Happy New Year, everyone 🎉

I’d love to gift this story to you

From my heart ♥️ to you on New Year’s Eve 2025

🎁

Trauma works like a stone thrown into water.

At first, there’s the impact — the splash we remember.

But what most of us don’t talk about is what happens after the stone sinks.

When I was 18, I fell down the steep concrete stairs of a convent.

It was my 18th birthday.

The fall was sudden, violent, and unforgettable.

Yes, there were missteps.

But I also know the intensity of that fall was shaped by what I was wearing — wooden clogs, the trendy kind in the late ’90s. Hard soles. No give.

That moment became my stone.

The ripples showed up quietly over the years.

A heightened caution going down stairs.

A body that learned to brace before it trusted.

A nervous system that remembered, even when my mind moved on.

That’s how trauma works.

The surface calms, but the stone continues to sink.

And here’s the part we often miss.

The true ripple effect doesn’t stop at the surface — it happens when the stone reaches the bottom. When it stirs up the sediment that’s been resting there. Fear, memory, tension, posture, breath.

Last July, I bought Klompen — traditional Dutch wooden clogs.

And it took me five months to wear them.

Not because of the shoes —

but because of what they touched in my body’s memory.

Trauma isn’t healed by avoiding the water.

It’s healed when the residue at the bottom is gently cleared.

As that sediment settles, something shifts.

The memory no longer controls the body.

The body regains poise.

Posture changes.

Movement becomes intentional, not guarded.

The trauma doesn’t disappear —

it transforms.

What once caused fear becomes a bridge to presence.

What once destabilised becomes a teacher of balance.

When the bottom is cleared, the water doesn’t forget the stone —

it integrates it.

And that’s when the ripple effect becomes wisdom.

Happy New Year, everyone 🎉