For a long time, I thought surviving meant performing.

From the outside, I looked capable. Reliable. The one who could cope. I kept busy, achieved things, stayed useful.

But inside, I felt like an imposter.

Every day was an act.

I wore masks so well that eventually I forgot what my real face looked like. I smiled when I was exhausted. I said I was fine when my chest was tight with anxiety. I showed up for everyone else while quietly disappearing from myself.

Most of the time, I wasn’t fully there at all.

Life felt like a train that wouldn’t slow down.

Everything rushed past the windows too fast to process — responsibilities, expectations, old memories I hadn’t faced. I lived with constant anxiety and long stretches of dissociation, as if I’d stepped off the carriage while my body kept travelling without me.

Now I know those words: Trauma. PTSD. A nervous system that never felt safe.

Back then, I just thought something was wrong with me.

After years away, I moved back to my hometown and started a family. I built a quieter life with my husband. Our relationship began with the most honest conversation I’ve ever had. There was nowhere to hide with him and he felt like home.

For the first time, I didn’t have to perform.

That safety changed everything.

When I reported my abuser to the police, I began therapy. Later, after a nervous breakdown, I returned. By then my train wasn’t just fast — it was alarmingly out of control and at risk of derailing entirely.

I couldn’t keep pretending I was fine.

One day, my therapist suggested something small.

Write a letter to your inner child.

So I did.

I could never have predicted the impact this one moment would have on my journey.

I couldn’t stop crying. It felt like pressure slowly releasing, like a train finally easing its brakes after running too fast for too long. Tears I didn’t even know I’d been holding just kept falling.

For the first time, I wasn’t judging myself for falling apart. I was simply listening.

And I couldn’t stop writing.

It felt like walking slowly back through the train of my life, one carriage at a time. Opening the door. Sitting with what was there. Stepping back out when it became too much.

Not everything at once.
Not overwhelmed.
Just one small, contained space at a time.

Three months later, I had written nearly 100,000 words.

Some pages were private — just for me. The rest became a book, The Train That Carries Us, a work of literary fiction with autobiographical themes.

Publishing it terrified me. I live in a small town. I worried about being seen differently, about passing someone in the street who now knew pieces of my story.

I thought certain people would show up for me — and they didn’t.

Instead, strangers did.

Messages began arriving from people I’d never met.

“I thought I was the only one.”
“This sounds like my life.”
“Thank you for putting this into words.”

Each one felt like a passenger quietly sitting down beside me.

Connection, I realised, is what changes us most.

Not fixing everything.
Not erasing the past.
But discovering we were never travelling alone.

That understanding led me to start a local peer support group called The Carriage of Courage.

I wanted to create the space I had once needed — somewhere survivors could take off their masks. No performances. No pressure to be “brave.” Just honesty, gentleness, and the quiet relief of being understood.

A place to rest between carriages.

I still live with anxiety. Dissociation still visits sometimes. Healing isn’t linear. The train still speeds up now and then.

But now I know how to slow it.
I know I can pause.
I know I can ask for help.
I’ve learned that uncomfortable isn’t the same as unsafe.

Most importantly, I’ve stopped seeing myself as broken.

I wasn’t broken.

I was learning how to bend.

And bending, I’ve learned, is its own kind of strength.

If you’re reading this and wondering whether things can ever feel different, please know this:

There is nothing wrong with you for the ways you survived.
Your coping kept you alive.
And you are not alone.

Sometimes healing begins with something small — a letter, a conversation, a room where you don’t have to explain yourself.

Sometimes it’s simply the courage to open one carriage door, knowing you can close it again and step back as many times as you need to.

Gently.
At your own pace.

The train that carries us will continue its journey.
We don’t always choose the tracks it takes.
But we do choose the speed.

And the way we slow it is connection.
Sitting beside each other. Reaching out a hand. Letting ourselves be seen.

Together, one carriage at a time.

Leah Houston (@slowyourtrain)