There was a time I thought my wounds made me dangerous. Unfit. Unstable. Unworthy.

I feared that if people saw the mess I’d come from — the chaos I’d endured, the pain I’d carried — they’d think I was broken. And worse, I feared they’d be right.

That fear didn’t come from nowhere. It came from experiences, both subtle and overt, that told me I was too much. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too angry. Too wounded.

It came from moments where my honesty was met with silence. Where my insight was treated as arrogance. Where my needs were pathologized instead of understood. Where my lived experience — especially around mental health — was seen as a liability, not a strength.

But I see it differently now.

Because I didn’t crumble. I learned how to hold myself. I learned how to sit with pain without needing to fix it. I learned how to regulate my nervous system, how to build safety from within, and how to treat others with the same depth of compassion I once craved.

And that didn’t make me unsafe. It made me trustworthy.

Not in the way that some institutions define it — through polished credentials and unblemished records — but in the way that people feel it.

Because when you’ve been through hell and stayed kind, you become the kind of person others can turn to when they’re falling apart. Because you’ve been there. And you’re not scared of it anymore.

It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence. And I know now: my presence is safe.

That’s what makes me trustworthy. Not despite my wounds — but because of them.