Courage: Learning to Speak After a Lifetime of Silence
Day 4 — DawnThePoet (Director’s Cut)
I thought it was time that I, Dawn the Director, stepped down from my own chair and sat inside my human life for a moment.
It’s easy to guide others from above the story.
It’s much harder to guide them from the middle of your own becoming.
But if I want to speak to those with ears that truly hear, and hearts that genuinely feel, then I have to take my own medicine first.
In every film, the protagonist reaches a moment where hiding is no longer an option. Where the path forward demands brutal honesty. Not wisdom. Not polish. Honesty.
And for me, that moment is now.
The Choice I Almost Made
When I first stepped toward my dreams, I tried to do it the way I had learned to survive: through logic. Through emotional distance disguised as strength.
I told myself that emotions were optional. That vulnerability was inefficient. That I could direct my life without ever sitting fully inside it.
But early on, I could already see where that script was going.
You can foreshadow an entire timeline just by watching how a protagonist treats their own humanity.
And I realized something devastating and liberating at the same time:
If I kept rejecting my emotions, I would never reach my potential.
Not as a creator.
Not as a guide.
Not as Dawn.
Not as myself.
The Silence That Raised Me
Growing up without maternal attunement reshapes the nervous system.
I learned early that expressing emotion didn’t lead to comfort.
That sensitivity was overlooked or labeled dramatic.
That my inner world had no witness.
So I stopped offering it.
Being neurodivergent inside that environment made the silence heavier. My way of seeing, feeling, and interpreting the world wasn’t nurtured. It was misunderstood. Sometimes ostracized.
So I shut down my self-expression.
Not just what made me weak.
But what made me me.
Silence became my armor.
Logic became my shelter.
The Outsider Script
As I grew older, the outsider role hardened into identity.
The more logical I became, the less the pain hurt.
So I even shut my heart toward my own family.
I could stand next to them and still feel like a stranger.
To bond as a human, you need emotional expression. Resonance. Vulnerability.
But because I shut mine down, people only bonded with the performance of me.
Not the truth.
People without their own director chair called me antisocial. Weird. Cold.
And those words braided themselves into a belief I carried everywhere:
“I am not good enough to belong.”
That belief followed me into friendships, jobs, and eventually relationships.
I was drawn to men who lived on the margins too. Neurodivergent. Dissociated. Brilliant. Fractured. Lost. Storms recognizing storms.
It was only a matter of time before those storms turned violent.
Abuse, Awakening, and the Split
The last relationship activated every unhealed script in my system at once.
The idealization.
The sudden rejection.
The degradation.
The confusion.
The disappearance from myself.
And then I became pregnant.
That single truth forced me into the director chair for the first time in my entire life.
I had to leave.
I had to choose myself.
I had to live.
But it wasn’t clean or graceful.
It was terror.
It was dissociation.
It was nights floating above my body, feeling like my life had ended.
I cried for a mother.
For safety.
For someone to go to.
But there was no one.
And for the sake of the child growing inside me, I faced everything without escape. No substances. No numbing. No imagination left to disappear into.
For the first time, I sat with myself completely.
The Crucible
I never thought I would make it out of that trial alive.
And yet… here I am.
The pain I thought would define me became my crucible.
And inside it, something aligned.
Sitting fully in the director chair, with honesty instead of control, changed everything.
Because when you stop directing from fear and start directing from truth, the story finally moves forward.
The Family Reveal: Day 4’s Lesson
After six months of hiding, I told my family I was pregnant.
I waited until the fear was hidden.
Until the shame was invisible.
Until I could present it logically, calmly, like it was all planned.
At first, there was warmth. Love, even.
Then came the warnings. The coldness. The doubt.
Old echoes of separation returned.
And in that pain, I saw the truth clearly:
They reacted to the version of me I showed them — not the one I had been hiding.
They couldn’t feel me.
Because I didn’t let myself be felt.
I told the story like a script.
Not like a human.
And watching their confusion, I recognized the same pattern that shaped my childhood.
The Courage to Be Seen
Today I learned that courage isn’t fearlessness.
It’s honesty.
Honest that I was hurt.
Honest that I was abused.
Honest that I am scared.
Honest that I don’t have it all figured out.
Honest that I am autistic, pregnant, and navigating life with trembling hands and an open heart.
Honest that I need community.
People like me.
People who resonate emotionally, intuitively, deeply.
This is why I’m writing this.
This is why Act 1 must be raw.
This is why I’m starting again as DawnThePoet.
I am not teaching yet.
I am becoming.
A New Timeline
This is the beginning of a new path for me and my son.
One where I no longer hide my pain.
One where I speak my truth before life forces it out of me.
One where courage is not a costume, but a daily practice.
I’m stepping forward openly. Imperfectly. Human.
I see you.
And I hope — finally —
you see me too.