When Doubt is Manufactured: A Story from the Inside
A quote from Bob Marley, “You don’t know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice,” on a letter board in front of a dandelion-knit blanket
Editor’s note: This post will continue to evolve as I do.
Welcome, kind souls and compassionate hearts to a bonus post as part of the Soft Starts series. Last year, I challenged myself to show up daily by sharing a poll. This year, I’m doing things a bit differently but just as intentional with bonus posts.
This means there will be one surprise post each month. Here’s to the first.
So, let’s take this painful, emotional, and deeply personal trip down memory lane:
Just like waves washing over rocks, doubt doesn’t always crash. It builds slow and corrosive.
It began in moments like this:
“We should probably talk to lawyers about this.”
“We should reach out to other admins.”
“We talked to their mother, and they weren’t happy.”
Not questions. Not conversations. But said plainly. Within earshot. Not whispered behind closed doors, not protected in some private exchange. Just spoken, out loud.
And it didn’t stop there.
There were threats of removal, prevention of completing responsibilities, admission of threat.
Trapped in a room, with the door closed, while voices rose and reason vanished. Gaslit until I questioned my memory. Criticized with a smile. Humiliated in front of others, then told I was “overreacting” or “sensitive” if I showed any signs of discomfort.
So now, the doubt isn’t vague. It has shape. It lives in rehearsed conversations, in overly edited emails, in waiting of tone shifts before speaking.
It didn’t teach me anything useful. It threw me on a roller coaster of confusion, fear, and second-guessing, at my expense. I didn’t become more strategic. I became exhausted. Each day felt like walking through fog with landmines underfoot.
Ones being detonated left, right, and center. Doors being slammed without warning. Videotaping me without consent.
This wasn’t normal conflict. It was emotional warfare dressed up as feedback. And it left doubt in its wake, around trust, safety, and whether the effort I put into it would ever be enough.
I grieve who I used to be.
The girl who gave without limitation. Who cared exponentially. Who bent over backwards just to spend time with the people she loved. Who couldn’t have imagined a world where cruelty would be casual, calculated, and so close.
She, and I, saw the world differently than we do today.
I wish I could fully articulate how much that experience shifted my inner landscape. My mindset, my outlook, even the filters through which I take in the world, they’ve all changed. That season altered how I trust, how I interpret silence, and how I walk into rooms.
Because I wasn’t just overwhelmed, I was exposed. Yet not in the way most people think. While it’s a feeling I still carry, not just of fear, but of waiting for the next shoe to drop, I’m left wondering of the unknown, the inconsistencies. I did my part to prevent things from escalating further. I chose to stand by the people I cared about, even when it cost me.
I fought so hard to not only get to this point, but to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be seen. And maybe, to some, it looked like too much. But I was suffering, not from imagination, not from insecurity, but from the actions and negligence of others.
After something so drastic, it took a while to understand that all I ever needed was one safe space. A place where I could release the pain, the frustration, the lack of care, consideration, decency, in order to decompress, to “relax” and to begin to put myself back together again.
All I needed was one person to recognize the signs, the symptoms, to stand up, to say: “You’re not too much” “You’re not who they said you were” “What happened to you wasn’t okay.”
That moment didn’t come. But something in me rose anyway.
I found my voice, not because I was given space, but because in order to survive and to overcome my circumstances, I had too. I started to speak with urgency. Fueled with passion. With a deep desire not just to be heard, but to tell the truth. To name things clearly. To seek what was real, even when it was uncomfortable.
After being silenced and misread for so long, truth-telling and transparency became a kind of survival. Still today, silence doesn’t feel neutral, it feels like risk.
But survival has a strange way of planning quiet truths. In the aftermath, I started noticing how I spoke to myself. How many of their voices I had absorbed as my own. What came from that was a soft but shaky new beginning toward speaking differently.
Kinder. Slower. More honest.
This post isn’t a beginning, or a solution. It’s a moment of pause. A moment between learning to speak to myself with care and learning to show up with consistency. Not as a performance but as reclamation.
So, I’m placing this here, in the in-between. For anyone who’s ever walked through fire and came out doubting everything but the truth they carried quietly inside. That truth matters. Even if no one clapped for it. Even if it shook when you spoke it. Even if you’re still finding the words for it now.
You’re not alone in the in-between. That quiet place where clarity is still forming, where pain hasn’t been fully named, but is deeply felt.
I lived there longer than I expected to. Trying to move through the motions of normal life, while part of me stayed frozen in the rooms where things were said, decisions were made, and I was reduced to something less than human. Relieving moments on loop. Tones of voice, glances, closed doors, each one carving new doubt, making it that much harder to breathe.
But I continued to show up. To put in the work. And to put the pieces of myself back together again. All the while, trying to wrap my head around: How did it shift so fast? When did care turn into control? Was there a moment I missed, or was this always the plan?
I’m still adjusting. Still learning how to hold space for both the grief and the voice that grew from it. I’m still fighting old memories and moments of doubt that try to pull me backwards.
But I’m going to continue on, in spite of it all. For peace. For joy. For the version of me that knows better now. And I hope that you do the same.
You deserve to live life. To be free of what weighs you down. To embrace all the good this world still has to offer.
And if any of this sounds familiar, if your voice was ever dismissed, your pain minimized, or your truth questioned, I want you to know:
I know what happened. I know the emotions I expressed were valid. Even when they weren’t met with understanding or compassion, they came from experience. Lived. Felt. Survived.
And that’s true for you, too. I see you.
Sending you love and light, especially if you’ve had to hold it alone.
Until the next soft start (Monday, January 19th, 2026).
As a signature of my blog, I’d like to end this post with a suggestion to “Pass on kindness.” There’s no time like the present to Inspire Those Who Inspire You. Acts of kindness, no matter how big or small, can have a direct, positive impact on someone else. Go out there today and change someone’s life for the better!
***These are my personal opinions and may not be those of my employer.***
