Author Honey Badger

That if you want relief, you must reveal. That if you want support, you must show your wounds. That if you want to be believed, you must be seen in pain

Refusal is not immaturity. It is not laziness. It is not a lack of healing.

Timelines. Processes. Authorities that claimed to know what healing should look like. I no longer trust those things.

Grief is tolerated if it is brief. Anger is allowed if it is contained. Silence is acceptable only if it eventually turns into insight.

We are expected to recover in ways that reassure others. To soften our language. To make meaning quickly. To show improvement on a timeline that makes institutions comfortable

Writing under a pen name allows the work to exist without performance. Without pleading. Without the constant threat of being asked to give more.

Healing expands and contracts based on context. What feels manageable in one environment may feel overwhelming in another. A sense of stability can disappear quickly when conditions change. This does not mean healing has been undone. It means the nervous system is responding accurately to new information.

They may say, I know I’m safe now, while their body remains alert. They may speak clearly about the past, while their nervous system reacts as if it is still present. This disconnect is not resistance.

Reclaiming trauma-informed practice does not require new language. It requires remembering what it was meant to protect.

When “trauma-informed” is used with integrity, it can signal care, consent, and respect for autonomy. When it is used without accountability, it becomes something else entirely—a shield for institutions and a tool of control over the very people it claims to support.

For survivors, consent must be ongoing, revisable, and responsive. A “yes” offered in one moment does not obligate the body in the next. Capacity can change. Tolerance can fluctuate. What felt manageable yesterday may feel overwhelming today.

That framing is convenient. It allows institutions to claim ignorance. It shifts responsibility onto the person harmed. It suggests that if someone did not speak—or did not keep speaking—it was because they were unwilling, afraid, or weak.

That there would be a moment when the body stopped hesitating, when memory loosened its grip, when I could say—without reservation—that it was over. That moment never came. What came instead was something quieter: trust without guarantees.

I learned quickly how to look functional. I learned how to sound reflective. I learned how to speak about trauma without disturbing the room.

For survivors of Military Sexual Trauma, this is not uncommon. Language has often been used to interrogate, to assess credibility, to demand coherence. Even well-intended words can carry echoes of pressure.

Not because my body didn’t want to move, but because movement had once been taken. Directed. Overridden. The body learned that leaving—dissociating, freezing, going still—was safer than staying present.

This is not a rejection of therapy. It is an acknowledgment of its limits—particularly for trauma that did not end when the event ended but lived on inside the nervous system

For many survivors, healing begins when attention moves below language—into sensation, pacing, rhythm, and choice. This is where somatic movement and sound enter—not as techniques to fix, but as ways to listen. Ways to orient toward what is happening now without forcing meaning onto it. The body speaks in signals, not sentences. And it deserves to be heard in its own language. Post-Traumatic Stress lives in the body not because the body is broken, but because the bod

Military Sexual Trauma is often spoken about as if it were an interruption—an unfortunate incident that happened alongside service rather than within it. Something to be acknowledged briefly and then folded into a larger narrative of resilience, duty, or strength. That framing is false. MST is not a footnote. It is not an aside. It is not a complication to an otherwise honorable story. It is an injury sustained inside a system that relies on hierarchy, silence, and obedi

Mindfulness does not require calm. It does not require silence. It does not require a particular posture, belief, or outcome.