My sister came home to our family at 11 months old. I was two and a half. She came as a foster child with severe abuse and neglect. Just like my other siblings who came later, but were born to my parents, she arrived in a car. I didn't know anything else. We grew up together — which means I didn't see the ripple effects of her early trauma for what they were. It was just life. It was just our family.

My parents surrounded her with love, a good education, and a faith community that believed in new starts. They poured themselves out for her in every way they knew how. And still, something wasn't reaching her. She carried a lie that had been whispered to her soul in infancy — you're just not worth it — and no amount of love seemed loud enough to drown it out.

As her sister, I learned early to fly under the radar. I became the good kid — the one who didn't add to the weight. I remember getting a speeding ticket in high school and deciding I'd handle it myself. I didn't want to bring one more problem through the door. I sent the payment to the wrong address, because I never asked for help. That small, quiet moment captures something I wouldn't understand until much later — that trauma in a family doesn't just affect the child at the center of it. It shapes everyone around them, often in ways nobody notices, including themselves.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to understand what I'd been watching all those years. My sister's extreme behaviors weren't choices — they were needs. Needs that no one, not even the people who loved her most, knew how to meet.

That realization changed everything for me.

Why isn't love enough — and what does it take to actually heal?

That question drove me to study human development and family studies at the master's level. It drove me to pursue a second degree in clinical mental health counseling. It drove me into training rooms learning Accelerated Resolution Therapy, TBRI, Gottman, and betrayal trauma work. Not because I needed more credentials — but because I needed better answers.

I believe in a God who restores. I've seen it happen. And I've learned that restoration often comes through understanding — through finally seeing the need beneath the behavior, and meeting it with something more targeted than love alone. That's the kind of love that really heals.

That's the work I do. That's why I do it.