Root and Rise

There’s a kind of friendship that stays when even family cannot help. I learned that early: DNA does not make a family. Family is whom we choose, and who chooses us, every single day. Do you remember the saying, “Friends are like stars. They’re always there even when we don’t see them, but they appear when darkness surrounds us”.

Families are built, not just born. Since friendships are built by choice, friends become your chosen family. I didn’t always understand that growing up. I believed the myth that blood ties were supposed to be enough. But it’s not possible to love everyone you’re connected to through genetics, because you’re born into that web. You never got to pick your relatives. With friends, you get to choose.

Even when you love your parents, your siblings, your extended family, they are not always the ones you share your mind with. Your children are a bit different, since you get to shape their attitudes and perspectives while allowing them to shape yours. That mutual molding can turn a genetically destined relationship into something closer to friendship. For some lucky ones, parents and siblings fall into the category of friendships, someone with whom they can share their mind, their dreams, and their fears. My children are my greatest allies, my source of inspiration and joy. I learn so much from them. I hope to mold my perspectives about myself and the world, through their eyes, so I can be a better person.

Looking back, I can trace the line of my life through the friends who held me up. Throughout my years, my friends helped me find my voice and my confidence. They shaped my values and my goals, friends have been my greatest strength and my deepest source of wisdom. Without them, I’d have been adrift like a boat on a vast ocean. They have been my lighthouse, my anchor, and my sail- as and when life called for it.

My best friends from school and college stuck with me even when I was emotionally needy, very quiet, and not much fun to be around. I’d like to think I’m a loyal friend who cares, but honestly that’s all I am. I am a worrier, have no sense of humor, fearful, and superstitious. I’m still not sure why they gave me their time and a place in their heart. They encouraged me to speak up, to participate in events and competitions, and included me in their activities. They didn’t know they were teaching me that I had a voice worth hearing.

One such friend is Angel, my friend from work. She was the one who identified the abusive situation I was in. She helped me see it and she stood beside me every step of the way after I left. It goes to show- sometimes only person can make all the difference in the world; just one person to help the other get back on their feet after being pummeled to the ground.

Angel understood something crucial that no one else did. For someone escaping long-term abuse, good food and well-rested sleep are the most important things. She was right, as always. Good sleep did wonders for my nervous system. It gave me moments of clarity in a time of great confusion and anxiety. She bought me a bedframe, a mattress, headboard, comfortable sheets, and soft pillows. The comforter had colors she thought might bring me joy: yellow, red, and green. At that time, I didn’t even know my favorite colors. I just gave her the primary colors and said those were my favorites.

Angel didn’t ask me what happened. That was the first sign that she was different. Sometimes people just wanted the story, the timeline, the evidence, the worst parts repeated so they could feel their own horror or relief. But Angel just looked at me one day at work, and said, “You’re not sleeping, are you?”

I wasn’t. I hadn’t slept through the night in years. My body had forgotten how to drop into deep rest. Even when I was exhausted, especially when I was exhausted, my nervous system kept a sentry awake. The hypervigilance I’d built as a child had found a new adult home in my abusive marriage.

The science:  Long-term abuse dysregulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Cortisol, which should follow a healthy daily rhythm, which is high levels in the morning, and low at night becomes inverted. The result? You're tired but can't sleep. You wake at 3 a.m. with a racing heart. Your body confuses survival mode with normal mode. Sleep deprivation then amplifies emotional reactivity, reduces prefrontal cortex function, making it hard to plan or see options, and keeps the amygdala on high alert.

It’s a vicious loop. And you cannot think your way out of it. You need someone to help you rest first. Angel understood that before I did. She didn’t hand me a book on trauma. She didn’t send me articles about abusive relationships. She handed me a container of food and said, “Eat this. Then let’s talk about what type of beds suit you.” I thought a headboard was unnecessary, a luxury for people who had their lives together. But she explained: “You need something solid behind you when you sit up at night. Something that says you’re not going to fall backward.” She was right. For the first week, I sat up in that bed at 3 a.m., my back against the headboard, and I did not feel like I was falling. I felt held. And the colors?

The science: Color perception is processed in the visual cortex but connects directly to the limbic system, including the amygdala and hypothalamus. Certain wavelengths, like soft greens, warm yellows, can lower heart rate and reduce cortisol secretion in traumatized individuals. Evolutionarily, the body remembers the colors of safe environments. 

Angel didn’t care about the science. She just knew to watch my face when I talked about what I liked. It took three months for my sleep to stretch past four hours. It took six months for me to wake up without checking for danger first. And it took a full year for me to lie down at night and feel, not peace exactly, but permission. Permission to stop scanning. Permission to rest.

Angel didn’t fix me. She just created the conditions where my body could begin to fix itself. Good food. Soft pillows. A comforter in colors I didn’t even know I loved and felt safe in. And her steady presence whenever I needed a friend to talk to.

The science: Safety is not a thought. It is a bodily state. According to the Polyvagal theory (https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory), the vagus nerve myelinates in response to repeated experiences of co-regulation. It means that the nervous system builds new connections and pathways when we have repetitive safe and loving interactions with another person/s. Over time, Angel's calm presence helped my dorsal vagal nerve shutdown the collapse response and my sympathetic hyperarousal, the fight-or-flight response- find a middle path. The middle path is called the ventral vagal state: rest, connection, and the ability to be still without fear. 

The bedframe didn’t heal me. The headboard didn’t heal me. But they were the scaffolding my body needed to remember that resting is not dangerous. That softness is not a trap. I think about that quote often: “You are only defeated until you fail to get back up.” But here’s what I’ve learned. Getting back up is not a matter of willpower. It is a matter of having one person who kneels beside you and says, “You don’t have to do it alone. I’ll sit here until you’re ready.”

For me, that person was Angel. For someone else, it might be a therapist, a neighbor, a stranger in a support group, or an imaginary friend. It doesn’t matter who. It only matters that they show up and stay. Angel didn’t know she was teaching me that my body deserved to rest. My school friends didn’t know they were teaching me that I had a voice worth hearing. But it mattered, a lot. The body keeps count, and it also keeps hope. And hope, sometimes, arrives in the form of a friend who buys you a yellow, red, and green comforter.

So here is what I believe now. Families are what we build. Families stem from emotional bonds, not genetic ones alone. There is always the choice to create alternate, existing familial bonds in friends and in partners.

We also have to talk about enablers within the family system. Because not everyone who shares your blood wants you free. Some women are detrimental to other women, by upholding the very structures that break them. And other women, like Angel, empower their fellow women. They choose joy for you until you can choose it yourself. They become your family. Your chosen, everyday, star-in-the-darkness family. And they will help you get back up, not by carrying you, but by kneeling beside you until you remember how to stand on your own.