Before You Begin
About 20–25 minutes
- A child who never rested
- Choosing herself and paying the price
- Strength of the body
- Healing through the hands
- A small circle, a full life
1. I GREW UP BEFORE I WAS READY
I don’t remember when my childhood ended.
There was no ceremony.
No warning.
One day, I was a child.
The next, I was responsible.
I learned how to be quiet before I learned how to be carefree.
I learn how to carry before I learned how to ask.
While other children were being looked after, I was looking after children.
Small hands that needed feeding.
Small voices that needed comfort.
Needs that did not wait for me to grow.
No one called it strength.
They called it duty.
They called it family.
They called it normal.
But something inside me learned a dangerous lesson early on:
That love meant exhaustion.
That being needed meant disappearing.
I didn’t complain.
I didn’t know then that I was allowed to.
When you grow up too early, you don’t realize what you’ve lost.
You just keep moving.
I thought marriage will save me.
I thought if I gave my life to someone else, the weight might finally lift.
Instead, I met the same absence wearing a different face.
The same silence.
The same loneliness.
Only this time, I had children watching me carry it.
Trauma has a cruel way of repeating itself until you are brave enough to name it.
I had three children and a heart that was breaking quietly.
I loved them with everything I had.
I lost myself doing it.
There were days I felt like I was dissolving.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just… thinning.
I knew something was wrong:
When rest stopped feeling like rest.
When sleep didn’t heal me.
When my thoughts became heavy rooms I didn’t want to enter.
This was not the life I wanted.
And admitting that felt like betrayal.
To my family,
To my children,
To the version of myself that was taught to endure everything.
But staying was killing me slowly.
And leaving meant being judged loudly.
So I chose the quieter pain, the one that let me breathe.
People talk about choosing yourself like it’s glamorous.
Like it’s brave and shiny and applauded.
It wasn’t.
Choosing myself meant being misunderstood.
It meant being blamed.
It meant standing alone while people questioned my character instead of my wounds.
But for the first time in my life,
I listened to the voice inside me instead of silencing it to keep everyone else comfortable.
I didn’t choose an easy life, I chose a true one.
At the time,
I didn’t know where the choice would lead me.
I only knew this;
I could not survive another life that required me to disappear.
So I stepped forward,
Tired,
Afraid,
Uncertain,
Carrying my children,
And whatever was left of myself.
This is not a story about perfection.
This is a story about staying.
Staying alive,
Staying honest,
Staying long enough to discover
That even a woman who was never allowed to be a child
Can still learn how to live.
2. I THOUGHT MARRIAGE WOULD SAVE ME
I believed that love would rescue me.
Not the dramatic kind.
Just the kind that would let me rest.
I didn’t marry because I was ready.
I married because I was tired.
Tired of carrying everything alone.
Tired of being the responsible one.
Tired of being strong without consent.
Marriage looked like relief from a distance.
A door out of responsibility.
A promise that someone else would finally stand beside me,
Instead of behind me, watching me struggle.
No one asked why I wanted to leave my old life so badly.
They only congratulated me for choosing a new one.
I didn’t know then that you can change locations
And still bring your wounds with you.
The abandonment didn’t arrive loudly.
It slipped in quietly,
The way it always had.
It was in the silences,
In the absence of support,
In the way my needs became inconvenient.
Different situation,
Same feeling.
Trauma has a memory.
It recognized patterns faster than the mind does.
I tried harder,
Loved deeper,
Shrank myself again.
Because that’s what I had learned love required.
When my children came into my life,
They became my reason to endure everything.
I loved them with devotion that terrified me,
I poured myself into motherhood
Because it felt like the only place I was unquestionably needed.
But love alone does not heal exhaustion.
And sacrifice does not erase pain.
Some nights, when everyone was asleep,
I sat in the dark and wondered
When I stopped recognizing myself.
I wasn’t unhappy all the time.
That’s what made it confusing.
I laughed.
I functioned.
I survived.
But inside, something was unraveling slowly.
I told myself I was lucky.
Others had it worse.
I should be grateful.
That voice, the one that minimizes pain, sounds a lot like wisdom
Until it cost you your sanity.
My body started speaking when my mouth wouldn’t,
Tension,
Restlessness,
A mind that never stopped running.
I began to realize that staying was teaching my kids the same lesson I was taught;
That love means endurance,
That women bend,
That silence is safer than truth.
That realization scared me more than leaving ever could.
Asking for a divorce felt like standing in court without a defense.
People didn’t ask if I was okay.
They asked why I couldn’t try harder.
They didn’t ask what I had endured,
They asked why I was breaking the family.
I carried shame like a second skin.
I carried fear like a shadow.
But beneath it all, there was something else,
Relief.
Not happiness,
Not confidence,
Just the smallest space to breathe.
I didn’t leave because I stopped loving,
I left because I was disappearing.
And this time, I refused to vanish quietly.
I took my children,
I took my fear,
I took whatever courage I could gather.
I walked away without applause,
Without understanding,
Without certainty.
But for the first time in my life,
I walked toward myself.
3. WORKING UNTIL I DISAPPEARED
Leaving did not make life easier,
It made it louder.
Suddenly, everything had a price.
Rent,
Food,
School,
Time.
I took any work I could find,
Work that didn’t care how tired I was,
Work that didn’t ask how much I was already carrying.
Some days I worked so hard,
I forgot what I was working toward.
I told myself this was temporary.
That if I just pushed a little longer,
Things would stabilize.
But survival has a way of expanding until it takes over your entire life.
Burnout didn’t announce itself.
It crept in.
I was always exhausted.
Even on days I wasn’t moving.
My body felt heavy.
My thoughts felt brittle.
There was no room for rest,
Because rest didn’t pay the bills.
I learned how to smile while breaking.
How to nod while being judged.
How to swallow anger because I couldn’t afford conflict.
My family didn’t see a woman trying to survive.
They saw a woman who made the wrong choice.
They asked why I couldn’t endure more.
Why I couldn’t think of the children first.
Why I chose hardship over ‘’stability’’.
They didn’t ask how much of myself I had already lost.
When you grow up being responsible for everyone,
People forget you are allowed to need help too.
There were nights I lay awake
Calculating how many hours of sleep I could sacrifice without falling apart the next day.
I worried constantly.
About money,
About my children,
About whether I had ruined everything.
But even in the middle of exhaustion,
There was something different this time.
I wasn’t numb.
I was afraid but I was present.
I began to understand something painful and freeing.
Not everyone wants you to heal.
Some people prefer the version of you that stayed silent
And carried everything.
I watched people disappear from my life the moment things stopped being easy.
No messages.
No check-ins.
No questions.
Their absence hurt.
But it also clarified things.
I didn’t have the luxury of collapsing.
I had three children watching me learn how to stand.
So I kept going.
Not because I was strong
But because stopping wasn’t an option.
I didn’t know it then,
But this was the chapter where endurance slowly began to transform into intention.
Where survival started asking a question;
What if there is more than this?
4. I STARTED RUNNING WITHOUT KNOWING WHY
I didn’t start running because I loved it.
I started running because I needed somewhere to put the restlessness.
My mind never stopped.
Even when my body was still,
My thoughts were already sprinting ahead,
Worrying,
Replaying,
Preparing for impact.
Running gave the noise a direction.
At first, I only ran short distances.
My lungs burned.
My legs protested.
My body reminded me that I was not an athlete.
But I wasn’t trying to become one.
I was trying to survive my own head.
Ten years ago today, I signed up for my very first marathon.
Not because I believed I could finish it,
But because I needed to prove something to myself.
Every step felt like a negotiation.
With pain.
With doubt.
With the voice that told me I should stop.
I didn’t stop.
Crossing the finish line didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like relief.
For the first time in a long while,
I had evidence
That I could endure something
And come out the other side intact.
I kept signing up for races,
One after another.
Marathons became my language,
A way to say I’m still here,
Without explaining anything.
People began to notice.
They called me disciplined.
Strong.
Inspiring.
I nodded and smiled.
But inside I know the truth.
I was running away from silence.
Eventually, I pushed further.
Longer distances.
Harder terrains.
Ultra marathons taught me what exhaustion really meant.
They stripped everything unnecessary away
Until only breath,
Movement,
And will remained.
I ran across Asia,
Different countries,
Different landscapes,
The same questions followed me everywhere.
How far is far enough?
How long can you outrun yourself?
Four years into running,
My body was stronger than it had ever been.
My mind was not.
The races stopped giving me peace.
The finish lines felt emptier.
Running had saved me once.
But it was no longer enough.
I had mistaken endurance for healing.
And for the first time,
I allowed myself to admit it.
I wasn’t searching for strength anymore.
I was searching for stillness.
I didn’t quit running.
I just stopped expecting it to fix me.
Something else was waiting.
I didn’t know it yet.
But life has a way of guiding you
To the exact place your healing needs to begin,
Even when you arrived by accident.
Next in real life came the moment where everything went quiet.
5. THE DAY THE NOISE STOPPED
I didn’t find copper.
I stumbled into it.
In 2018,
During a moment of scrolling without intention,
I came across a local page.
An artisan.
Copper works.
Hands shaping metal into something alive.
I didn’t know why I stopped.
I just did.
Something in me leaned closer.
I reached out to him without a plan.
Without confidence.
Just curiosity wrapped in courage.
He said no.
He wasn’t taking trainees.
He didn’t have the time.
The space.
The capacity.
I understood.
Or at least I pretended to.
But something wouldn’t let me walk away.
So I kept asking questions.
About copper.
About tools.
About process.
I didn’t ask to be taken again.
I asked to learn.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Three months of persistence,
Quiet, respectful, unwavering.
One day he invited me to his studio.
The first time I stepped inside,
it smelled like heat and history.
Copper lay waiting,
Raw, unshaped, honest.
He handed me a hammer.
When metal meets metal, it makes a sound that can’t be ignored.
The moment I struck copper for the first time,
Something extraordinary happened.
The noise in my head stopped.
No racing thoughts.
No rehearsed worries.
No echoes of judgment.
Just rhythm.
Pressure.
Presence.
I didn’t cry,
I didn’t smile.
I breathed.
I didn’t realize how loud my mind had been
Until it finally went silent.
Working with copper demanded everything from me,
My hands,
My attention,
My patience.
There was no space to dissociate.
No room to escape.
Only now.
Only here.
Copper didn’t care about my past.
It responded only to intention.
Too much force, it resisted.
Too little, it remained unchanged.
I learned to listen.
To adjust.
To respect the material
Instead of trying to dominate it.
In ways I couldn’t yet explain,
Copper was teaching me how to treat myself.
I didn’t know then that I was stepping into something rare.
Bornean copper bracelets carry history.
They are not trends.
They are lineage.
At that time, there were only five makers left in the state.
I became the only woman among them.
Not because I set out to be different,
But because I stayed.
Copper became my therapy.
My meditation.
My anchor.
I didn’t need to run anymore to feel strong.
I didn’t need to prove anything.
For the first time,
My hands were doing the healing my mind could not.
I started making jewelry with intention.
Every piece carried a story.
Not always mine,
But always human.
Pain.
Survival.
Hope.
Quiet strength.
Love.
I posted them online,
Along with the stories behind them.
And people began to respond.
They bought my work.
At first, I wondered if it was pity.
If they felt sorry for me.
That thought lingered longer than I’d like to admit.
But over time, I learned something important;
People weren’t buying my pain.
They were recognizing their own.
Copper gave them permission to feel.
And in doing so,
It was giving me permission to heal.
Not completely,
Not neatly,
But honestly.
I was no longer running away.
I was finally standing still.
6. WHEN PEOPLE SHOW THEIR TRUE COLOUR
Loss doesn’t always come from death.
Sometimes it comes from silence.
I noticed it slowly.
The way messages stopped arriving.
The way concern faded once my struggle stopped being temporary.
People are generous when hope looks quick.
They are quiet when it doesn’t.
When life was hard but still familiar,
They stayed.
When it became inconvenient,
They disappeared.
No one tells you this part.
That choosing yourself may cost you
The very people who praised your strength.
They liked me better when I was enduring quietly.
When I needed nothing.
When I didn’t disrupt the image they had of me.
But survival made me honest.
And honesty made them uncomfortable.
I didn’t announce my pain.
I didn’t beg for understanding.
I just noticed who stopped seeing me.
Who looked away.
Who changed the subject.
Who pretended not to notice
That I was holding my life together with effort and will.
That hurt more than I expected.
Not because I needed everyone,
But because I had once believed they would stay.
There is a special kind of grief
In realizing your presence was conditional.
That you were loved only when you were manageable.
Only when your strength benefited others.
At first, I blamed myself.
Maybe I asked for too much.
Maybe I expected too much.
Maybe I should have been quieter.
But healing has a way of sharpening your vision.
I began to see that some people weren’t leaving because I changed,
They were leaving because I stopped carrying them too.
Letting go wasn’t dramatic.
It was necessary.
I stopped explaining myself.
Stopped justifying my choices.
Stopped shrinking to make others comfortable.
I didn’t burn bridges.
I simply stopped crossing them alone.
My circle became smaller.
Painfully small at times.
But something unexpected happened in the quiet.
The people who remained,
They stayed without needing me to perform strength.
They listened without fixing.
They respected my boundaries.
They saw me, not just my endurance.
A small circle doesn’t mean a lonely life.
It means a life without constant defense.
I learned that peace often arrives
Only after you remove what keeps disturbing it.
I didn’t lose everyone.
I lost the wrong one.
And in that loss,
I gained space.
Space to breathe,
Space to heal.
Space to become someone who no longer apologizes for surviving.
This chapter is not about bitterness.
It’s about clarity.
About learning that not everyone who walks with you is meant to walk with you through everything.
And that is not failure.
That is wisdom earned the hard way.
7. EVERY PIECE HOLDS A STORY
When people started buying my work,
I didn’t celebrate right away.
I questioned it.
I wondered what they were really paying for.
Was it the copper?
The craftsmanship?
Or the story attached to it?
There were moments I feared my pain had become a product.
That people were supporting me out of sympathy,
Not respect.
That thought sat heavy in my chest.
Each bracelet took time.
Heat.
Attention.
Copper does not rush.
It remembers every mistake.
I worked slowly.
Intentionally.
I let the metal guide me instead of forcing it to obey.
In every curve,
Every strike,
Every polished edge,
There was intention.
And always, a story.
Not always mine.
Sometimes borrowed from conversations.
Sometimes shaped by listening.
Sometimes formed from silence.
I began sharing those stories online.
Not dramatically.
Not for attention.
Just truth.
About endurance.
About starting late.
About surviving things no one applauds.
I didn’t embellish.
I didn’t clean it up.
I spoke the way I lived,
Quietly,
Honestly,
Without asking permission.
Something unexpected happened.
People didn’t turn away.
They leaned in.
Messages arrived from women I had never met.
Mothers,
Daughters,
Survivors.
They told me they saw themselves in the metal,
In the marks,
In the imperfections that made each piece real.
That’s when I understood.
They weren’t buying my pain.
They were recognizing their own.
Copper carries memory.
It darkens with time.
It changes by touch.
Just like people.
No two pieces are ever identical.
And that is their value.
Perfection has no soul.
But survival does.
Being one of the remaining makers in the state was an honor I didn’t take lightly.
Being the only woman among them was not something I announced.
I let my work speak.
I stayed.
I learned.
I respected the crafts.
And slowly, I earned my place.
This work didn’t erase my past.
It didn’t heal everything magically.
But it gave me something I had never had before;
A way to exist without explaining myself,
A way to be seen without being exposed,
A way to turn survival into meaning.
I was no longer asking,
Am I enough?
I was answering it,
With my hands.
8. HEALING IS NOT A FINISH LINE
I used to think healing would feel like arrival.
Like crossing a line and finally being done.
It doesn’t.
Healing is quieter than that.
Less dramatic.
More honest.
Some days, I wake up grounded and steady.
Other days, the past taps me in the shoulder without warning.
I don’t panic anymore when it happens.
I don’t shame myself for not being over it.
I have learned this truth the hard way;
Healing is not about erasing what happened.
It is about no longer letting it decide who you are.
There are parts of my childhood that still aches.
Moments I wish had been softer.
Hands I wish had held me instead of needing me.
That pain didn’t disappear.
But it no longer runs my life.
I don’t measure success the way I used to.
Not by applause.
Not by titles.
Not by how strong I look to others.
Success, to me, looks like this:
Waking up without dread,
Working with my hands in peace,
Coming home knowing I choose us, honestly.
It looks like boundaries.
Like rest without guilt.
Like a life that doesn’t require me to disappear.
My circle is small now.
Not because I failed to keep people,
But because I finally learned how to keep myself.
The people who remain see me when I am quiet,
Not just when I am capable.
That is enough.
Copper still teaches me.
It reminds me that pressure can shape without destroying.
That softness and strength are not opposites.
That time change everything and that change is not loss.
Every craft I make carries a reminder;
We are allowed to become.
If you’re reading this and standing at the edge of your own decision, afraid to choose yourself, I want you to know something;
You don’t have to be fearless.
You don’t have to be healed.
You don’t even have to know where you’re going.
You just have to stop abandoning yourself.
Choosing yourself may cost you approval.
It may cost you comfort.
It may cost you people who only loved you when you were convenient.
But it will give you something irreplaceable;
A life that belongs to you.
I am not a woman who had it easy.
I am a woman who stayed.
Stayed alive.
Stayed honest.
Stayed long enough to find peace in places I never expected.
And if I can stand here,
Still healing,
Still learning,
Still breathing,
Then maybe you can too.
Written with love by Effrey Joseph
Inspired by the real life story of Jess Boubie