Long before I had memories of my own, I was already carrying someone else’s.
The Dryer Window: A Legacy of Finding a Way In
There is a biological theory that trauma is a stowaway, passed down on a cellular level from woman to woman. Because a female is born with every egg she will ever carry, the terrors my grandmother faced while being shot and disabled by my grandfather were already imprinted in my mother’s DNA, and subsequently, in mine. I was born into a 1970s courtroom drama where the men at the local pub decided “not guilty,” leaving my mother to navigate a childhood of split custody and domestic horror. By the time I arrived—the daughter of a twenty-year-old mother looking for an unconditional love she never received, and a father who was thirty-seven thousand miles away and probably going on tour again—the cycle was already in motion.
In the small town of my youth, resilience wasn’t a lofty concept; it was a series of tactical maneuvers.
My childhood was defined by the “dryer window.” When the house was empty, I didn’t succumb to the darkness on the front porch. I made sure that the small window above the dryer was always unlocked. I learned how to contort my body to crawl inside, a literal metaphor for how I would navigate the next three decades of my life. If the front door were locked, I would find a gap. If the emotions were high, I would find “treasure” in tree bark by the river or charm the clerks at the movie store into giving me free rentals just for being a fixture in their lobby.
I spent my elementary years memorizing the phone numbers of “safe people” like they were psalms—incantations to be used “if things get tricky.” While my mother tried to fill the void with chaos in survival mode,, I became the shadow parent. In high school, my rebellion was fueled by a sharp, painful clarity: I knew that living in a two-bedroom apartment that felt more like a storage locker wasn’t normal. I knew that eating Cheez Whiz sandwiches was a symptom of a deeper hunger and exhaustion, and that a car—if you were lucky enough to have one—required a muffler to be whole.
To survive, I became a nomad. I bounced between foster care, grandmothers’ spare rooms, and friends’ couches. I worked full-time while still a student, not for extra pocket money, but for the basic dignity of a winter coat and the bus fare that ensured my sisters and I got to school. I was never on time, but I almost always arrived.
Eventually, the weight of being the “protector” became too heavy to carry alone. In my early twenties, I performed a strategic retreat—what I now call an “Old Norma Jean.” I married a gentleman to find a harbor where I could finally let my frontal lobe finish developing. I needed to be “protected” so I could finally blossom into the woman I was meant to be. But life, as it often does, threw a curveball. An unexpected pregnancy and the realization that my hometown was a minefield of triggers sent me fleeing to the city.
In the city, the “dryer window” girl returned. When asked what I would do if money were no object, I didn’t hesitate: “I’d sell t-shirts at concerts.” I built a life in the West End of Vancouver, juggling single motherhood and a job at the Commodore Ballroom, proving that the grit I learned in a storage locker apartment could translate into the neon lights of a metropolis.
But the problem with being a professional survivor is that eventually, the adrenaline runs out.
After years of “white-knuckling” it—through a strategic marriage to let my frontal lobe develop, through single motherhood in the big city, and through the exhaustion of the late nights behind the bar—the pandemic finally broke the seal. I didn’t just return home; I collapsed into it.
Before I found the right medication, I found a queen-sized bed in a studio apartment. For twenty-four months, my world shrank to the size of those sheets. The weight of my own brain felt like a tethered Velcro strap, pinning me down. Even a glass of water felt like a marathon, and the few times I ventured outside, the air felt thick and heavy—an underwater panic attack that never quite broke the surface.
In that gray blur, the only anchor of light was my son. He was—and is—all the best parts of me wrapped up in one human, a version of my DNA that managed to keep the gold while filtering out the lead.
The road to recovery was paved with the indignities of a small town. There is a specific kind of horror in standing in a pharmacy line, pulling a ball cap low to hide the “underwater” look in your eyes, only to hear your name echoed through the stale halls by a ghost from your past. “ALEX! WE SHOULD CATCH UP!” a former flame shouted from behind the counter. I could only mumble a polite lie—I don’t live here, haha, bye—and flee. In a small town, you are constantly haunted by how you are perceived, a ghost of the girl everyone used to know, even when you are just trying to survive the next hour.
To combat the weight of my history and the noise of my brain, I turned to the only constant I had ever known: the clothes on my back. Throughout my life, no matter how much money I had or didn’t have, I obsessed over how I was perceived. Clothing was my armor; it was the one thing I could control when the apartment was empty, and the car had no muffler.
I found my therapy in the dusty aisles of thrift stores. Thumbing through the racks was a form of meditation. In a pile of discarded fabric, I could find something forgotten and give it a new life. It was a mirror of my own existence—finding beauty in the “used,” the “broken,” and the “outdated.” Every vintage find was a reminder that you can be cast aside and still be valuable.
Recovery is rarely a straight line; for me, it was a series of calculated risks that led me back to where I started, but with a different set of keys.
As the “velcro” of depression began to lift, I felt a familiar itch to build something. I took a business course, a move toward the “normalcy” I had craved since I was a teenager, knocking at her friend’s bedroom windows at night. Soon after, I took a leap of faith that would have terrified the girl hiding in the movie store: I opened a small boutique with a stranger.
In that partnership, I was a sponge. I learned the mechanics of commerce, the rhythm of inventory, and the grit required to keep a storefront breathing. A lot of mistakes, a lot of emotions, and a whole lot of learning. But as the months passed, the clarity I’d gained through my healing journey told me something vital: this wasn’t my “fit.” It was a beautiful classroom, but it wasn’t my home. I realized that resilience isn’t just about staying the course; it’s about having the courage to change direction when the path no longer aligns with your soul.
I walked away from that boutique and turned my gaze toward the place I once tried so hard to escape. It’s the part of town just over the bridge that many won’t even make the journey to explore.
Today, I am opening my own vintage store on that side of the bridge. It isn’t just a shop; it’s a sanctuary. It’s a space where the “treasures” I used to find in tree bark become things I find in dusty thrift racks that now have a permanent home. But I didn’t stop at the racks. Remembering the daughter of the roadie, the girl who found her rhythm in the Commodore Ballroom, I designed the space to double as a music venue. It is a place where the healing power of live sound can finally drown out the inherited trauma of my past.
The geography of this new life is almost poetic in its irony. My store sits directly across the street from the gas station where I used to work in high school—the place where I scrubbed floors and watched the world go by, wondering if I’d ever get out.
Standing in my own doorway now, I look across the pavement where it used to stand and see a ghost of myself. I see the girl with the memorized phone numbers and a heavy heart. But I am no longer her. I have come full circle, returning to the town that triggered me, not as a victim of its history, but as a curator of its future, just like how it’s now turned into a bustling mix of offices, apartments, and one of the best breweries in town.
The woman who used to crawl through windows now owns the business. The girl who had no winter coat now sells them. And the silence of that two-bedroom “storage locker” closet bedroom has been replaced by the roar of a guitar and the steady, rhythmic heartbeat of a woman who finally, truly, found her way in.
The Practice: By thumbing through dusty racks, you were practicing recontextualization. You were taking things that were discarded—just as you might have felt discarded in foster care or that storage-locker apartment—and seeing their inherent worth. You practiced seeing the “treasure” where others saw “trash.”
You may have inherited the trauma of the women before you, but you also inherited their survival. The same DNA that carries the memory of the abuse also carries the strength that kept your grandmother alive after the shot and your mother alive through the dysfunction. You are the “upgraded version” of that survival. You have tools they didn’t have—medication, therapy, and the language to describe your pain. You are the one who gets to break the chain.
Sometimes you have to go back to the place that broke you to prove to yourself that it can’t break you anymore. Moving home, or facing the “gas station” version of your past, isn’t a regression. It’s a victory lap. It’s you showing up to the scene of the crime as the person in charge.
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