Happy Fourth of July! I’m proud to be an American. I woke up singing Lake Street Drive’s Better Than, which has the lyrics, ‘better than being some fool’s bride’. It’s not exactly a patriotic anthem, but it felt fitting.

There’s something about today that made me feel proud to be American—not in the flag-waving, fireworks sense, but in a quiet, internal way. Proud that I’ve fought for my own freedom. Proud that I’m still here.

Emancipation

Today is the Fourth of July. Montana feels really good to celebrate in, because people are proud to be here and proud to be Montanans, and I want to be around people who are proud to be whoever and whatever they are. Who live rooted in something real.

We went to the rodeo last night. It’s not my first rodeo (literally), but it was for the rest of my family. It’s always wild to me how much my parents haven’t lived and seen. It’s no wonder I had to get out from under them. My spirit never wanted the suburban script. And the trauma was a lot. I remember being 12 and thinking, If I can just make it to 16, I can emancipate. That word became a kind of lifeline. I didn’t do it, but it planted something.

Because today is about emancipation. On a national level and a personal one.

I wonder how my life would have been at 16 if I truly had been emancipated. It was hard for me to even explain to people why home was so bad. It’s still hard. By all objective judgments, and if we were in court, they’re very well-adjusted people. They have high-paying jobs at companies they’ve been at for years. They have friends, they own homes, they provided us housing and food and clothing and extracurriculars. My dad calls us ‘million-dollar kids’. They didn’t spare any expense in Northern Virginia (where most kids were in private schools and 98% of my graduating high school class went to college). Being a traumatized and privileged kid is a whole other layer of trauma. Because you feel guilty about having any trauma at all, like you’re not supposed to. This might trigger some people, but it’s the reality for middle-class families.

The thing about growing up in a house like mine is that it’s hard to explain what made it bad. There was no visible neglect. No bruises.

But when you grow up with narcissistic parents who are emotionally stunted and completely unattuned to you, it doesn’t matter how much money you have.

They were always yelling and fighting (they still do). My ACE’s score was like a five at one point. God was not a part of our household. I still don’t know how to tell this part of my story.

I can only think back to being a kid. I honestly don’t remember much (still), besides just a lot of darkness. A lot of needing to be with myself because I was so hurt or unhappy with my family. A lot of closing in, sleeping as long as I could, later in my teens, using drugs and alcohol to cope. Needing to get out of the house, get away. Finding solace in other people’s parents, who were kind and soft. I always thought it was a gift from my brain that I don’t remember much.

[TW: suicidal ideation]

I do remember that by 13, I wanted to kill myself. That’s the only time in my life that I really considered dying. I remember planning it and researching it on the web. I remember getting really close to doing it, and then God caught me. I didn’t know it at the time, but they did. I’ve always been really well protected, watched, guided. I knew there was more. No 13-year-old should want to do that. I’m determined that no 13-year-old ever feels that way. I’m with my inner 13-year-old often. Still telling her she’s safe. This is all for her.

The inner freedom we search for

Everything I hate about my parents, I hate about myself, and it means I have a well of stuff to work on. It’s like this time period, right after ceremony, was just to be like, here’s your syllabus, time to study. My teacher says my family is going to hate reading any of this. They will. They’re not supposed to like it. No parent is like ecstatic to learn how they hurt you, and then have that be told to the world.

But I’m here to talk about my trauma and my healing. It’s the greatest story of my life. It’s my legacy of living. It is everything about who and what I am.

And we have to tell our stories (the hardest ones) because when we do, we set them free.

On a larger scale, for all the transformation and change that needs to happen in the world, it starts with us.

We can push and push on our external environment to be what we want to see, and I am confident, 9 times out of 10, it will never work. I’ve met too many people who left their climate jobs, policy work, activist careers—not because they didn’t care anymore—but because they realized the world doesn’t transform just because you push hard enough. It shifts when you do.

We don’t change the world by screaming at it. We change the world by healing ourselves.

And yeah, that sounds cliché. But it’s also pretty radical. The idea that maybe nothing’s even wrong with the world. Maybe it’s just you.

And when you actually start doing the work? It’s the most radical thing you can do. Healing becomes activism. Finding happiness and purpose as the best protest you could make.

So on this Fourth of July, I’m thinking about freedom.

Not the version we’ve been sold, but the kind you carve out inside yourself. The kind where you finally choose you. Where you say, “This cycle ends with me.” That’s a new kind of patriotism, and that’s a new kind of America.

For Merica’,
Valerie