No One Is Strong Enough Alone Everyone Needs Someone To Show Them The Way

For many, many years, I’ve been afraid to be honest about who I was, because I knew that being honest meant telling the truth about the fact that I wasn’t as strong as I wanted the world to think I was. For the first time in my entire life I am getting seriously honest about the fact that yes I am weak, and I am human, and I have invisible injuries that are still healing.

Now that I am deliberately choosing to live authentically, I am learning that means admitting that I don’t have all the answers about healing from mental health issues, but it also means acknowledging those who are teaching me how to get better.

Much like breaking a bone, when your brain or your heart hurt, you have to approach the healing as if you are repairing the damage of a muscle. To that end, I am teaching my brain that it’s okay to be wrong, it’s okay to ask for help, and it’s okay to admit that I am doing these things, instead of pretending that I know everything there is to healing.

For the first time in my life, I am starting to realize that I am becoming more aware of what those who live with addictions are dealing with. Which is important since I used to work in addictions, and I genuinely believed I knew what I was talking about.

Now I do know what I am talking about, and I want to keep a record of this healing journey so that

  1. I always have these videos and podcasts to come back to.
  2. I can show other people that it can be done.

I didn’t really “want” to help other people when I started this website, I wanted to help myself, but helping myself means that at a certain point it has to stop being about me all the time. To that end in these pages you will find conversations that I have had with other survivors, educators, healers, philosophers, and teachers, who are showing me what I didn’t know I needed to know, so that I and others can heal.

For years I was afraid to let myself break, because I thought that I would never be able to come up for air, if I let myself genuinely drown in and feel, the pain that I had been holding back. Now I know that I can come back from the brink of an emotional break, now I know that I have survived every last bad day I’ve ever had. I didn’t think I was strong enough to heal from all of the trauma that I have experienced.

Not only am I learning that I am in fact strong enough, but that even though it hurts some of the time, I am enjoying the process of getting to know myself in ways that I didn’t know I needed to. I hope that as I continue to live openly and loudly as possible, you will find the inspiration you need, to live as you need to live, so you can find your happiest, healthiest self.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall

CURRENT PROJECTS

The vlog series is called Setting Myself Free and it’s all about where I am in the moment. Each week I will upload a new video discussing how I am doing, and what I am thinking and feeling, so that other survivors out there who are thinking they are alone, can follow along with my journey and perhaps get inspired to document their own.
The Podcast, Comfortably Uncomfortable Conversations, will continue to be about getting to know real people who have survived, and learned to thrive in a world that tells them they should not. From comic book lovers to sexual assault survivors, the conversations will transform the ideas you have about being “alone.”
The Podcast Short Story Lost Love Diaries airs every Sunday at 9am PST for the next few weeks. Much like the vlog I will be discussing my healing journey and talking about my experience as a sexual assault survivor.