The danger can end long before the fear does.
For a long time, I didn't understand that.
When I think about my childhood, I don't remember living in a constant state of fear. In fact, there was a strange kind of peace in the emptiness I experienced.
I knew something was missing. I could feel it, even when I couldn't remember what it was. But without those memories, I was able to experience a fairly normal childhood after the trauma.
At least, that's how it appeared.
I wasn't constantly thinking about what had happened. I wasn't consciously reliving experiences I couldn't remember. I went to school, played, laughed, and did many of the ordinary things children do.
But something remained beneath the surface.
And I didn't have the words to explain it.
When You Don't Understand Your Own Feelings
Even before adolescence, there were things about myself that I couldn't understand.
I was shy. I had difficulty trusting men. And I had an unusual discomfort with dolls and certain kinds of childhood play.
I didn't know why.
I simply knew that playing with dolls brought feelings I couldn't identify. Something about it made me uncomfortable, almost as though I were experiencing emotions that didn't belong to the moment.
I felt strange. Different.
When you're a child, you don't necessarily question where those feelings come from. You just assume they're part of who you are.
And sometimes, you begin to wonder whether something is wrong with you.
It wasn't until adulthood that I finally understood why dolls affected me that way.
The realization came from something so ordinary that I never could have predicted it.
A pack of sugar-free chewing gum.
I usually bought a strong mint flavor, but that day I chose something softer. When I started chewing it, the taste was immediately familiar.
It reminded me of the gum a therapist had given me during sessions when I was very young, after my father sexually abused me.
During those sessions, puppets and dolls were used to help me communicate about what had happened. I was also asked to use dolls during interviews connected to my father's prosecution.
Those experiences involved having to communicate things that no child should ever have to explain.
And suddenly, years later, I understood why dolls had always made me uncomfortable.
I wasn't afraid of dolls themselves.
They were connected to experiences I hadn't consciously understood for much of my life.
The taste of chewing gum had brought that connection into focus.
Memory is complicated, particularly when trauma is involved. I don't pretend that every unexplained reaction has a single cause or that memories always work the way we expect.
But that moment helped me make sense of something I'd carried since childhood.
And understanding changed how I saw myself.
When the Aftershock Became Louder
As I entered adolescence, the emotional effects became much harder to ignore.
The emptiness that had once offered a strange sense of peace was replaced by feelings I couldn't always understand or control.
Guilt. Shame. Fear. Nausea.
Sometimes those feelings were so powerful that they became physically overwhelming.
And they didn't arrive on a schedule.
I could be having a perfectly ordinary day when something suddenly changed how I felt.
The smell of beer on someone's breath.
A familiar cologne.
The rough texture of stubble on a man's face.
Certain images or sensations.
Sometimes I recognized the connection. Other times, I couldn't identify what had triggered the reaction at all.
I only knew that something had shifted.
The world around me hadn't changed, but my experience of it had.
That's one of the things I wanted to express in Aftershock.
“The room was quiet. My mind wasn't. The world moved on. I couldn't.”
To someone watching from the outside, everything might have appeared normal.
But the absence of visible danger didn't mean I felt safe.
And because I didn't understand what was happening, I often assumed the problem was me.
The Future I Was Afraid I'd Never Have
Adolescence is already a confusing time.
You're learning about relationships, attraction, identity, and the kind of life you hope to build.
For me, those experiences were complicated by feelings I didn't know how to separate from my past.
I was attracted to boys. I wanted to experience love and connection.
But I struggled with the idea of being physically or emotionally close to someone.
I couldn't understand how I could want a relationship while experiencing such powerful discomfort around aspects of intimacy.
I began to worry that I would never have the future I wanted.
That I would never find love.
That I would never experience the kind of closeness other people seemed to take for granted.
Those fears contributed to a period of deep depression and despair.
There were times when I didn't want to wake up.
I wasn't making plans to end my life. I didn't want to take my own life. But I was exhausted by what I was feeling, and the thought of simply not waking up sometimes seemed like relief.
I want to be clear that those feelings belong to a period of my past. They aren't how I feel today.
But they were real.
And I think it's important to acknowledge how painful life can become when you don't understand your own emotional responses.
I wasn't weak.
I was a young person trying to make sense of experiences that were far bigger than my ability to understand them at the time.
Understanding What Was Happening
Therapy became an important part of my life during my teenage years.
Over time, I began learning more about trauma, memory, anxiety, and the ways our minds and bodies can respond to experiences long after they're over.
I eventually came to understand that trauma-related responses don't always require a conscious memory of the original experience.
Our brains can form associations between sensory experiences and emotional responses. A smell, taste, sound, or texture may become connected to something frightening or painful.
Those associations can sometimes produce strong reactions even when we aren't consciously thinking about the past.
That helped me understand something I'd struggled with for years.
I wasn't choosing to feel ashamed.
I wasn't deliberately making myself afraid.
And the feelings themselves weren't proof that something was wrong with me.
They were experiences I could begin to understand rather than judgments I had to accept about myself.
But understanding something intellectually and changing how you respond emotionally aren't always the same process.
That's why the bridge of Aftershock matters so much to me.
“Healing wasn't forgetting. Healing was teaching my nervous system what my mind already knew.”
For me, healing involved years of therapy, reflection, and learning more about the human mind.
It wasn't a single breakthrough.
It was a gradual process of recognizing old beliefs, questioning them, and learning that the shame I'd carried never belonged to me.
The Things That Still Remind Me
Something I want people to understand is that healing hasn't erased every reaction I have to my past.
I still don't enjoy playing with dolls.
Even when I'm playing with my own children, I can experience that familiar discomfort.
The difference is that I understand it now.
I don't feel that something is deeply wrong with me because of it.
I recognize the association, acknowledge the feeling, and don't attach the same meaning to it that I did as a child.
Other reminders have changed, too.
The scent of beer on someone's breath, my father's cologne, or the texture of facial stubble can still bring memories to the surface.
But they don't affect me the way they once did.
Sometimes they simply remind me that I had a father.
That there was a childhood.
That there are things I remember and experiences that belong to my history.
The memories are softer now.
I can acknowledge them and move on with my day.
They don't have to become an overwhelming emotional experience.
And perhaps one of the most meaningful changes is that I'm now able to experience intimacy with my husband without the nausea and shame that once complicated my understanding of relationships.
The future I once feared I would never have became possible.
Not because the past disappeared.
But because my relationship with it changed.
The Difference Between Remembering and Reliving
I used to struggle with feelings that seemed to arrive without explanation.
Now, I can often recognize where those feelings come from.
I don't have to accept every emotion as a reflection of who I am.
I don't have to carry guilt for someone else's actions.
And I don't have to treat every reminder of my past as a threat to my present.
That doesn't mean I've reached some imaginary place where nothing can ever affect me again.
It means I've learned that a memory can exist without controlling the moment I'm living in.
A familiar scent can remind me of my father without taking away my peace.
An uncomfortable feeling can surface without convincing me that something is wrong with me.
I can remember without reliving.
I can acknowledge without carrying.
And I can move forward without pretending I've forgotten.
Why I Wrote Aftershock
When people think about surviving trauma, they often focus on the event itself.
The moment something happened.
The moment it ended.
The moment someone was finally safe.
But there can be another story that unfolds afterward.
A quieter one.
The story of trying to understand feelings that don't make sense. Of questioning yourself. Of wondering whether the life you want will ever be possible.
And eventually, perhaps, the story of discovering that your past doesn't have to determine your future.
That's what Aftershock represents to me.
Not a lifetime of being trapped in fear.
Not a declaration that every difficult feeling has disappeared.
But the journey from confusion and shame toward understanding and peace.
I didn't need every reminder of my childhood to disappear before I could reclaim my life.
I needed to understand that those reminders didn't define me.
The girl who once feared she would never experience love grew into a woman who could.
The child who felt something was deeply wrong with her eventually understood that she had been carrying feelings connected to things that were never her responsibility.
And the woman I am today can remember her past without allowing it to become her entire identity.
“The earthquake doesn't own me. The fear doesn't define me.”
The aftershocks were real.
So was the healing.
And I am so much more than either one.
With love,
Ashley Gail Miller 🖤💗