The Mirror That Helped Me Find My Way Back

How a $10 door mirror and my children’s words became part of my healing after domestic abuse.

A note before you continue: This chapter talks about domestic abuse, severe depression, and suicidal thoughts. If now isn’t the right time to read it, that’s okay. I’ll still be here when you’re ready. Support resources are at the end.

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In late November 2017, my daughters and I walked into Walmart and bought a $10 door mirror. It wasn’t meant to be decoration. I bought it because I was trying to remember how to live.

Just a few weeks earlier, on November 3rd, I had left an abusive relationship. I call that day my Freedom Date. Two months before that — on September 17th, the night before my thirty-fourth birthday — I had reached a point so low that I started writing a goodbye letter. I survived that night, and I found the courage to leave. But here’s what nobody tells you: leaving doesn’t teach you how to live outside of it. Freedom was only the beginning.

My First Home After Freedom

My first home after leaving was a tiny three-bedroom, two-bathroom trailer. There was no central air, just a window unit in the living room. Mushrooms grew from the carpet inside one of the closets. It wasn’t in a safe neighborhood, and the people across the street were awake and moving at all hours of the night.

I didn’t sleep that first week. I stayed up peeking through the corner of the curtains, listening for anything that might threaten my children. I didn’t feel physically safe in that trailer — but we were safe from the abuse. My children no longer had to watch me get hurt. They no longer had to hear the screaming and the yelling. That little trailer was imperfect, but it was ours. It was freedom and independence. It was the first home I ever had as a free woman.

When Ordinary Tasks Felt Impossible

By late November, I was completely depleted. Years of being told I was worthless, that I was a bad person, had changed how I saw myself. I’d absorbed those words for so long that they sounded like my own thoughts. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed. Eating a microwave meal took nearly everything I had.

My son Cody was sixteen. He was in high school with exams and responsibilities of his own, but for about two months after my Freedom Date, he held our family together. He walked his five-year-old sister to the bus stop. He cooked dinner for the little ones, made sure they were bathed, and put them to bed on time. He made sure I ate. He carried far more than any sixteen-year-old should ever have to carry, and I still feel guilty that he had to grow up so fast — but I will never stop being grateful for what he did for us. I’ve told him what those months meant to me. His answer was that he would always take care of me if I needed him.

A Checklist for Living

I knew I had to find a way out of the depression — not just for me, but because my children were watching. I wanted to be the best mother I could be for them. I wanted them to see that healing was possible, to watch their mother become stronger, even if I had to start with the smallest steps imaginable.

I started watching self-help videos on YouTube, and in one of them, someone suggested writing positive affirmations on a bathroom mirror. That’s why my daughters and I bought the mirror. Across the top, I wrote myself a daily checklist:

• Wake up
• Pee
• Start coffee
• Take ACV
• Shower
• Hair and makeup
• Gym

Ordinary things. But nothing felt ordinary to me then. I needed written reminders of what a healthy day was supposed to hold. Doing my hair and makeup wasn’t about how I looked — it was a few minutes of caring for myself, of trying to feel something other than what I had survived. At first, I could only manage pieces of the list. Over time, I began doing more.

What My Daughters Saw

My older daughter was twelve, just days away from turning thirteen. She was visiting when she sat down with me and her five-year-old sister to write on the mirror. I helped my littlest with some of her words. Together they covered the glass in blue, pink, and black permanent marker, and surrounded every message with uneven little hearts.

They wrote:

“I am: The Best Mom Ever!!!”
“Silly”
“Very nice”
“Artistic”
“‘Veryest’ important”
“You are important!!!!”
“You smell like cookies”
“You are amazing”
“You are the greatest”
“You are Coolio”
“You are the best mom ever.”

Every single message landed somewhere in me. I wasn’t standing alone the first time I read them — I was sitting right beside my daughters, watching them make the mirror with me. Their words made me realize my children had been watching all along. They could see I was hurting, but they could also see things in me I couldn’t yet see in myself. They still believed I was important. They still thought I was artistic, amazing, silly, and “Coolio.” Most of all, they believed I was the best mom ever.

I didn’t suddenly feel healed. The depression didn’t disappear because we wrote kind words on a mirror. But those words gave me a reason to begin. I needed to heal so my children could watch me heal. I needed them to see me become stronger — not because I hid what happened, but because I refused to let it decide who their mother would become.

Small Steps Back to Myself

I started putting my infant daughter in her stroller and taking the kids for walks around the neighborhood. Inside the trailer, I tried to make life silly and playful again. My almost-two-year-old son had a walker he was technically too big for, but the trailer’s floor plan let him travel around and around in circles, laughing the whole way. Cody and I would put on ridiculous songs — the Llama Song, the Shrimp Song, others I can’t even remember now — and watch him dance.

Those moments mattered more than I can say. The children didn’t need a perfect house. They needed laughter. They needed peace. They needed a mother who kept trying.

I began working out. I started going to the gym. And I began painting. At first, the checklist was something I had to force myself to follow. About six months in, I noticed something had shifted — I was going to the gym every day because I wanted to, not because the mirror told me to. Working out made me feel accomplished. It made me happier. I could look into a mirror, notice small changes, and feel proud of the work I had done.

The Woman Who Began to Evolve

On December 10, 2017, while the mirror was still teaching me how to move through each day, I started a painting that would eventually become The Evolution of Her.

I didn’t set out to make a professional work of art. I never imagined showing it publicly. I simply started painting. The woman in the painting is turning away from the viewer, and as she walks away, more light falls across her body and the darkness begins to fall behind her. I wanted her to be a woman leaving behind the toxicity that no longer served her, turning toward a better life for herself and her children.

Without planning it, I placed the light onto the canvas first. I didn’t understand what I had done. I didn’t yet have a name for the process that would become Lumière Inversée. My hands understood something before I did: the farther she moved from the darkness, the more visible her light became.

At the time, I thought she was finished. But as she hung on my walls, I kept feeling that something was missing. In 2025, I returned to her and reimagined her shadows and highlights. She evolved from 2017 to 2025. So did I.

One Day at a Time

The mirror didn’t rescue me. It didn’t erase the abuse or instantly repair what was broken, and it didn’t make every day easy. What it did was give me somewhere to begin. Wake up. Start the coffee. Take a shower. Care for myself. Move my body. Be present for my children. Try again tomorrow.

The checklist stayed across the top. My daughters’ words surrounded my reflection every time I stood in front of that mirror. Some days I believed them more than others. But slowly, the things I once forced myself to do became things I wanted to do. The woman who could barely eat a microwave meal began walking, laughing, exercising, painting — finding her way back to herself.

The mirror stayed hanging because I still needed it. Every day, it reminded me of something my children understood before I was ready to believe it: I was important. I was still their mother. I was still here. And this too would pass. Something better was waiting on the other side.

That is where my paintings come from. When I say the light goes down first, this is what I mean — I learned it in a trailer with mushrooms in the closet and my children’s handwriting on a $10 mirror, before I ever had a name for it. If you live with a piece of mine, or you’re thinking about bringing one home, I want you to know exactly where its light began.

If You Need Support

If any part of this story feels familiar, please know that a network of people is ready to help. You don’t have to face an abusive or toxic situation alone.

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

FavorHouse of Northwest Florida
Counseling, shelter, and advocacy for survivors of domestic violence in Northwest Florida.
24-hour hotline: (850) 434-6600
Website: favorhouse.org

National Domestic Violence Hotline
Free and confidential support is available 24/7.
Call: 1-800-799-7233
Text: START to 88788
Website: thehotline.org

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Free and confidential support is available 24/7 for anyone experiencing emotional distress or a mental-health crisis.
Call or text: 988
Website: 988lifeline.org