked.

That he could hide behind my personality
while I wore it.

But sitting in that doesn’t actually do anything for me now.

Because I know the truth.

And more importantly,
I know who I am now.

We’re not those people anymore.

We’re two people trying to stay sober
in the same house,
with the same past,
but doing it differently this time.

And that means being honest.

Not just about the addiction…

but about the roles we both played in it.

No more hiding behind each other.
No more rewriting it to make it easier to carry.

Just the truth.

Even when it’s uncomfortable.

04/24/2026

The last couple weeks were heavy.

Five days straight at work in full PPE.
Room to room.
Sick residents everywhere.

Warm blankets.
Holding kidney basins while they’re vomiting.
Cleaning up diarrhea… over and over again.
Trying to keep people comfortable when they feel absolutely awful.

Then coming home…
four kids, also sick.

More laundry.
More mess.
More “mom, I need you.”

And somewhere in between all of that,
I still had school.
Still had a final to study for.

I was running on empty.

And when you’re that depleted,
that’s when things start to slip in.

Not big.
Not obvious.

my husband said,
“lately I’ve been thinking about smoking pot.”

And I didn’t hear it as a thought.

I heard it as a threat.

So I went straight to,
“that’s a relapse… and I’m not sticking around if you do that.”

No pause.
No softness.

Just protect mode.

Because when I’m that exhausted,
when I’ve given everything to everyone else,
my brain goes straight to survival.

My sobriety feels like something I have to guard with everything in me.

Like a mother bear.

And in that moment,
it didn’t feel like two people struggling.

It felt like something that could take everything down.

But here’s the part I’m sitting with now…

He trusted me enough to say the thought out loud.

And I met that with fear.

I know better.
I’m learning this in school every day.

Thoughts aren’t actions.
People need space to say the hard things.

But real life doesn’t feel like a classroom.

It feels like risk.

So now I’m trying to figure out how to hold both.

How to protect what I’ve built…
without reacting in a way that shuts him down.

Because I won’t go back.
That part is solid.

But I also don’t want to be someone who makes honesty feel unsafe.

So yeah…

it’s been heavy in more ways than one.

And this is what doing the work actually looks like.

Not perfect.
Not clean.

Just real time,
trying to do it better.

04/14/2026

A Note on Triggers, PTSD, and Safety

As someone currently studying addiction counselling and living with PTSD, I understand how quickly the body can return to past moments of fear or trauma. For many people, especially parents or caregivers, situations like illness or uncertainty can activate intense emotional and physical responses.

PTSD is not just a memory.
It is a body response that can take over without warning.

This is not a weakness. It is your nervous system trying to protect you.

When I am working as a counsellor, we will approach these moments with compassion, not judgment. We will focus on recognizing triggers, building grounding skills, and learning how to stay present when things feel overwhelming.

You are not “too much.”
You are responding to what you have lived through.

Healing is not about never being triggered.
It is about learning how to move through it safely.

Simple Grounding Tool: Come Back to Now

When you feel that wave hit, try this gently:

Pause for a second.
Look around the room and remind yourself where you are.
Say in your mind or out loud, “I’m safe right now.”

Put your feet flat on the ground and press them down a little.
Feel something near you. A chair, your clothes, your hands. Anything real.

Take a slow breath in… and a longer breath out.
Do that a few times.

You don’t have to force it away.
Just remind your body, little by little, that you are here… and this moment is different.

You are not alone in this.

04/01/2026

You’re seeing who I am now.

Not who I had to survive to become her.

This is the truth behind it.

Healing out loud.

03/31/2026

Most people only see who I am now… and have no idea who I had to survive to become her.

I don’t share this for sympathy.
I share it because this is the truth.

I was a little girl who learned way too early that the world had teeth.
I stopped making eye contact.
I learned how to disappear in plain sight.

By 13, I wasn’t innocent anymore.
I was making decisions no child should ever have to make.
Running. Surviving. Figuring it out the hard way.

And that kind of life doesn’t just go away.

It follows you.

Into your relationships.
Into your choices.
Into the way you cope when everything feels too heavy to carry.

So I became two people.

The mom.
And the one no one saw.

The one who woke up before her kids…
drove to a dealer…
half sick, half desperate…
praying no one saw me walk back inside.

The one who could hold a baby in one arm…
and still be losing herself in the other.

The one who loved her kids more than anything…
and still wasn’t okay.

That’s the part people don’t understand.

Addiction doesn’t mean you don’t love your kids.
It means you’re drowning… and don’t know how to get out.

I lived a double life.
And I was dying in both of them.

Then came the losses.

My brother.
Gone.

My dad.
Gone… without ever fixing what was broken between us.

Grief sat in my body like it belonged there.
And for a long time… so did the chaos.

And in the middle of all of that…
I was raising children who needed more.

Autism.
Medical needs.
Hospital rooms.
Fighting to be heard while being told it was “in my head.”

Holding it all together…
while I was falling apart.

And then one day… I couldn’t run from it anymore.

I had to look at myself and say…
this ends with me.

Getting sober wasn’t the hardest part.

Staying… was.

Feeling everything I numbed for years.
Facing the damage I caused.
Seeing the pain in my own kids’ eyes and knowing I put some of it there.

You don’t just heal and everything disappears.

It doesn’t work like that.

My son is 22… and I can still feel the distance.
I can feel the hurt he carries from a version of me that no longer exists… but still lives in him.

And I don’t get to rush that.
I don’t get to fix that.

I just have to stay.

And then there’s the part no one sees now…

I work full time.
I go to school full time.
I’m a mom to all of them.

And some days… the only place I can finally breathe…
is in a bath… with the door closed…
trying to hold myself together for just a few minutes.

Because I carry a lot.

And I don’t say that for pity.
I say it because it’s real.

I am not the woman I used to be.

But I am still healing from her.

And I’m still taking accountability for everything she did.

So if you read this and feel uncomfortable…
good.

This isn’t meant to be easy to read.

This is what healing out loud actually looks like.

Not the pretty version.
Not the “I made it” speech.

This.

The past.
The guilt.
The growth.
The showing up anyway.

Every. Single. Day.

03/30/2026

I can feel it.

The distance.

Not loud.
Not obvious.
Just enough that a mother knows.

And I asked why… because part of me still hopes I’m wrong.

And my mom said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“He still has a lot of pain from your addiction.”

And I didn’t argue.
Because I know that’s true.

That’s the part of recovery people don’t talk about enough…

You get sober.
You change your life.
You become someone you’re proud of.

But the people you love…
they’re still carrying pieces of what you were.

And you don’t get to rush their healing.
You don’t get to erase what they felt while you were surviving.

Then she said something else…

“The kids have been saying you’ve been taking a lot of baths lately.”

And I kind of just sat there.

Because I have.

And not because I’m avoiding them.
Not because I don’t want to be present.

But because I carry a lot.

I work full time.
I go to school full time.
I’m a mom.

I hold everything together all day long.

And sometimes the only place I can finally exhale…
is in a bath, with the door closed, where no one needs anything from me for a few minutes.

But hearing that…
it made me pause.

Because I never want my kids to feel like I’m distant again.
Not after everything.

So now I’m sitting in this space of trying to balance it all…

Being there for them.
Holding space for their pain.
While also trying to hold myself together.

And it’s heavy.

But this is the part I don’t hide from anymore.

I love my son more than anything.
And I hate that part of his story includes my addiction.

I can’t change that.

But I can stay.

I can listen.
I can own it.
I can keep showing up, even when it hurts.

And I can be honest about what I’m carrying too.

Because if I don’t say this out loud… it will sit inside me.

And this is what healing out loud looks like.

Not perfect.
Not tied up neatly.

Just a mom…
doing her best to hold her kids, her past, and herself all at the same time…
and choosing not to run from any of it.

03/30/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about the women who have walked in and out of my life.

And if I’m honest… I’m not bitter anymore. I’m grateful.

Grateful for the ones who held me when I was falling apart and didn’t ask me to be anything other than honest.
Grateful for the ones who called me out when I needed it, even when I didn’t want to hear it.
Grateful for the ones who loved me in seasons where I didn’t even love myself.

And yes… even grateful for the ones who couldn’t stay.

Because every single woman I’ve crossed paths with taught me something.
About friendship.
About boundaries.
About the kind of woman I want to be… and the kind I don’t.

Some friendships were loud and chaotic.
Some were deep and safe.
Some were lessons I had to learn the hard way.

But all of them shaped me.

And now… the women around me feel different.

There’s less competition.
Less pretending.
Less walking on eggshells.

More honesty.
More support.
More “I’ve got you” without conditions.

And I don’t take that lightly.

Because I know what it’s like to feel alone in a room full of people.
I know what it’s like to hold onto the wrong connections just so I didn’t feel abandoned.

So to the women in my life now…
the ones who see me, who support me, who grow with me…

Thank you.

And to the women who were part of my story but not my forever…
thank you for the lessons, too.

I’m not the same woman I used to be.
And that’s because of all of you.

03/30/2026

It’s a strange thing… what becomes normal.

After 22 years of hospital visits, emergency rooms, specialists, and more appointments than I could ever count…
you learn how to do this.

You learn the words.
You learn how to stay calm.
You learn how to sit in rooms where your whole world can shift and still ask the right questions.

And for a long time… we were told the same thing.

DKA.
Diabetes.
Mismanagement.

And you start to carry that.
You start to question yourself.
Wonder what you missed.
What you could have done differently.

But now…something changed.

The specialist looked at everything and said he doesn’t think this has always been diabetic mismanagement.

That there may be something more going on.

Something deeper.
Something we haven’t seen yet.

And now we’re here…

More tests.
More waiting.
More unknowns.

Words like Kennedy disease.
Muscle wasting.

Words that don’t feel routine.
Words that don’t feel “normal” no matter how many years we’ve done this.

And I don’t even fully know how to process that yet.

Because part of me feels relief…
like maybe this wasn’t something we caused or missed.

And another part of me is terrified of what that actually means.

Because if it’s not what we thought…

Then what is it?

So we wait.
We breathe.
We hold it together like we always have.

But this one feels different.

And I can feel it in my chest.

I don’t have answers right now.

But I do have my voice.

And I’ve learned that keeping this kind of fear inside only makes it heavier.

So I’m saying it out loud.

This is hard.
This is scary.
And I don’t know what’s coming next.

But this is healing out loud.

Letting people see the real parts.
Not just the strong ones.

03/17/2026

I walked into treatment broken.

Not just tired.
Not just struggling.
Broken.

And instead of finding safety right away
I was judged.

Whispers.
Looks.
Comments I wasn’t meant to hear.

Because my addiction didn’t look like theirs.
Because my story didn’t sound “hard enough” to them.

Like pain has levels.
Like trauma has a ranking system.
Like you have to earn your right to be there.

I remember wanting to leave.

Actually trying to leave.

Telling myself maybe they were right.
Maybe I didn’t belong there.
Maybe I wasn’t “bad enough” to need help.

But something in me knew
if I walked out
I might not make it back.

So I stayed.

Head high
even when I wanted to disappear.

I showed up every day.
Did the work.
Faced things I had spent years running from.

And slowly
things started to shift.

They started to see me.

Not just as the girl they judged
but as a mom who was living a double life.
A woman fighting a raging co***ne addiction.
A person carrying trauma that could have taken anyone to their knees.

And one by one
the walls came down.

The same women who once questioned me
became the ones who stood beside me.

Protected me.
Held me up.

And one of them said something I will never forget

We are going to love you
until you learn how to love yourself.

I held onto that like it was oxygen.

Like it was the only thing keeping me alive.

And somewhere along the way
I did learn.

Slowly.
Painfully.
But for real.

I learned how to love myself.

So if you’re the one who feels like you don’t belong
like your story isn’t “bad enough”
like you haven’t earned your place in healing

Stay.

Do the work anyway.

Because this girl right here
the one writing this

I will love you
until you learn how to love yourself too.

03/17/2026

Writing has always been how I communicate best.

Because when I speak
I’m too blunt.
Too honest.
Too real.

The words come out sharp
unfiltered
and sometimes they land wrong.

They sound harsher than I mean them.
They make people uncomfortable.
They offend.

Not because I’m trying to hurt anyone
but because I don’t know how to soften truth when it lives this deep in me.

But when I write
it hits differently.

You can feel the pauses.
The weight behind the words.
The why.

You don’t just hear me
you understand me.

Writing gives my truth space to breathe
instead of crashing into people all at once.

It turns what sounds like anger
into something you can actually feel.

So if my voice has ever felt like too much
read me instead.

Because I’m not trying to be harsh

I’m trying to be honest
and writing is the only place
that honesty sounds like what I actually mean.

03/17/2026

I used to be the girl people warned you about.

I am not who I was.
But she deserves to be remembered.

She was the girl with a shaking voice and a breaking heart,
trying to survive things no one ever saw.

She was the one who stayed too long.
Trusted the wrong people.
Held on to anything that felt like love even when it hurt.

She made choices out of pain not peace.
Out of survival not strength.

And people judged her for it.

But they didn’t see what she was carrying.
They didn’t feel the weight of her nights.
They didn’t hear the thoughts she had to fight just to make it to morning.

They only saw the mess
not the reason behind it.

I used to hate her for that.

I used to wish I could erase that version of me.
Delete the memories.
Silence the story.

But healing doesn’t work like that.

Healing is looking at that version of you
and saying,

I get it now.

It’s understanding that you weren’t weak
you were overwhelmed.

You weren’t broken
you were unprotected.

You weren’t too much
you were never held properly.

So no I’m not that girl anymore.

But I will defend her.
I will speak for her.
I will honor her.

Because she kept me alive long enough
to become this version of me.

And this version

She doesn’t hide.
She doesn’t shrink.
She doesn’t apologize for surviving.

So if my story makes you uncomfortable
that’s okay.

It used to make me uncomfortable too.

But I don’t tell it for comfort anymore.

I tell it because it’s mine.

And I finally know
I’m allowed to take up space with it.

03/12/2026

My Story Isn’t Pretty

My story isn’t the kind people like to hear.

It’s messy. It’s heavy. It’s uncomfortable.

But it’s the truth.

I was a little girl when things first started to break inside me. My father leaving left a hole I didn’t understand how to fill. Then came an abusive stepfather. Teachers who were supposed to protect children but instead became another place where fear lived. Home didn’t feel safe. School didn’t feel safe. For a long time, nowhere really did.

By thirteen I had already learned something most children should never have to know.

The world has teeth.

I ran away. I ended up in city cells. I was pregnant and alone, facing decisions no thirteen year old should ever have to make. I had to make choices about my own body and my own future when I was still a child myself.

There was violence. There were beatings. There were moments where survival meant doing whatever it took to make it through another day.

Experiences like that don’t just disappear.

They live in your nervous system. They follow you into adulthood.

For me, that pain eventually turned into addiction. Drugs became a way to quiet everything that was too loud inside my head. The memories, the fear, the shame, the trauma that had built up over years.

But addiction brought its own darkness.

There was sexual manipulation. Situations where my worth felt tied to what someone could take from me or what I could give just to survive.

I lost pieces of myself during those years.

When I had my children, something inside me wanted to be better so badly it hurt. I desperately wanted to stay sober. Sometimes I believed that if I kept having babies, I would stay sober because I would never use while pregnant.

Motherhood became one of the things I held onto to try to keep myself alive.

But even that journey wasn’t easy.

Having a sick child changed me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. The fear of losing your son never leaves your body. It becomes something that lives in your chest. The hospital visits, the constant worry, the trauma of watching your baby fight to survive, never accepting fully that he was diabetic…it leaves scars people can’t always see.

That experience left me with PTSD.

At the same time I was raising two very different children, each with their own needs, their own challenges, their own worlds. I loved them fiercely, but I felt like I was drowning most days because I had no one who truly understood what my life looked like.

I felt completely alone.

I clung to friendships even when they were toxic because those people felt like family. When you grow up without stability, sometimes you hold on to anyone who stays… even when they hurt you.

Because the idea of having no one at all feels worse.

My life has never been a straight line. It has been a long road of trauma, survival, mistakes, motherhood, healing, and learning how to keep going even when I felt like falling apart.

And I know when people read my story, some will judge it.

But I’m not ashamed of where I came from anymore.

Those experiences are part of my history. They shaped me, but they do not define the woman I am today.

Today I’m someone who is still healing. Still learning. Still choosing sobriety and truth every single day.

And telling my story isn’t about reliving the pain.

It’s about refusing to hide from it anymore.

Because there are so many people walking around carrying stories just as heavy as mine.

They’re just too afraid to say them out loud.

I’m not hiding anymore.

I’m healing out loud.

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40 Kingsway Crescent
Moncton, NB
E1G1G4

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