Chapter Twelve: Fragments of Her

She used to believe she was broken beyond repair.

Too many stories, too many scars, too many versions of herself fighting for space in the same body. She thought healing meant becoming someone new, someone better. Someone whole.

But she was never just one person, and yet she was.

She was a mosaic of every version that got her through this life.

And now, she finally understood—wholeness doesn’t mean untouched.

It means integrated. It means still breathing. It means here.

The girl who dissociated to survive still lived inside her, no longer buried, but held gently. The angry one. The seductive one. The scared one. The quiet one who used to write notes on napkins. None of them disappeared. They evolved quickly once she finally had the words to express her grief, love, joy, and all her other feelings. They came home.

She stopped fighting her identities and started listening to them. What they needed. What they feared. What they were still healing from. It hasn’t always peaceful—some days were chaos in the mirror—but even then, there was something solid beneath it all: compassion.

She had built a life not in spite of her fragmentation, but because of it.

Sometimes her daughter came into her dreams—not in anger, not in silence, but simply there. Smiling. Present. She didn’t know what the future held, but she no longer lived with her life paused, waiting for reconciliation. She had forgiven herself, and that was sacred enough.

The world didn’t look different.

But she did.

She carried a softness now, not weakness, but wisdom. Her walk wasn’t hurried. Her voice no longer apologized. She could look people in the eye without shrinking. She could say “no” without explanation. She could ask for what she needed.

And when people asked, “What happened to you?”

She no longer hesitated. She told them.

Not the polished version, not the courtroom script. But the full, beating truth. Finally, she had words to describe what happened and what she was feeling. And of what it’s like to survive childhood abuse. To live with a fragmented mind. To go to prison. To be homeless. To lose a child. To make peace with yourself in pieces, and then reassemble something stronger than you ever imagined.

And they listened.

Because there is power in survival.

But there is transformation in telling the truth. 

She still has to think of the words, yet she still finds the alters still live, lie, and make decisions that are wrong. 

She was not a redemption story. She was not a warning or a tragedy.

She is a woman.

Made of fragments.