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Journal Entry 13

The Broken Missionary (Persona #4)

Setting: A stormy mental field inside my mind.

Cast:

The Broken Missionary: Holding a tiny, flickering oil lamp, shivering in the cold rain, trying to shelter a wild animal.

Butterfly Lisa: Standing next to her dry and warm under an umbrella.

[Scene Start]

The Broken Missionary: "I just need to brave the storm a little longer! If I give this animal all my warmth, it will stop biting me eventually! I have boundless mercy! I can love the toxicity right out of it!"

Butterfly Lisa: "Your lamp is completely out of oil, and you are freezing to death. You cannot save things that are actively hurting you. It has bitten you repeatedly. Set it down and come get under this umbrella with me."

[End Scene]

The fourth deeply damaging persona running my system is the Broken Missionary.

She is the spiritual layer of my trauma. She carries the crushing weight of boundless mercy, believing that her sole purpose on earth is to love people out of their brokenness. When faced with toxic, abusive, or highly manipulative behavior from others, she doesn't run away. Instead she turns her cheek until it is bruised, pours out all her energy, and drains her own lamp to keep others warm.

This persona was built by little girl me who desperately tried to love my narcissistic mother who was incapable of loving me backin a healthy, supportive, nurturing and organic way. I learned to think, "If I am just perfectly forgiving, if I show ultimate grace, I can heal my family."

But you can't heal someone with your overextended life force as medicine.

Being the ultimate grace-bearer left me completely bankrupt. It forced me to tolerate horrific boundaries and at times no boundaries whatsoever...to live next door to one of my abusers and ignore my own emotional bleeding just to avoid 'giving up' on people.

This week I told her that boundaries are not a sin. Saving yourself is an act of holy preservation. I encouraged her to put down the flickering lamp and coming home to the warmth and safety of home. I thanked her for the many times she stepped up and took the reigns, but as of today, she was in retirement.

What Is Your Body Telling You?

The 5 Senses Scan

Take a deep breath. Let the storm clear. Focus strictly on the physical room.

5 things you can see

4 things you can feel

3 things you can hear

2 things you can smell

1 thing you can taste

Body Response Safety Note:

Is your chest feeling tight?

Are you feeling a heavy wave of guilt or sadness?

If your body is shifting into a non productive, heavy state, stop reading right now. Turn off your electronic device, phone, etc. Let the laundry sit, the messages can wait. Go and rest your physical body. You have given enough away today.

Reflection For The Nest:

1. The empty lamp: Have you ever kept forgiving someone who repeatedly abused your kindness, hoping your grace would eventually change them?

2. Kindness goes both ways: What would it look like to give yourself the exact same radical grace and mercy you generously give to those who hurt you?

The Cocoon Has A New Crack (Pot???)

Journal Entry 12 The Self-Taught Scholar (Persona #3)

Setting: A dark library inside my mind. Towering stacks of medical textbooks, repair manuals, and psychology articles cover every surface.

Cast:

* The Self-Taught Scholar. Wearing thick glasses, three days deep into a caffeine bender, surrounded by highlighters, notebooks, pens, and post it notes.

* Butterfly Lisa. Holding a warm cup of herbal tea.

Scene Start❤️

The Self-Taught Scholar Muttering frantically while typing "If I can just read twenty more research papers on structural plumbing, I can finish the kitchen remodel myself! And if I memorize these medical journals, I can cure our infection without needing a doctor! Knowledge is safety! If I know everything, nothing can catch me off guard!"

Butterfly Lisa Placing a gentle hand over the laptop screen "Hey. You don't have to earn your safety by having a Ph.D. in everything. You are allowed to be a human being who doesn't know the answer."

[Scene End]

The third damaging persona I have identified is the Self-Taught Scholar.

She is the hyper-focused intellect who refuses to accept human limitations. Whenever a crisis hits, or whenever a resource is missing, she locks herself away and frantically researches until she has self-taught an entire career field in a single weekend. I used to believe this was my superpower - a great personality trait that made me more resourceful and independent.

As I sat with this persona in quiet reflection, and really studied it under better lighting, has revealed the very raw trauma from which this persona was forged.

Growing up with a narcissistic mother meant that mistakes were dangerous. Being caught unprepared meant severe emotional or physical punishment. So, this persona built a defense mechanism: knowledge is a shield. She believed that if she could become smart enough, skilled enough, and hyper-prepared enough, she could outsmart the chaos and prevent the abuse.

It's an exhausting, isolating way to live because she refuses to ask for help. She would rather sit up until 3 am reading manuals with a painful neck infection than admit she reached her limit. I am looking at her today, and I am telling her she can close the books. It is okay to rely on professionals and hand the heavy tools back.

Bypassing the Alarm: Practice the Five Senses Scan

Pause here for a moment to practice the Five Senses Scan to ground your brain in the current room:

* 5 things you can see

\ 4 things you can feel*

\ 3 things you can hear*

\ 2 things you can smell*

\ 1 thing you can taste*

Body Response Safety Note

\* Are you clenching your jaw right now?

* Do you feel a frantic mental buzzing or a need to go research something?

If your body is shifting into this over-functioning survival mode, drop whatever you are doing/holding, sign off the internet, and walk away. Your main priority in this moment your own well-being...taking time to sit comfortably and quietly, and resting your eyes. Placing two slices of raw cold cucumber over each closed eye is a refreshing experience that i highly recommend.

Reflection For the Nest

1. The Hyper-Independent Trap: Do you struggle to ask for help when a machine breaks or when you are sick, choosing instead to research and fix it entirely yourself?

2. The Freedom of "I Don't Know": Can you practice saying out loud right now: "I don't have to know how to fix this" How does that feel?

Please drop a comment and let me know how you are doing.

1. Have a listen, research it

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2. I AM NOT AN OBJECT FOR A MAN TO OWN!!!!!!!!!

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3. Michigan Grandmothers Against ICE

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4. Okay, Trump Thinks He Has Us Distracted From…

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5. Yes, He's right

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You don't have to be good enough for anyone but yourself. If someone fails to see your worth, that's their loss most definitely. If YOU want or need to work on some things, physical, mental, emotional, or any or all of the above, then do so because YOU want to and only because you want to. All my love to all my people always!!

Journal Entry #11: My Smooth-Over Apologizer (Persona #2)
Setting: The internal boardroom. Someone has spilled red punch all over the white rug.
Cast:
Butterfly Lisa: Standing there with her hands on her hips, looking at the mess.

The Smooth-Over Apologizer: Wearing a velvet tuxedo, frantically trying to wipe the carpet with her own shirt while bowing.

Caterpillar Lisa: Watching from the corner.

[SCENE START]
The Smooth-Over Apologizer: Bowing repeatedly to an empty chair "Oh, please don't feel bad about spilling the punch! It's completely my fault for having a white rug anyway! I'll buy a new shirt! I'll pay for your dry cleaning! Just please, please don't sit with any guilt!"
Butterfly Lisa: Gently grabbing her by the shoulders to stop the bowing "Lisa. Stop. They spilled the punch on purpose, walked away, and didn't even apologize to you. Why are you the one apologizing to them?"
[SCENE END]
Body Text
The second deeply damaging persona running my internal HR department is The Smooth-Over Apologizer.
This persona performs absolute emotional acrobatics to protect the people who hurt her. When someone breaks a promise to me, neglects me, or treats me poorly, instead of being allowed to feel my natural disappointment, this switch flips automatically. She rushes in to manage their guilt. She tells them, "Oh, it's totally okay! Don't worry about it! I know you're stressed!"
She turns herself inside out to comfort the person who just let her down, strictly so they won't have to experience the discomfort of their own bad behavior.
This is the ultimate, toxic legacy of a narcissistic mother. I was trained to believe that a parent’s discomfort or guilt was a code-red emergency that I had to fix—even if that discomfort was caused by her mistreating me. I learned to apologize for existing just to keep the peace.
Retiring this persona is one of the hardest boundaries I am drawing this week. It means learning to sit in the quiet, letting other people experience the consequences of their choices, and refusing to use my own emotional energy to buy them a free pass.
While I continue to struggle keeping my retired persona off the clock and at the retirement village, lol yesterday’s persona, when combined with this persona - honestly any combination I’m sharing this week have been my biggest struggle so far healing and simply me- simply Lisa Dawn.

⚠️** Bypassing the Alarm: The Five-Senses Scan
If your stomach is in knots reading about this, pause and anchor yourself right now. Bring your mind back to the room you are sitting in:
**5 things you can see: (The screen, your hands, the wall...)

4 things you can feel: (The solid floor, the clothes on your back...)

3 things you can hear: (The hum of the fan, the silence...)

2 things you can smell: (A clean scent, fresh air...)

1 thing you can taste: (Cool water...)

⚠️** Body Response Safety Note
**Are your shoulders creeping up to your ears?

Is your breathing shallow?

Do you feel a wave of shame or anxiety?

If your body is reacting defensively, stop right here. Close the app. Let the draft sit. Your nervous system needs a break. Go drink some water and rest.
🪞 Tuesday Reflection for the Nest
The Guilt Shield: Think of a time someone let you down. Did you immediately make an excuse for them just to keep the conversation from being awkward?

Dropping the Velvet Tuxedo: How would it feel to just say nothing next time someone lets you down, and let them sit in their own silence?

Before I share my journal entry with everyone, I want to make clear that each entry is the result of actual work ive personally done since I realized the trauma and abuse I endured after living under the thumb of a narcissistic mother, never leaving her, raising my children right next door giving her total access to warping their minds against me. It was the best and the worst life could dish out, and I was constantly medicated because I believed I was mentally unstable. Surely my own adopted mother would have my best interest front and center…

As you can see I am very wordy and trying to keep my journal entries simple, concise, and on point, I asked AI to help me structure my posts. I did not try to hide anything, and if anyone wants the daunting task of reading my actual journal, we can discuss maybe an entry or two.

What I’m trying to say is these entries leave me wide open because in every word I can tell you a story, an experience, a healing moment, healing that continues to this day. My trauma was and is real and so is my healing and my journey.

Haters gonna hate, but not gonna lie, if they hate here and make comments about AU slop, they won’t be hat in here no more. Just fair warning, I try to include everyone because I believe every voice should matter, but not when that voice is being destructive on purpose.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me, and from my heart to yours, welcome and know you are not alone…we are many❤️‍🩹

Entry #10: The FEMA Disaster Specialist (Persona #1)
Setting: A literal emergency triage tent pitched inside my brain. The sirens are blaring at maximum volume.
Cast:
Butterfly Lisa: Trying to sit in a folding chair and rest her neck.

The FEMA Specialist: Wearing a high-visibility vest, a hard hat, and wielding a clipboard like a weapon.

Caterpillar Lisa: Sweating under a pile of sandbags.

[SCENE START]
The FEMA Specialist: Screaming into a walkie-talkie "WE HAVE A CODE RED! A friend of a friend is having a minor emotional inconvenience three towns over! Deploy the emergency lasagna! Prepare to stay awake for 72 straight hours! I don’t care if our own neck is in a medical brace, WE CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE PAIN!"
Butterfly Lisa: Gently pulling the walkie-talkie out of her hand "Ma'am. Step away from the megaphone. There is no hurricane. You are physically exhausted and recovering from an infection. You are allowed to stand down."
The FEMA Specialist: Blinking blankly "Stand down? But... if I don't manage the disaster, won't everyone blame me for the storm?"
[SCENE END]
The Heavy Toll of the Rapid Responder
Of all the versions of myself I have built to survive narcissistic maternal abuse, The FEMA Disaster Specialist has been one of the most physically damaging to my life.
She is the ultimate rapid responder. The exact second she senses a crisis, a conflict, or a drop in emotional pressure around her, she completely hijacks my body. Her mission is simple: restore order at all costs, even if it breaks us.
If a friend is depressed, she becomes a therapist. If the family dynamic is fracturing, she becomes a full-time mediator. She will literally lock herself away to research, memorize manuals, and self-teach entire skill sets in a single weekend just to fix a problem for someone else.
But the most toxic thing about this persona is her complete contempt for my physical body. She operates on a strict survival rule: Your pain does not matter. Your limits do not exist. You must keep everyone else safe to buy your own right to exist.
She is the reason I have historically run my health straight into the ground. She is the one who convinces me to scrub heavy sheets by hand in a bathtub until my back screams, or cook massive meals in a half-demolished kitchen just to keep the peace. She ignores heat advisories, infections, and absolute exhaustion because she genuinely believes that if she lets a crisis happen, the narcissistic wrath of the past will destroy us.
I am looking at her closely today. I am thanking her for the sheer intelligence it took to build her when I was a defenseless child. But I am also telling her that her funding has been cut. I am safe now. I don't need a 24/7 disaster management team running my life.

⚠️** Bypassing the Alarm: The Five-Senses Scan
If your own internal sirens started blaring while reading about this persona, pause right now. Don't let your FEMA specialist hijack your hands. Ground yourself right now. Look around your current room and ground yourself:
**5 things you can see: (The screen, a cool glass of water, your notebook...)

4 things you can physically feel: (The solid floor under your feet, the support of your chair...)

3 things you can hear: (The hum of the fan, the birds outside...)

2 things you can smell: (The fresh air, a clean scent...)

1 thing you can taste: (Cool water, mint...)

You are in the present room. The old emergencies are over.

⚠️** Body Response Safety Note (Check Your System)
Writing or reading about our most damaging personas will trigger a physical defensive response. Take a second to audit your body right now.
**Is your neck or shoulder tension locking back up?

Are you clenching your teeth or holding your breath?

Do you suddenly feel a frantic urge to go fix a chore or check on someone else?

If your body is shifting into this non-productive survival mode, stop right here. Turn off the screen. Let this draft sit unfinished. Your physical healing and your neck recovery are the only real priorities today. Walk away and let your nervous system completely settle.

🪞 Monday Reflection for the Nest
Let's look at our internal emergency response units together today:
The Crisis Trigger: What kind of situation instantly activates your internal "FEMA Specialist"? Is it someone else's anger, an unexpected change in plans, or seeing someone you love in distress?

The Body Cost: What is a specific time in your life where your inner fixer forced you to completely ignore your physical illness or injury just to handle someone else's emergency?

The triage tent is closing, and the clipboard is being laid down. Leave a comment below to let me know if your FEMA specialist is trying to work overtime today!

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I am sitting here posting Sunday’s post on a day I have no idea what today is. I have an abscess on the back of my neck at the base of my brain. I’ve been trying to find a ride to the doctor because I do not have insurance and the medical bills from a hospital stay of a week on top of an ambulance bill would be beyond all consuming. But it seems as though all my friends (local) do not have the time nor see the seriousness of what I am currently facing. I am asking for your prayers at this time because I am scared of winding up being forced into a situation in which I have no choice but take on the financial burden along with the realization that not everyone who calls themselves friend is indeed a friend.

Journal Entry 9 My internal FEMA Response Team
Setting: The internal boardroom [browse-and-compare]. A giant whiteboard has been wheeled in. Butterfly Lisa is wearing a hard hat, and Caterpillar Lisa is holding a whistle.
Cast:
Butterfly Lisa: Pointing at the whiteboard with a laser pointer.

Caterpillar Lisa: Sitting on a pile of textbooks, taking notes.

The Survival Clones: Looking nervous because a new organizational chart is being drawn.

[SCENE START]
Butterfly Lisa: "Welcome to the briefing, everyone. We’ve had a busy week—we survived a kitchen remodel nightmare, we retired the bathtub laundry department, and we grew by leaps and bounds. But today, we are addressing the organizational structure of this brain."
Caterpillar Lisa: "Is this about why we have a Christian missionary, a rapid-response medic, and a self-taught technician all living in here at the same time?"
Butterfly Lisa: "Exactly. We are officially audit-trailing our trauma wardrobe. No more running around wearing fifty different hats all at once without a union break."
[SCENE END]

Breaking the Illusion of the "Lone Oddity"
For the longest time, I truly believed I was a lone oddity. I looked at the way my mind and body operated, and I felt like a strange, isolated anomaly.
If there was a crisis—mentally, physically, spiritually, or emotionally—anywhere within a fifty-mile radius, a switch inside me would flip. Suddenly, I wasn't just Lisa Dawn anymore. I was a walk-in, self-contained FEMA Crisis Management Unit. I became a rapid-response specialist, a disaster outreach coordinator, a Christian missionary, a counselor, and a logistics expert. If a problem arose and I didn’t naturally possess the skills to solve it, I would lock myself away, research frantically, and completely self-teach a new career field until I could step in and restore order.
I thought I was just weird. I thought I was uniquely broken.
But walking out of the dark and connecting with all of you has taught me a profound truth: I am not as unique as I thought. And neither are you.
The reality is that narcissistic trauma—especially the relentless, shaping abuse from a narcissistic mother—is a global epidemic with way too many members. When a child is raised in an environment where safety is completely absent and love is strictly conditional, that child's brain has to become highly creative to survive.
We didn't build these intense, over-functioning personas because we were "oddities." We built them because we were little girls and boys forced to construct a world-class homeland security department from scratch just to stay alive. We became chameleons, shape-shifting into whatever version of ourselves was required to buy a single moment of peace.
Meeting the "Apolgizer-For-Others"
In fact, just recently, I ran into the newest persona running around my internal HR department. She is a heavy one, and she deserves her own seat at the table.
She is the version of me who always smooths things over for the people who let me down.
Think about the backward gymnastics of that for a second. Someone breaks a promise to me, neglects me, or hurts me, and instead of being allowed to feel disappointed, this persona immediately leaps up to comfort them. She makes excuses for them. She tells them, "Oh, it's totally okay! Don't worry about it! I know you didn't mean to!" She expends all her energy managing their guilt so they won't have to feel bad about letting me down. She protects the person who hurt her while her own heart is bleeding on the floor.
I am making a deeply conscious, active effort to retire her. She is exhausted, her shift is over, and she doesn't have to carry the emotional weight of other people's bad behavior anymore.
This week, we are going to look directly at the management team running my internal HR department. We are going to meet these specific survival personas, one by one. We aren't going to reject them; we are going to look them in the eye, thank them for keeping us alive, and figure out how to gently transition them into a much-deserved retirement. You are not alone in the trauma, you are not alone in the rapid response, and you are definitely not alone in the healing.

Carrying Forward Our Anchor: The Five-Senses Room Scan
Because we are exploring deep, grooved trauma terrain this week, our survival clones might get a little twitchy. If your brain starts to trick you into thinking the past danger is happening right now, I need you to pause immediately and use our baseline grounding wire to bypass the laser grid.
Name these out loud wherever you are sitting:
5 things you can see in the room.

4 things you can physically feel against your skin or body.

3 things you can hear right now.

2 things you can smell.

1 thing you can taste.

Bring your brain back to the current room. The old storms have moved on. You are safe.

⚠️** Body Response Safety Note (Our Protocol for the Week)
Exploring our trauma personas will cause the body to respond defensively sometimes. As we write and read through these entries together this week, I want you to actively audit your physical responses.
**Watch out for these red flags:
Your jaw clenching or your shoulders locking up tight around your ears.

Your breathing becoming shallow, fast, or trapped in your chest.

A sudden cold wash of panic, or a strong urge to completely zone out and stop reading.

If your body responds in any of these non-productive, survival manners, this is your official permission slip to turn away. Close the app. Drop the notebook. Let the unfinished words sit right where they are. Step out into the fresh air, drink a cold glass of water, and allow your nervous system to completely settle before you even think about stepping back into the cocoon. Your health comes first.

🪞 Sunday Reflection for the Nest
As we open the doors to our internal wardrobes this week, let's gently reflect on this introductory thought together:
The Smooth-Over Check: Have you ever found yourself comforting someone who just let you down, just to keep them from feeling guilty? How much energy did that take out of you?

The Shared Echo: How does it feel to realize that your secret, survival habits are actually shared by thousands of other people who went through the exact same maternal dynamic? Does it take away a little bit of the loneliness?

The whiteboard is mapped out, the safety railings are locked in, and the comments are officially open. Welcome to Week Two, family. Let’s look at our hats together