Meet the Author: My Story of Shadows, Survival, and Self-Discovery
Here I sit. Ready to let it all out. Because this—this quiet, trembling moment—is where connection begins. This is my story.
The screen stares back at me, empty and expectant. Fingers poised, hovering, unsure whether to create or retreat.
Outside, morning light struggles against the blinds, weak and hesitant. The apartment holds its breath—just the hum of the fridge and the faint patter of rain from last night daring to interrupt the stillness.
It feels fragile. Heavy. Like the edge of something vast, where one step could send me soaring or spiraling.
And yet, here I sit. Ready to let it all out. Because this—this quiet, trembling moment—is where connection begins. This is my story.
A Childhood Shaped by Chaos
I grew up in a place where broken glass sparkled on the sidewalks, like forgotten dreams catching the sun. Fairytales didn’t visit my childhood. Lullabies didn’t drift through the air.
What did? Shouting.
The kind that rattled walls too thin to keep secrets.
Empty bottles rolling on countertops. The sour tang of stale beer.
I was small back then. Thin, quiet, barely there. Easy to overlook unless someone needed a scapegoat. The monsters weren’t under the bed, they sat at the dinner table, gripping cans with knuckles as tight as their tempers. A minefield. One wrong word, one wrong glance, and the night could blow apart.
After school, I’d wander streets streaked with graffiti and speckled with syringes. Bullet shells mingled with pebbles, and the sirens sang their nightly serenade.
That was my normal.
No bedtime stories, just the muffled roar of traffic and the hum of danger.
Invisible. That’s what I became. Hunched shoulders, secondhand clothes, and a silence that made me an easy target.
Bullies didn’t even have to try.
They laughed. Called me a nobody. Said I’d never be anything.
For a while… I believed them.
Adolescence: Dreams vs. Reality
School wasn’t a refuge. It was just another battleground.
I’d slide into class, shoulders hunched, trying to disappear into the desk. Paper balls found the back of my head more often than not. Sharp whispers stabbed my ears. Invisible insults, but they always landed.
Home wasn’t any better. The walls didn’t block the yelling. Doors slammed. Bills piled up on the counter, unpaid and unapologetic. It was chaos wrapped in silence when the fights paused, the tension thick enough to choke on.
But somewhere in all of that, a spark refused to die.
A dream. A tiny, stubborn voice that maybe, just maybe, there was something else out there. Something softer. A place where I might fit without shrinking.
Walking home past shattered glass and rusted fences, I noticed things. Wildflowers sprouting through cracked sidewalks, like nature flipping off the concrete. Bright petals daring to exist where they shouldn’t.
And the graffiti wasn’t just vandalism. It was rebellion. Vivid colors slapped onto gray, screaming, “I’m still here!” even when everything else was falling apart.
Resilience. It was everywhere if you looked hard enough. And somehow, it started to look like hope.
Stepping into Adulthood—and Straight into the Fire
Fast-forward to my thirties. I thought I’d left my demons in the dust—built a life, tied the knot, held down a steady job. But life had other plans. It all fell apart, faster than I could catch my breath.
Deceit and manipulation carved it up piece by piece. One day, the person I loved, trusted, believed in, pulled the rug from under me. The rumors were true. The late-night phone calls were not so innocent. So many secrets I lost count.
Betrayal hit like a sucker punch. What made it even worse?
She didn’t stop at just breaking my heart.
She turned people against me—friends, family, my entire safety net.
Suddenly, I was untethered. Alone. Broke. Homeless.
My car became my world. Nights spent curled up in the driver’s seat, stiff-necked, staring at headlights cutting through the black. Tears dried on my cheeks before I could wipe them away. Days stretched endless—heat baking the windows, shame baking my spirit.
Every breath felt like a weight.
Every thought dragged me further into the abyss.
Broken. That’s what I thought I was.
Done for.
But then, in the quiet chill of some nameless midnight, something shifted.
I’m still here.
It wasn’t loud or triumphant. Just a whisper of defiance. A glimpse of a possibility. If I was still breathing, maybe—just maybe—I could rebuild.
From nothing. From rubble. From me.
My Confessional: Social Media
Desperate for connection, I turned to social media. It felt like shouting into a void, raw and unfiltered, hoping someone out there might care enough to respond.
At first, I was clumsy…
Late-night rants, rambling confessions, anything to push back the loneliness.
But something unexpected happened.
Those chaotic bursts of honesty became creation. Videos, reflections, stories about my heartbreak—no filters, no polished edges. I wasn’t aiming to go viral. I just needed to release it. To be heard.
And people listened.
Each post drew comments, replies, tiny drops of hope from strangers who said, “I’ve been there,” or, “Thank you for saying what I couldn’t.” With every “me too,” the distance between us felt smaller.
Strangers became confidants. A community started to take shape.
Carl Rogers once said, “What is most personal is most universal.”
I didn’t fully understand that until then.
My pain—messy, private, real—was no longer mine alone. It rippled out, connecting me to others. Vulnerability bridged the gap. Isolation lost its grip.
It turned out the void wasn’t empty after all.
A Lifeline in Nature
I found something out there…
Outdoors, away from the chaos in my head.
Nature wasn’t just a place; it was a lifeline. The heartbreak, the confusion, the noise—they all shrank against the enormity of it. A hiking trail winding endlessly forward. A stream carving its path through ancient rocks. The sound of wind rustling through the leaves.
It made my problems feel... smaller.
I’d stand still, eyes shut, the sun brushing my face like it had been waiting for me all along. I’d breathe in, deep and deliberate, and let the tension unravel with every exhale.
Even the tiniest details—a bird’s song piercing the quiet, the crunch of leaves beneath my feet—felt like medicine for a soul I didn’t know how to mend.
Nature didn’t ask for anything in return.
No explanations.
No apologies.
I didn’t have to be more, or less, than who I already was.
For the first time, I felt peace not as an achievement, but as a gift.
Walking with My Shadow
While I was escaping into nature, I stumbled into something else—my own mind. Messy, unfiltered, and full of things I’d spent years trying to ignore.
It felt like rummaging through a dusty basement, each box holding memories I wasn’t sure I wanted to face. Childhood wounds. Old insecurities. Heartbreaks I thought I’d buried for good.
But they weren’t buried. They were waiting.
This wasn’t some Instagram-ready journey of enlightenment.
It was shadow work.
Raw. Ugly. The kind that Carl Jung wrote about. The kind that makes you question everything you think you know about yourself. Each revelation cut deep, like peeling back a scab before it’s ready.
Painful, yes. But necessary.
For the first time, I didn’t shove the broken pieces away. I looked at them—really looked—and saw them for what they were. Not monsters. Not mistakes.
Just parts of me, neither good nor bad, just... there.
And in that messy, uncomfortable honesty, I felt something shift. Self-acceptance didn’t show up as fireworks or fanfare. It arrived quietly, like a friend sitting beside me in the chaos, saying, This is who you are. And that’s okay.
Rewriting My Narrative
Something started shifting.
Quietly at first, like a low hum under the chaos.
Even while drowning in hurt and confusion, I was growing.
Slowly, awkwardly, but undeniably.
Each time I scribbled in a journal, spilled my thoughts onto a blog, or hit "record" on a raw, unfiltered video, I felt the pieces of me start to knit back together.
Not perfectly. Jagged edges still showed, but it was progress.
The neglect, the betrayal, the suffocating loneliness stopped being chains dragging me down. They became something else. Fuel.
And that’s when it hit me.
It’s not the breaking that defines us.
It’s the rebuilding. Piece by messy piece. Choice by stubborn choice.
Healing Thoughts: Why I Share My Journey
From the wreckage of my old life, I carved out something new. Not polished. Not perfect. Just real. A promise to share my story in a way that says, “You’re not the only one fumbling through the dark.”
That’s how Healing Thoughts, the place were I bare my soul to the world began.
Writing, speaking, creating—it became my way of reaching out. A rebellion against the glossy, airbrushed lives we scroll past every day.
Let’s be honest…
The world doesn’t need another curated highlight reel. It craves truth. Messy, raw, unvarnished truth about falling apart and clawing your way back to your feet.
That newsletter, these daily texts, and my social posts are letters. Notes from one survivor to another. Each one carries the scars of my own journey: lessons about resilience, self-worth, shadow work, and growth.
Some days they’re about healing.
Other days they’re about sitting with the pain until it softens.
But they all say the same thing.
“It’s okay to feel broken. It’s okay to admit the hurt. And it’s more than okay to heal.”
My Invitation to You
So here we are. You. Me.
This messy, unfinished story we’re still piecing together.
My path isn’t paved with sunshine and grand victories; it’s got potholes, blind turns, and the occasional backslide into old fears.
But you know what? Every stumble is proof.
Proof that I’m still here. Still breathing. Still inching forward.
And forward—messy, halting, imperfect forward—is what matters most.
Maybe my journey feels familiar to you. Maybe you’ve wrestled with your own shadows, or maybe you’re still in the thick of it, clawing your way toward daylight.
If that’s the case, I hope you’ll stick around.
Subscribe to my Healing Texts, read more of my story over at Healing Thoughts.
Join this scrappy, beautiful community of survivors, seekers, and soul-searchers.
Share your own reflections if the mood strikes.
Together, we’ll navigate the chaos of becoming.
Together, we’ll turn our darkness into something like light.
Final Reflections
I look at the scars now…
The jagged reminders of a childhood that didn’t pull its punches and an adulthood that dealt heartbreak with a cruel hand. They don’t scream failure to me anymore. They speak of survival.
Proof of those nights spent in a car, tears soaking into worn upholstery, prayers tossed into a silent, indifferent sky. They’re evidence that I’m still here.
A breathing, imperfect work in progress.
But this story is nowhere near finished. It develops, deepens, with every twist and turn. Each scar an open chapter, each heartbreak a lesson that cuts to the bone but leaves something raw and real behind.
And somehow, sharing this with you, laying it all out in words, makes it easier to see the web that connects us. The resilience. The stumbles. The rising.
Thank you for listening, for holding space for my chaos.
I hope it sparks something in you—a small ember, a reminder. That even when the night stretches too long, dawn has a way of creeping in.
That we are not what happens to us. We are what we choose to do next.
So here’s to the cracks, the shattered pieces, the shadows we’ve wrestled with. And here’s to that stubborn, flickering hope inside us all—the one that refuses to go out, no matter how dark it gets.
—Ryan Puusaari
P.S. “Scars aren’t reminders of what broke you—they’re proof you fought, fell, and still wrote the next chapter.”