When the Safe Place Becomes the Scariest Place

Fighting for my voice when the pain becomes too much to bear

There’s a certain kind of safety we attach to our bedrooms. It’s where we retreat at the end of a long day, where we curl up under layers of blankets and let the world fade away. For me, it’s where I’ve felt the safest, most in control, and most myself for a very long time now. In just the last few years, several health issues have left me virtually bed-bound - which is no way to live a life, it’s no way to nurture a marriage, and most challengingly, it’s no way to consistently engage with a kindergartener. My bedroom has been both the place I feel safest, and the place where some of the most terrifying moments of my life have originated. This feels particularly cruel that this has now been the backdrop for three of the most terrifying health related experiences of my life in the last 14 moths - experiences where in the moment, the caliber of pain was so intense that I was unable to speak, unable to communicate, unable to ask for what I need - I was just.. unable.

The first time this happened, it was November of 2023, and I’d never encountered this challenge before. I had an early morning Telehealth appointment and woke up with the worst migraine I’d ever experienced, drenched in sweat, a fever climbing so high it eventually topped out at 105 degrees. I was barely coherent, slipping in and out of consciousness, unable to communicate more than a few garbled words despite some clearly asked questions. My husband administered a quick injection with my emergency medication and then carried me out of the house, driving as fast as possible to the nearest hospital. What started as an adrenal crisis was actually a response to an abscess and an infection in my brain - bacterial meningitis.

It’s hard to describe the disorientation of being so gravely ill that you lose track of yourself—your body’s basic functions betraying you, your mind adrift in fevered chaos. And when the hospital discharged me nine days later, I came home to the very room where it had all begun, trying to reconcile safety with trauma. I was barely conscious in the beginning, spending most of my time asleep or laying alone in the quiet in the dark. I was challenged to stay in that environment for nearly the next 14 weeks - in that same bed, with that same migraine, slowly mentally unfurling the blurred lines between safe and unsafe, fear and memory.

Eventually, I thought I’d come up for air.

The second time was in April 2024. I had literally been back on my feet for maybe 3 weeks when a sharp sudden pain pierced through my right side. I immediately threw up in my bed - something I’ve NEVER done before. I always make it to the toilet or the garbage can. But I couldn’t move fast enough. Shortly afterwards, my husband found me collapsed on the floor, cradling my abdomen, gasping for breath and unable to take off my pajamas or even to sit up. He immediately called 9-1-1 - and thank heavens he did. I lost consciousness as the EMT’s carried me out of my house on a stretcher and loaded me into the back of their ambulance rig. Later, I would learn it was a spontaneous ectopic pregnancy (something I was assured could never happen to me,) and my fallopian tube had ruptured, filling my abdomen with quite a bit of blood. The pain was so overwhelming that words failed me entirely, leaving me trapped in silence, my body’s betrayal complete. The terror of nearly dying on my own bedroom floor haunted me long after the physical pain had subsided.

That experience broke me - it broke my body, my soul, my fight, my spirit. It took my voice. And my heart has been working so hard for the last 5 months to put it all back together into whatever this new version of Amanda might look like. As 2024 transitioned into 2025, I’d somehow begun stitching the reality of fear and pain with safety and comfort back together again, and was starting to felt like my room was a place I could both want and need to be.

I’d just started to feel hopeful again that my bedroom and I could have a clean slate, a new start, and then again, the next shoe dropped.

(Another note: I will never use the term radical acceptance, but I will allow for the term acknowledgement; and here I am acknowledging that this body has, and likely will continue to have several obstacles hurtled it’s way, and call I can realistically do is keep my eyes open, have a plan in place, and try not to fixate on the waiting period.)

Yesterday, it happened again. I woke up in such severe pain I was unable to communicate. On Saturday I’d developed a dull ache in my lower back on the left side, which intensified until I was doubled over in pain, nearly unable to move. I was severely nauseous, dehydrated, and had a radiating headache which rivaled the source of the pain itself. As someone who has both passed kidney stones before and is pre-disposed to them, I was pretty sure I knew what was happening. I thought I could pound the fluids, run a few extra liters via IV, and pass them on my own. When I became entirely unable to move or speak or communicate, we recognized this was yet another emergency, another trip to the hospital, another moment where my body rendered me speechless, defenseless. Once again, my bedroom transformed into a battleground, my sanctuary turned hostile.

There’s a deep vulnerability in being so unwell that communication is impossible. It’s as if your body, your voice, your sense of self all dissolve under the weight of pain. And yet, each time, I’ve come back to this room. I’ve laid down in this bed, wrapped myself in these blankets, cried my eyes out, and tried to make sense of the horror that has unfolded here. I think as I’m learning to feel my feelings in real time and hold space for both—the safety and the trauma, the comfort and the fear. It’s a fragile balance, one I wish I didn’t have to navigate, but here I am, doing my best to weave them together.

I share this because maybe you’ve been there, too; in a place that’s supposed to be safe, only to have it serve as a backdrop to your scariest moments?

Maybe you, too, are trying to find your way back to feeling safe again, despite the memories that linger.

I see you.

I feel you.

And today I believe in the middle -

That there’s space to hold fear and healing together.

That there’s a space to hold pain and comfort together.

I can’t do it alone.

We can’t do it alone.

Why? Because people need other people.

Especially when they’re only working at partial capacity.

This weekend was a setback. It was my second ER trip in 6 days (the first one for unrelenting abdominal pain that still has no identified source or resolution,) and not how I’d hoped to emerge into the new year, but my pep-talk provider reminded me that even though healing time is needed, yesterday is already in the past. And maybe, perhaps, it could have nothing to do with the future.

So I’m gonna hold my breath on that one. I’m going to wish on stars and candles and send extra hopes up to the stars.

Today I just needed to digest and exhale the experience of being in so much pain you’re rendered unable to communicate - and knowing that’s a pushing point I’ve reached three different ways in the last year, it’s something I have to be mindful of going forward. I have to be prepared if I’m alone. Or alone with my daughter. I have to use my voice when I have it, so that someone else can recognize when I’ve lost it.

Here’s to words - may we always have more than we need, may we find them while there’s time, and may they meld safe and scary into something that feels like home again.