Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

Eirene: [00:00:00] Some of the deepest wounds don't come from strangers. They come from family and sometimes from the very people that are supposed to be protecting you. From the ones who stayed physically present, but emotionally unavailable. The ones that watched what was happening, understood more than they admitted, and still chose silence because silence can look like loyalty. It can look like keeping the peace. Like survival, but when you're the one being harmed, silence doesn't feel neutral. It feels like being sacrificed to maintain the family narrative. Today I want to talk about what it feels like to grow up knowing someone saw your pain and didn't intervene. To live inside a bond that required endurance, not safety.

This episode is about the quiet betrayals that happen inside connection. About what it does to a child when the people who are supposed to protect them instead ask them to endure. [00:01:00] Because when family chooses comfort over truth, the distance that forms isn't always physical. Sometimes it lives inside the relationship itself. And learning to name that without minimizing it, without excusing it, without carrying the shame for it is part of healing.

This is Born Tired Where Survival Meets Healing. A podcast for those of us who grew up in survival mode but are ready to heal and speak our truth. I'm Eirene. A cycle breaker, 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 are 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 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 [00:02:00] matters more than finishing the episode.

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

What I'm about to share isn't something I understood as a child. It took years to realize that what felt confusing back then was actually my nervous system responding to something it didn't have language for. When harm happens inside family clarity comes later, if it comes at all. As a child, you don't name abuse, you name feelings. You notice when the air changes, when your body tightens, when something doesn't feel right, even if no one else acknowledges it. You learn to adapt before you learn to question, to make sense of what's happening in ways that allows you to keep going. And when no one around you interrupts the harm, you assume the interruption must come from you.

For a long time, I carried the story without context, not as a narrative, but as a collection of reactions, hypervigilance, [00:03:00] shame, a constant need to stay aware. I didn't have words for what I was responding to. I only knew how to survive it. So when I tell this part of my story, I'm not telling it from the perspective of who I am now. I'm telling it as it lived in me. This is about honoring the truth of how it felt before understanding arrived, and it's about giving voice to a child who learned early that silence was safer than speaking, before she understood what she was being asked to carry.

My mother was very religious when I was a child. She was raised in a Catholic family where my grandmother gathered everyone to pray the rosary every day at the same time. As a child, my mother wanted me to be a nun, not a doctor, not a lawyer, not a teacher. A nun. I think she hoped she could pray away my father's drinking. Maybe she thought if I became a nun, it would wash away her father's sins, [00:04:00] the ones he committed against me. Or maybe she had just lost all faith in men and thought that would be the only safe life for me.

My grandfather, her father, used to stay with us whenever he came to the United States. He came every six months to keep his visa active. During those days, he slept in the same room as my sibling and me, him on the top bunk us on the bottom. When my parents went to work, he watched us. He was a quiet man. People respected him. I remember all my friends would say, your grandfather's so cute, but they didn't see the monster I saw. He was the first of many men in my family who would violate me in that way.

I used to put my sibling to sleep by singing the ABCs. I lied next to them, patting their back until they drifted off. I dreaded those moments because once they were asleep, I knew what would [00:05:00] happen next. During the day, he waited for nap time. At night it was easier, he had full access. I tried many times to fight back, to say no, but that's when the threats started. He told me that if I didn't do what he wanted, he would do it to my sibling, and I couldn't bear that. He said, all my cousins did it as if that was supposed to make it normal. Eventually I stopped fighting. He told me not to say anything to anyone or I would be in big trouble.

I still remember the first time my mother walked in and saw him abusing me. For a second, I thought, thank God this is over. But instead she turned around and closed the door behind her. For years, I tried to make sense of that moment. As I got older, I convinced myself, that's why she was always so cold towards me, because I wasn't pure anymore. [00:06:00] As a child, you always find a way to blame yourself. Looking back now, I realize I was the perfect prey for all of them. My father was drunk most of the time. My mother was in survival mode, barely holding on. I was just a little girl too scared to speak, too ashamed to understand, too desperate to protect everyone else but myself. No one was watching me closely enough to notice the signs. No one questioned why I changed, why I flinched, why I didn't sleep.

I remember in second grade during one of his stays, my teacher asked for a parent-teacher conference. She told my father she was concerned because I kept falling asleep in class. Predators can sense when a child is unprotected. They know when the adults in the home are too distracted, too broken, too consumed by their own pain to [00:07:00] see what's happening right in front of them. And in my home, there was always chaos, a perfect cover for silence.

Years later, I would understand that my home wasn't just unsafe, it was unstable. The adults around me were unraveling in ways I couldn't name yet. My mother had her first schizophrenic episode when I was 10 years old. It was terrifying. She was hearing voices and many of them told her that her father was an evil man, the devil. After that, he stopped staying with us when he came to the US and the abuse stopped.

I still saw him occasionally at family gatherings and holidays. Moments where pretending was expected. I was careful. I made sure I was never alone with him. I stayed in rooms with other people. I watched exits. I kept my body alert even though the abuse had stopped, my awareness never did. The last time I saw him, something in me [00:08:00] shifted. I was done pretending, I didn't greet him. I didn't say hello, I didn't perform politeness. I walked right past him. He looked confused, and I looked at him not with fear, not with shame, but with memory. I wanted him to know that I remembered that. I hadn't forgotten, that what he did still existed. For a moment, he held my gaze, then he looked away and he looked down. That was the last time I ever saw him.

Decades later when he passed away, I thought I'd feel relief, but instead it brought everything back to the surface. Many of my relatives who knew what he had done, because I told them, posted about him on social media. They shared their sadness, called him a good man, spoke about how much they miss him. So I thought [00:09:00] either they don't believe me or they're okay with him being a predator. That realization felt like another betrayal. It showed me how denial protects abusers, how silence becomes loyalty, and how truth tellers are often left standing alone. I ended up blocking all of them outta self preservation because healing sometimes means choosing peace over pretending.

Not long after his death my mother was hospitalized . We all thought she was gonna die. My sibling was crying, heartbroken at the thought of losing their mother, and I just stood there thinking about that door. For a long time, I pretended that moment ever happened. The only person I ever told was my husband, because even saying it out loud broke my heart, that she would allow that to happen to me. I later found out he had abused others.

When you step back and put everything together, a pattern becomes visible, [00:10:00] harm moving through generations, unchecked and unnamed. My grandfather's abuse, my father's violence, my mother's illness, and her inability to protect me. I Understand now that she was surviving her own pain, but understanding does not mean carrying the cost of it. I spent my childhood trying to save her, to be the steady one, trying to hold things together. But the truth is, I should have never been her protector. I should have been protected. Multiple things can be true at once.

Sometimes I think about that little girl, how she carried secrets that weren't hers, how she sang lullabies to keep her siblings safe, how she mistook silence for protection, and survival for love. For so long, I thought what happened to me defined me. That enduring it meant I was broken, tainted, unworthy of love. But now I understand I was never broken. [00:11:00] I was just forced to grow up in a world that kept breaking around me. I still see that door sometimes, and for a second I feel like that child again, small, unseen, and unprotected. But then I remind myself, the woman I've become opened every door that silence tried to seal shut. There's a kind of grief that comes from realizing no one was coming to save you.

This is what reclaiming my voice looks like. It's messy, it's painful, but it's mine because I was never meant to carry their shame. I was meant to break their cycle, and I am. When I think about that version of me, the child who learned to read danger before she could spell it. Who tried to protect everyone but herself. I feel both heartbreak and awe because she kept going even when she didn't know what she was surviving for. Even when the people who should have protected her didn't.

I used to think silence was [00:12:00] strength, that being quiet made me brave. That surviving without asking for help meant I was healing. But silence doesn't heal you. It hides you, and for years I lived in hiding, from my memories, from my body, from myself. Even after the abuse stopped, my body didn't know it was over. Survival doesn't shut off just because danger leaves the room. It becomes the way you move through the world without even realizing you're doing it.

I learned to read rooms before I learned to relax in them. To track tone, posture, silence, to sense when something was about to shift before anyone said a word. My nervous system stayed on high alert, because that's what kept me safe once.

I learned how to disappear inside my own body, to stay quiet without being asked, how to make myself small without anyone telling me to. And for a long time I mistook that for maturity, for strength, [00:13:00] for being easy. People praised me for being calm, for being low maintenance, not needing much, but what they were really praising was how well I learned to survive without taking up space. I didn't know how to ask for help because needing something once felt dangerous. I didn't know how to rest because stillness used to mean vulnerability. I learned to anticipate other people's needs before they ever voiced them, to manage emotions that weren't mine. To become whatever kept the environment stable, and no one told me this was an intuition, it was conditioning. The Hyperawareness wasn't a gift. It was the cost of growing up without safety. I carried that into adulthood, into relationships, into motherhood, into how I loved, into how I disappeared when things felt overwhelming. I thought love meant endurance. that Closeness meant self-sacrifice. I thought being needed was the same [00:14:00] as being valued. Because when you're taught early that your role is to absorb harm quietly, you don't immediately recognize environments that ask you to keep doing that. Healing didn't arrive all at once, it arrived in moments when my body reacted before my mind could explain why. When I felt unsafe without clear reason, when my chest tightened, even though nothing was happening, and slowly I started listening instead of overriding it. I started realizing my body had been telling the truth long before I had language for it. That it wasn't broken. It was remembering what it took to survive, remembering what it costs, and that's when healing shifted.

I stopped asking my body to pretend it never happened. I stopped shaming myself for the ways I adapted. Stopped calling myself, guarded, distant, and difficult. I began calling it what it was, a child doing the best [00:15:00] she could in an environment that required too much of her. That realization softened me, because once you understand how survival shaped you, you start choosing something else. You can learn how to rest without waiting for permission. To say no without explaining your entire history, how to stay present without scanning for danger. That's when living begins.

There's a part of me that still grieves my mother, not just the mother I lost to illness, but the one I never truly had. The one who might have stopped him, who might have seen me. And I've learned that grief like that never really ends, it just softens when you stop trying to make it make sense. I searched for reasons that would justify her choices, but there is no reason that could undo that kind of pain. So I stopped asking why, and I started asking what, now? What do I do with this [00:16:00] story? How do I carry it without it carrying me? And for me the answer was truth, speaking it, owning it, letting it breathe. Every time I tell this story, the little girl inside me stands a little taller because she knows now that door that once trapped her isn't locked anymore.

There's a kind of power that comes when you realize you don't need permission to heal. When you stop waiting for someone else to open the door and you do it yourself. I come from a lineage of women who endured. Who prayed through their pain, who loved through their fear, who mistook silence for peace. But endurance is not the same as freedom, and I refuse to pass that version of survival down. My healing will sound different. It will look like boundaries, rest, and softness that doesn't have to be earned.

I spent years believing I had to be unbreakable. Now I know [00:17:00] strength doesn't mean staying untouched by pain. It means finally letting yourself feel it, because that's where transformation happens. Not in holding it all together, but in breaking open. So when I think of that little girl now, the one behind the closed door, I tell her, you can come out now. You're safe. You were always worthy of love, even when no one gave it to you. And every time I say those words, something inside me settles. Like the part of me that was waiting finally gets to rest. This is what breaking the cycle looks like, because I was never the sin that needed cleansing. I was the truth that needed to be seen. And now I see her fully, as a child who stayed silent to survive, and as the woman who speaks now, so she can live.

If this episode resonated with you please share with someone who might need it, and take a moment to leave a [00:18:00] review, wherever you listen. Your review helps more people 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. You can also join me on substack, where I share weekly reflections and gentle reminders to help you feel less alone on your healing journey. You'll find the link in the show notes. If you'd like to connect beyond the podcast, you can find me on Instagram and 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.

This episode was written and narrated by Eirene Torres. Audio Production by Carlos Torres. Original [00:19:00] music composed by Carlos Torres.