The harsh dimness that follows loss isn’t static, but charged with the energy of immanent change. Hurt, I was left with a choice: wallow and stay in the dark, or seek light and fight to reach it. These two paths emerged. I had this choice to make. Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. I saw that this mountain valley, haunted by senseless murders, darker, had absorbed unthinkable violence and turned it into mesmerizing light.

Back home, my mother would still impulsively choose my clothes as she'd chosen my name. But all the identities she'd chosen for me felt wrong, now. I could not return to the person she'd picked for me to be. My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

I hated my inability to explain my life on the trail to her and my mother’s inability to comprehend. I hated her consistent need to know the list of different foods I’d eaten that day. I remembered how she’d asked me if I’d had a good dinner in the same phone call when I’d told her I’d been raped.I considered, tomorrow night, not calling her.

I walked home holding Tom’s hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him.

The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden’s soil and grow until at last it was undeniable.

My mom used to tell me, “I don’t like my mother, but I love her.

In fact, because I liked him so badly, I needed to continue on my course. I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be, and she was whom I needed to show Dash—and myself.

I walked, floated, lighter—forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self—forgiveness for my innocence.

Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.

My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed.