I Purchased a Bouquet of Unicorn Baby's Breath

Something about the colors snatched me. My brain knew something I wasn’t conscious of yet, so I brought them home. 

When I bring flowers home, I set them up somewhere where I can see them, immediately upon entering the door. And then if you want to smell the flowers, you have to immerse yourself a step closer, a level deeper into your home. It’s easy to look, but it’s a choice to engage — as is most things in life. 

Something about this bouquet though was too familiar, something in the color pallet, so I brought them home. It was clearly an item that was piquing my curiosity for self-discovery.

Sure enough, they helped me remember a critical aspect to my traumatic experience I had at the age of 15. The color scheme of the bouquet looked just like a backpack I used to have. This backpack was a simple, single-pocket Jansport backpack. White, with multi-colored polka dots on it. 

Let me interject real quick to show you how easy it is to read between the lines of your life. Remembering, and finding this backpack in the memory of my trauma was something my life, my guardian angels, were communicating to me as early as 2013. In 2013, I became a caretaker for a neurodivergent, non-verbal teenager who often watched Dora the Explorer. So multiple times a week, I would hear, “Backpack! Backpack! — Backpack! Backpack!” from the tv screen. The very obvious parallel here was the neurodivergence of this teenager — she was the same age I was when I had the traumatic event take place. The same age my brain suppressed the memory, and where I didn’t have the tools I needed, and we all know (I hope) the rest, to process it in a safe place, or way. So this slowly caused continual disconnects in my brain to my body, my body to my heart and my soul. The disability factor — of my experience was now a daily reminder between 2:30-6:30pm, 5 days a week. And yea, that’s the same timeframe of day also, when my traumatic event happened. Even more so, the house I drove to meet this family was up the gnarliest hill. I always drove it, but it was just such a freaking big hill, hard on my car, scary to drive up whenever it was raining, you’d get near the top and can’t see over the top. You were always scared an oncoming car would hit you in that moment of blind-faith trusting the road. However, unfortunately, all this information went right over my head. 

9 years later, I had since gone back to school and also worked other jobs where I started wearing a backpack regularly. I was teaching kids music lessons. I was influencing youth. One of the jobs, for some time, was 2 freeways away, and I worked on Sundays & Wednesdays — the same days that my family and I would be at church during the week when growing up. I remember this job in particular, really went against the grain with my teaching philosophy. I had to speak up often about internal structure to provide space of mind for the optimal learning (and teaching!) experience for students and teachers involved. Not too different from the feelings I had when I was a teenager myself, seeing contradictions galore regarding information withholding. Not only that but this concept of “always being on”. This time, all this information really began to stick with drawing connections to my past experience. 

Eventually I found that traumatic experience tucked away in my memory, while living in a parallel life circumstance similar to the look of my life when the event happened. I even lived just off of the same named highway, Pacific Ave, but in another city. When you uncover memories, they are slow to come back in fullness. It was 7 months since remembering the event, when certain details started coming back. Sometimes just my body remembering for me, like a deep throbbing nerve pain in the center of my right foot after I did a healing event of breath work, cold plunges and sauna. It was the first step I took 15 years ago, with that foot. But with this other critical detail, uncovered by purchasing the unicorn baby’s breath, I finally understood why I hated being seen for all these years. That detail being: “YEA. I was wearing my multi-color polka dot backpack on that walk home — in that moment of shame and abandonment, I was forced to be seen, while I was entirely alone.” 

The takeaway: my self-expression was too loud and something to be thrown away. 

The worst part, I didn’t tone it down — I covered it all up. I became as small as possible and I started walking on eggshells. Sometime within the next few weeks I switched to a different backpack. I stopped listening to my favorite band, and FORGOT about how much I loved their music (The Beatles). I put one of the action figure characters of the band in our garage, what had been a gift from a few Christmases ago. I painted my entire room white. It had had bright yellow and green walls. And even a sunflower on one of the walls— emulating the song, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”. I covered up all that work minus some paint hand-prints on the wall near the door that I had invited my friends to contribute to when I was about 12. Around the perimeter of the room, right above the level of my head, I painted a charcoal grey stripe, free-handed through the space. The resemblance of a crack. The color of depression. I got rid of the psychedelic duvet cover I had, and started using a blue quilt instead.

When I finally started to delve into my healing, or at least open that up in 2017, I started to feel like it took me longer to do things. My on-time usually gets me somewhere 5 minutes late or less. This has actually improved over the past couple years. On-time would mean 15-30 minutes late. So it’s improved significantly. It’s not just this sort of thing though — it’s also the fact that I am in my 30’s and I haven’t married or had kids. I haven’t bought a house. I’m just now, understanding that I really don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. That I really can do whatever I want, I just have to have a realistic means to the end of achieving that thing. An actual strategy, not just hopeful wishing or praying — all that does is keep you in analysis paralysis. It’s a relent of initiation and ownership. That’s what I mean, by twice as long. It seems like most of my peers, just get that. Most of them understand that their life is their’s to live. This is just not the reality for folks with unresolved childhood trauma. But when you resolve it, you will find a deep-seated reverence for yourself. It’s just that, you have to do the work, to get there. 

Last year, when I remembered my backpack, it helped me remember all the rest of the color in my life — the color that I had then covered up. I decided I wanted her back. My 15-year old self who had a vibrant worldview and love for herself. I found the backpack on a resale app. It had pen marks in the front pocket just like the pen marks I had made in it that I was so upset about when it first happened. (We’re healing the perfectionism!) For a moment I wondered if it was the exact backpack. It had been shipped up to Seattle from Portland, where I had last seen the backpack in Spanaway. Maybe a long-shot, but I reached out to the seller anyways. She got back to me and said she purchased it new in California (where I was born), 15 years ago. Divine timing and metaphysics are a real thing. Once I got the backpack, I went and walked, wearing it, the same distance I had to walk when I was 15 — to try and remember my traumatic experience; to unlock the emotions from it. When I did that, I took breaks when I felt that I was starting to disassociate, or when I felt anxious from being around others. I took twice as long to finish this walk than I normally did. (Even a little longer to sunbathe on a dock for a few minutes).

I stopped rushing in order to avoid being seen.

I started embracing every step of carrying myself.

So when I saw those flowers at the store — at the same grocery chain I go to but at a brand new location I’d never visited before — instead of ignoring my desire to bring color into my life, I brought it home.

Shortly after bringing those flowers home, I took myself to Pacific Park, wearing my backpack around. (In part to save my life — I had to flee home as I was in the middle of being gang stalked). I was alone again, but this time I walked in confidence, with no guilt, shame or fear. 

Going back for yourself, is delicate work. It shouldn’t be rushed, but it should be prioritized, because the longer something remains hidden, unspoken or suppressed, the stronger of a root it becomes in your system. 

If you know something went wrong in your life and are trying to find what it was so you can free yourself from it, so you can get yourself back, you absolutely can. 

You can attend my free training, Finding Safety Through Self-Expression, to take the next step in finding yourself. 

Remember, your voice is the key. 

-B