Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

Finding My Voice, Inviting You to Find Yours Episode 1
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Eirene: There's a moment, after the breaking, before the becoming when everything inside you asks to be witnessed. That's what this space is for. For the stories that have waited patiently, for the truths that have lived too long in the dark. Because even if no one believed you at the time, even if your truth was buried under years of survival, it still matters.

Here we meet ourselves in the echoes. We remember what was forgotten. The body remembers. The heart remembers. And when we speak, we give those memories direction. Healing has taught me something survival never could. That our stories don't lose their power when we speak them, they become medicine. Every time one of us speaks, another person finds their way back to themselves.

This is Born Tired, Where Survival Meets Healing. A podcast for those of us who grew up in survival [00:01:00] mode, but ready to heal and speak our truth. I'm Eirene, a cycle breaker, who is learning what peace feels like after years of survival. Every episode is an invitation to rest inside your truth, to feel seen, and to remember you were never alone. This is what it sounds like when silence finally breaks.

Before we begin, I wanna share a gentle reminder. This episode includes stories and reflections about domestic violence, childhood trauma, and abuse. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you. If at any point you need to pause or step away, honor that. Your wellbeing matters more than finishing the episode.

If you or someone you know is in danger or needs support, you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 800 7 9 9 7 2 3 3 or visit the hotline.org for free. Confidential Help is available 24 hours a day, [00:02:00] and if you're listening outside the US you can find international hotlines and local resources @findthehelpline.com.

You are not alone. Take care of yourself while you listen.

This space isn't about polished versions of ourselves. It's about the messy, complicated, and often painful truths we carry. I believe healing happens when we stop pretending and start telling it as it is. So as I open up about my beginnings, I invite you to listen with compassion, not only for me, but for yourself.

Living with complex PTSD has shaped the way I move through the world and how I heal. I've been in therapy for almost two decades now, and it's been one of the most transformative parts of my journey. I've done talk therapy and EMDR and those experiences completely change how I understand my nervous system, how it reacts, protects, and sometimes still braces for what no longer is [00:03:00] happening.

Healing isn't linear, but consistency matters. Journaling has been one of my anchors, and meditation has become a daily ritual that helps me come back to my body when my mind wants to run. I also live with an autoimmune condition that literally mirrors my stress. I break out in hives when I go into fight or flight, my body keeps score in real time. It is a daily reminder that healing isn't just emotional, it's physical. One of the hardest things I've had to face is learning to trust people. My trauma taught me to see everyone's flaws first. A way to stay safe, to predict hurt before it happens.

It's a survival habit that's kept people at arms length, even the ones who truly care. Healing for me is unlearning that, reminding myself that not everyone is a threat, and that vulnerability can exist alongside awareness.

Since [00:04:00] this is my very first episode, I wanna take a moment to share why I started this podcast, what you can expect as you listen, and why telling stories matter so deeply to me. I started this podcast because for so long I lived in silence, carrying experiences I didn't have the words or the safety to share.

Healing began for me when I realized that survival was not the end of my story, and that speaking the truth could create space for others to feel less alone. Here you can expect honesty, reflection, and sometimes hard truths, but always with the intention of moving toward healing. Stories matter because they remind us that pain can transform into wisdom. That resilience has many faces and connection is possible even in the places we once felt isolated. Before I share my story, I wanna say this, our earliest memory shape us in ways we don't always realize. [00:05:00] They stay in our bodies, in the way we breathe and the way we react when life feels uncertain.

For me, survival mode began long before I had words for it. Looking back now, I can see how those early moments created patterns I've spent decades untangling. That's why I believe telling the truth about where we come from matters because it helps us understand not only our past, but also the way forward.

My parents were immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and that shaped so much of the atmosphere I grew up in. My father had what I could only describe as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. When he was sober, he was quiet, withdrawn, almost like he wasn't comfortable in his own skin. He wasn't affectionate. When I think back, there aren't many good memories that include him. My mother coped by shrinking herself as much as she could to avoid being his target. She was quiet, socially [00:06:00] awkward, and deeply religious when I was a child. Her answer to my father's abuse was prayer. The hope that one day he would stop. She cared a lot about appearances and what our extended family thought. She worked hard to hide what was happening inside our home. Toward me, she was always cold and distant.

Most of my earliest memories are full of chaos. My father drunk and like always when he drank, he found something to fight about. Something wasn't where he left it. My mother didn't follow his instructions right, or the food wasn't right. Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered. If she had done everything perfectly, he would've still found something to attack.

I remember the smell of alcohol on his breath. I learned the weather of my home by sound. The slow building wind of his voice, the sudden thunder of a slam door, the aftershock of silence that always came too late. [00:07:00] The way the air in the room felt heavy, like even the walls knew what was coming. My small body would tighten, bracing itself before the first explosion. He was like a volcano. Unpredictable. Simmering, always ready to erupt. We never knew when he would erupt, only that he would. Every day was walking on eggshells, holding our breath. It wasn't if, it was when, and that shaped my nervous system into constant high alert.

When the eruption came, it was terrifying. He'd scream, verbally abuse my mother, throw plates, break things, always making sure we felt his anger. Hypervigilance became my survival skill. I learned to scan faces, voices, body language. Even now, decades later, sometimes I catch myself holding my breath in conflict. That habit was born in those years waiting for the volcano to [00:08:00] explode.

Growing up in that house, I learned to survive by becoming different versions of myself. It was almost like I had multiple personalities depending on who I was with. Around my friends and my cousins, and I have a lot of cousins, I felt free, almost like I could breathe again. I was loud, playful, full of joy alive. At home, I was cautious, always on guard. Two versions of me, side by side, and for a long time I didn't know which one was real. That's the cost of survival, splitting yourself to stay safe.

Inside my home, I was also the eldest daughter. Being the eldest daughter wasn't just a role, it was a sentence. I became the translator, the protector, the caretaker. My parents were immigrants who didn't speak English, so the responsibility fell on me to bridge two worlds. From the time I was a child, I was handed documents , bills, [00:09:00] school letters, medical forms, and asked to figure them out. I stood at counters I could barely reach trying to explain words I didn't fully understand .

And when I guessed wrong, when I hesitated, when I didn't know which box to check, I was called stupid. That word planted itself in me like a thorn. It hurt more than any confusion ever did. I was a little girl doing adult work. That weight bent me. It cracked me, and I'm still learning how to mend those cracks. It didn't make me stronger. It taught me what it feels like to live under constant pressure.

And don't get me started on the punishments that came in many forms, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, and other times it was the complete opposite, being completely ignored. Each variation carried the same message. I was powerless under his volcano, and no [00:10:00] matter how still I tried to stay, the eruption would always find me.

I must have been three or four years old. The first time I remember him hitting my mom. He struck her so hard across the head that her ears started bleeding. I remember being so scared, too small to understand, but old enough to know this wasn't right.

I had this Fisher-Price toy phone, the kind with the rotary dial and a smiling face. I picked it up and I tried to call for help. That image never left me, little me dial for rescue on a plastic phone. When that didn't work, I started yelling at him, trying to protect my mom, and in that moment, I became her protector and his scapegoat. Imagine that a little girl standing between her mother and a grown man's age. That was the role I carried. I was born into chaos, [00:11:00] into responsibility. Into survival mode before I even had a chance to just be a child.

Meanwhile, my mother shrank herself. She prayed for change. She tried to keep up appearances for family who never saw the truth. To me, she felt cold, unreachable. I understand now she carried her own wounds, her own silence, her own survival mode. But as a child, all I felt was distance and the sting of emotional absence. There were many times I tried to protect her, stepping in like I was a parent. Shielding her, distracting him, absorbing his anger. That became part of my role, and it left me with the blueprint for relationships I've had to carefully rewrite as an adult.

My father carried the weight of being the black sheep of his family, and he passed that legacy on to me. He lived in anger, resentment, bitterness that he couldn't [00:12:00] contain. I was seen as difficult, too outspoken, too much, and so I became the target.

Sometimes he locked me in the bathroom for hours. When he locked me away I would cry. I would cry until my body shook. I cried so hard I would exhaust myself, sobs breaking into hiccups and silence. Sometimes I fell asleep in the dry bathtub. Not from peace, but from depletion. Picture that a child small enough to barely reach the sink, trapped in a space that was supposed to mean privacy and safety. I would trace the sink with my fingers, make up stories in my head, stories where I was free, where my mom smiled, where the yelling never came.

Those daydreams were my escape hatch. The only doorway out of a locked room, I gave the faucet a name and pretended it could talk back. I counted the tiny chips of the enamel of [00:13:00] the tub, like stars I could wish on. I learned to make stories out of cold surfaces. I learned that if I hummed quietly, the sound filled the space just enough to keep the fear from swallowing me. And over time, that bathroom became more than a punishment. It became a strange kind of refuge. Out of his sight I was safe from his wrath. I whispered stories to myself, created worlds where I wasn't the scapegoat, where I wasn't the protector.

And in that small space, I could disappear into imagination. Looking back now, it's heartbreaking. My first safe haven was a locked bathroom. A place meant to isolate me became the only corner of the house where I could breathe. Safe, but only if I was hidden. Loved, only if I disappeared.

As I sit here sharing these memories, I remind myself I am no longer that [00:14:00] child. I have distanced now, space, and a voice I didn't have then. I've grown, I've healed. I've created a life that is my own. But when I speak these words out loud, I can still feel how much that little girl lives inside me. Trauma doesn't vanish, it changes form and healing is learning how to live alongside it with compassion.

For me, that means learning how to listen to my body and what it's trying to tell me before it screams. It's meant learning how to pause before I shut down. To breathe before I disappear into analysis. Every tool I've picked up, therapy, writing, meditation has been about rebuilding safety inside myself.

Breaking silence is how cycles end. By speaking, I shine a light on what was once hidden, and in that light, there's a chance for understanding and transformation. Telling the truth is a first [00:15:00] step toward freedom . I don't tell these stories to dwell on the past or to reopen old wounds. I tell them because silence was a soil that allowed so much pain to take root in my family.

The patterns it created stayed with me for decades, shaping how I saw myself and others. In the middle of that chaos, something inside me kept going. It wasn't strength, it wasn't resilience. It was survival, and survival comes with the cost.

Survival has its own language. It teaches you to smile when you wanna cry . To stay quiet when you wanna scream,. To say, I'm fine when you're anything but. If you've lived this, you know, survival is a mask. And when you wear it long enough, it can take years to remember the face underneath. For a long time, I didn't know the difference between calm and shut down. I thought quiet meant peace. I thought stillness meant [00:16:00] safety.

Healing for me has been learning a new script, feeling the full breath, not the half. Naming what happened without shrinking around it. Offering myself the care I kept trying to earn from people who couldn't give it to me. Survival kept me here, but healing lets me stay. Children don't get to choose another life. That endurance kept me alive. But it came with the cost i'm still reckoning with.

Survival splits you, it carves patterns into your bones. It makes you carry burdens that never belong to you. It silences you until you learn to break the silence yourself. That's why telling my story matters. It's not just for me, it's for the generations that come after me. I will not pass down silence as my inheritance. My story will not end the way it began.

Stories matter because they give shape to what was once invisible. They let us [00:17:00] name what we could not name as children. They transform memory into testimony, and testimony becomes a bridge. Every time someone hears a story like this and says, me too, another thread is woven, and those threads connect us. Together they create something strong enough to hold what once felt unbearable. That's the power of truth.

If you're listening and some part of my story feels familiar, I want you to know this. You're not broken for having survived. You did what you had to do to endure, and those adaptations, even if they feel heavy now and can be transformed. Healing is possible and it opens space for life beyond survival.

I hold both grief and gratitude. Grief for the little girl who lived in fear and gratitude for the woman who found her voice. This podcast is part of that voice. Speaking it out loud [00:18:00] is my way of reclaiming myself. My hope is that in hearing it, you'll feel permission to reclaim yourself to. Because none of us are as alone as we once believed.

I was born into survival mode, there is no before the trauma . From the very beginning, chaos was the language of my home, and silence was never an option. I became the one who said what others wouldn't. And even though that meant being misunderstood, it gave me a voice. A voice that connects me now to others who know the cost of speaking up.

That's why this podcast is called Born Tired, because some of us come into this world carrying burdens that were never ours to hold. Some of us are born tired, and yet here we are still breathing, still healing, still speaking. This is the heart of what I want to create here, a space for truth, for healing, for connection, and it begins with [00:19:00] telling the story as it is.

As I share this with you, I wanna invite you to place your hand on your heart. Remember one thing you survived that felt impossible at the time. You're still here and that matters.

If this episode resonated with you, please share with someone who might need it and take a moment to leave a review wherever you listen. Your review helps others find the podcast and reminds others they're not alone. Don't forget to subscribe or follow the show so you never miss an episode.

If you'd like to connect beyond the podcast, you can find me on Instagram or TikTok @borntiredpodcast. I'd love to hear what resonated with you. And if you'd like to support the podcast, there's a link there to buy me a coffee.

Thank you for being here, for listening with an open heart. Most of all, remember this, your story matters. Your voice matters, and you are not alone.

[00:20:00] This episode was written and narrated by Eirene Torres, audio production by Carlos Torres. Original music composed by Carlos Torres.