There are things that happen to a person that words don't properly hold. Things that fracture you so completely that you forget what it felt like to be whole. I know this because I lived it. Not in some distant, academic way — but in the kind of way where you sit on the bathroom floor at 3am wondering if anyone would notice if you just stopped existing.
I grew up in what looked, from the outside, like a normal family. But behind closed doors, there was a different reality. Narcissistic abuse doesn't always leave bruises you can see. It rewires the way you think about yourself. It makes you believe that you are the problem. That you are too much, or not enough, or both at the same time.
The cruelest part wasn't the abuse itself. It was what came after. The isolation. When you finally speak up, you expect the world to rally around you. Instead, people pick sides. Families fracture. Friends disappear. You find yourself completely, utterly alone — not because nobody cares, but because the truth is inconvenient for everyone else's version of reality.
I lost relationships I thought were unbreakable. I lost people who I thought would always be there. And in the silence left behind, I heard every lie I'd ever been told about myself echoing louder than ever.
I want to be honest about this part, because pretending it didn't happen helps nobody. I wanted to give up. Not in a dramatic way — in a quiet, exhausted way. The kind where you just stop fighting. Stop eating. Stop answering the phone. You go through the motions, but you're not really there. You're already somewhere else in your mind, somewhere the pain can't reach.
I tried to make sense of it. I tried therapy, self-help books, motivational podcasts. Some of it helped. Most of it felt like someone reading from a script who had never actually been where I was. You can't Google your way out of a shattered soul.
The thing that saved me wasn't a technique or a program. It was a person. Someone who had been through their own version of hell, who sat with me without trying to fix me, and said: "I know. I've been there. And you're going to make it."
There was no judgment. No advice I didn't ask for. No toxic positivity. Just someone who truly understood, keeping the light on while I found my footing. That's the moment I understood what was missing from every mental health resource, every helpline, every well-meaning friend's advice.
I started recovering. Not in a straight line — recovery never is. There were setbacks, bad days, moments I thought I'd end up right back where I started. But something had shifted inside me. I wasn't just surviving anymore. I was angry. Not at the people who hurt me — at the fact that millions of people go through what I went through, and nobody comes for them.
The mental health system is broken for survivors. Insurance-approved therapy that never gets deep enough. Crisis hotlines staffed by people reading from flowcharts. Support groups that feel performative. And worst of all — a culture that tells you to "just get over it" or "choose happiness" as if pain is a lifestyle choice.
Nobody should have to survive the worst chapter of their life alone.
That's why I built LightKeeper. Not as a replacement for therapy — but as the thing that should exist alongside it. Peer guidance from people who have actually been where you are. Not someone with a degree telling you what you should feel. Someone with scars telling you what actually helped them survive.
A lighthouse doesn't chase ships. It doesn't swim out into the storm. It just stands there, shining, and the ones who need it find their way to it. That's what LightKeeper is. We're not going to force you to do anything. We're not going to rush your healing. We're just going to be here, with the light on, for as long as it takes.
If you're reading this and something in it resonated — if you felt seen for even a moment — then this was written for you. I don't know what you've been through. I don't know what kind of dark you're sitting in right now. But I know this:
You don't have to face it alone anymore.