Whispering Wyrd

I don’t usually join the daily writing prompts, but this one speaks directly to my heart. Because the truth is simple… A place of breathtaking beauty, and for me, a place of profound healing. Right here where I have lived for the last 5 years.

I’ll be 60 years old in a few months. For most of my life until the last five years, I lived in utter despair. Severe clinical depression and addiction held me captive. First alcohol, then benzodiazepines. I tried again and again to get free back in Texas, but I couldn’t. The rural area where I lived was toxic to me. No one I knew seemed happy. Numbness, induced by substances, felt like the only way to survive. I didn’t live there, I merely existed.

Moving to the mountains of northern New Mexico saved my life. I had visited this place since childhood, and it was the only place I ever felt truly happy. I grew up dreaming of living here. And when I finally arrived, that dream became a kind of homecoming my soul had been waiting for.

Living here gave me the strength to heal. It’s where I finally broke free from everything that held me down. Getting off alcohol was hard. Getting off benzos after more than 20 years of daily, high-dose use was the hardest thing I have ever done. The year-long taper hurt in ways I didn’t think a person could survive. Two seizures. BIND (benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction). Multifocal PVCs, terrifying heart rhythms. Muscles so stiff I could barely walk. There were days I wasn’t sure I would make it through.

But now, ten months free, I am healing. For the first time since 7th grade,when I took my first drink, I feel whole again. These mountains, this sacred landscape, gave me what Texas never could… hope, strength, and a path forward.

Here, the world is alive. The rivers sing. The mountains stand watch. Ravens circle overhead with messages from older times. The forests remember. Even the Earth beneath my feet whispers its quiet healing as I walk gently across it.

This place of mystery, beauty, and deep, patient healing is where I always wanted to live. And now that I’m finally here, I wake every morning with joy in my heart, and every night I go to bed knowing I am home. Healing is possible!