Dr. Jenny Holland, PsyD

My first home was an incubator labeled “Isolation.”

This is the blessing that grew from it.

I Will Not Stop Until I Am Blessed

Content Note:

This piece includes reflections on childhood neglect, physical and emotional abuse, disability, and spiritual betrayal.

Please read at your own pace.

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My story began here — in a box meant to save me, that taught me the cost of being unheld.

DEDICATION

For Noah and Addison —

My sons —

may you always know that your dignity is non-negotiable,

your worth unconditional,

your voice something that should never be dimmed

to make others comfortable.

And for Amelia —

my daughter who, like me, has cerebral palsy —

brilliant, discerning, luminous.

May you never mistake your body for a burden

or your needs for inconveniences.

May you receive the access, care, and reverence

I had to survive without.

May safety shape you instead of survival.

May every doorway open for you

because you were born deserving of blessing.

And for the little girl I once was —

frightened, neglected, hiding under the dining room table

because she knew she would be punished

for what she could not help.

May she find, at last,

a safe bathroom she can use,

a shower she can enter without fear,

and a world that finally sees her as worthy.

This blessing is for all of us —

my children, my younger self,

and everyone still waiting

for the doors that should have opened long ago.

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INTRODUCTION

“I am sad,

but I am held.”

That was the first line of the poem that became this essay —

a truth that rose from my ribs

on a night when the feeling felt ancient

and the blessing I needed felt impossibly far away.

There comes a moment in every life

when truth stops circling politely

and begins to insist.

When the stories written into your muscles

before you had language

begin to loosen their grip,

and something inside you rises and says:

I will not keep disappearing.

I will not keep apologizing for my existence.

I will not stop until I am blessed.

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I WILL NOT STOP UNTIL I AM BLESSED

(the poem)

I am sad,

but I am held.

Not always by people —

sometimes they disappear,

or worse, pretend not to see me.

But I am held

by something deeper:

by the wound itself,

by memory,

by a love I can’t always name

but feel under my ribs

when I’m quiet long enough.

I may be broken,

but I am loved.

Not in the way my mother said —

not as her doll,

not as a body to be arranged

to please her sense of order.

No.

I am loved as a soul,

with corners and questions,

with all the parts I was told were too much.

I am forceful,

and I am gentle.

I want people to come close,

but not out of pity.

I want them to be changed by knowing me.

I want to be changed by knowing them.

To see that truth can be fierce

and soft at the same time.

That humility isn’t hiding,

it’s showing up

without pretending

you’re whole.

I have wrestled —

not once,

but a thousand times.

In my childhood homes,

in hospitals,

school systems,

workplaces,

in spiritual spaces,

in friendships,

in my marriage,

in my own heart,

when I feel too alone to keep trying.

I wrestled with my mother’s shadow,

my father’s indifference,

authority figures who refused to help,

with doors that would not open

and invitations that were never returned.

With being told I was too heavy —

or literally, too much work.

Not just my chair,

but my presence,

my truth,

my story.

But I am still here.

And I will not let go

until I am blessed.

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THE CHILDHOOD THAT SHAPED ME

Before I learned to bless myself,

I learned to hide.

Your story may be different from mine,

but if you grew up unseen, you will recognize this.

I spent much of my early life

under the dining room table.

Not because I was shy.

Not because it was a game.

I hid because I was unsafe —

and because I was often so soiled from accidents

I knew I would be punished

the moment anyone noticed.

I couldn’t walk until I was seven,

after countless orthopedic surgeries.

Muscles tight as wire.

Spasticity like living inside a charley horse.

My body pulling against itself,

tightening when I needed softness,

pushing in directions

I did not want to go.

Working harder than anyone knew

even in moments that looked still.

I could not get onto the toilet alone,

and no one helped me.

Accidents were inevitable.

Punishment predictable.

Children don’t know the word neglect,

but they know when no one comes.

So I hid under the table —

the only place low and shadowed enough

to delay the consequences

of being a child

in a home that did not know how to care for her.

This is what happens

when a child is unblessed:

She disappears.

She contorts herself

around the absence of care.

She learns to silence her existence

to avoid harm.

And yet, beneath the hiding,

beneath the shame,

beneath the loneliness —

something stubborn kept a light inside me.

A spark that could not be extinguished.

A flicker that protected my destiny.

A tiny ember that disability studies names

as survival in the face of systemic neglect.

A developmental impulse toward coherence

no environment could destroy.

A sacred psychology that whispered:

You are meant to be blessed.

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THE THEORIES THAT NAME THE WOUND — AND THE BLESSING

Attachment Theory — attunement is the first blessing;

where it is absent, vigilance forms.

Developmental Theory — identity organizes

around the quality of care.

Jung — the soul hides what the world refuses to honor.

Disability Studies — my accidents were not personal failures;

they were failures of the environment.

Sacred Psychology — to be blessed is to be recognized.

To be unblessed is to be unseen.

To bless oneself is to finally tell the truth.

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THE DOORWAY THAT WOULD NOT OPEN

The night I wrote the poem that became this essay,

I was sitting outside a spiritual community gathering.

The accessible door —

the one they kept promising to fix —

was broken again.

It is a particular kind of wound

to be told your presence is valued

while the doorway that grants you entry

remains unusable.

People often say the right words:

We are inclusive.

We welcome you.

We care about you.

We want you here.

But blessing is not a sentiment,

or a public performance

when the optics are good.

Blessing is access.

Blessing is architecture that says:

We meant what we said.

And we fixed it — immediately —

because we want you here.

The reality:

it remained broken for years.

And the truth is this:

Some doors are wood and metal.

Others are made of indifference.

Both deny blessing

in the same way.

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THE VIRAL TRUTH

The door is still not fixed.

And I no longer wait outside it.

Blessing is not begging for entry.

Blessing is becoming the door —

becoming the threshold —

becoming the place

no one can deny again.

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ADULTHOOD — WHERE THE OLD WOUND RETURNS

Childhood wasn’t the only place

where neglect shaped my life.

The early wound returns

until you name it.

I married someone I loved deeply,

and I also married into

homes where my accessibility needs

were postponed, minimized, ignored.

Entrances without ramps.

Unsafe bathrooms.

Equipment that injured me.

The unspoken implication

that my needs were too much.

Messages — direct and indirect —

that I did not contribute,

that I did not add value.

Silent expectations

that I would manage

what I could not safely access.

Not cruelty.

Not hatred.

Familiarity.

A pattern repeating

until I finally said:

My needs were never the burden.

The absence of care was.

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THE NIGHT I REFUSED TO BE SILENCED

There was a night, years ago,

when the old wound surfaced again —

not in my home,

but in the public square.

A town hall.

A room packed with clinicians and citizens

asking what was happening to the country.

And I did what the child under the table

never could:

I spoke.

I named the threat.

I named the pattern.

I named what everyone felt

but no one wanted to say aloud:

that a leader’s psychology posed a danger to the public,

and that I had a duty to warn.

The room went still —

the trembling kind of stillness

that happens when truth arrives

and nobody knows what to do with it.

I was not reckless.

I was a psychologist

reading the sky before a shipwreck.

And I knew the cost.

My license.

My safety.

My career.

My reputation.

But silence is its own violence.

And I have carried enough silence

to recognize when it is trying

to drag me back

into the shadows

I am fighting my way out of.

So I said it anyway.

And something ancient in me —

something that had waited decades —

rose and said:

Not again.

Not this time.

Not at the cost of myself.

Clarity may leave you alone,

but it will never leave you wrong.

The child who hid under the table

and the woman with the microphone

recognized each other instantly:

Two versions of me

refusing to be unblessed

any longer.

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THE CLEARING — WHY I WRITE

I write to clear the static of my own trauma

so that my mind becomes a place

I can think in.

So that my voice becomes a place

others can rest in.

So that my story stops interrupting

the wisdom I am meant to offer.

We cannot bless others

with a voice tangled in unspoken pain.

We cannot guide others

while holding our breath

under old tables.

We cannot become thresholds

while contorting ourselves

around the architecture

that harmed us.

Writing is my clearing.

My becoming.

My offering.

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THE HEALING — BECOMING THE THRESHOLD

There is a moment in every life

when you stop looking for blessing

outside yourself

and realize the blessing

has been forming

in your own marrow.

A moment when you stop waiting

for the door to open

and understand:

The doorway is you.

Healing is when you say:

I am the threshold now.

I open.

I welcome.

I bless.

And I bless the child I was —

the girl hiding under the table,

the girl who had no safe bathroom,

the girl who crawled for years,

the girl who waited

for care that never came.

I bless her with the truth:

She’s making it out.

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BLESSING FOR THE BROKEN DOOR

Blessing the broken door that refused to open for me —

because it pushed me toward a deeper honesty,

a truer belonging,

and an inner sanctuary

no institution ever built for me.

Sometimes the doorway that stays broken

is the clearest teacher.

It shows you where you were never truly held.

It reveals the difference

between sentiment and care.

It nudges you toward the spaces

your soul can finally expand.

I am learning to bless the wound

for what it revealed,

and to bless the woman who rose

on the other side of it.

This is the work I now offer the world —

clarity, belonging, and blessing

for the places that have forgotten

how to open their own gates.

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THE REVELATION — AFTER THE WRESTLING

Healing is not the erasure of the wound.

Healing is the transformation of it.

When you begin to bless yourself,

the blessing flows outward:

Your clarity becomes someone else’s clarity.

Your threshold becomes someone else’s doorway.

Your blessing becomes a place

they can enter.

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CLOSING BLESSING

And so I return to the line

that began all of this:

I will not stop until I am blessed.

I bless the child I was —

the one who hid,

the one who hurt,

the one who survived.

I bless Noah and Addison —

may dignity be their baseline

and care their standard.

I bless Amelia —

my luminous daughter

with cerebral palsy like mine

but none of my early shame.

May every doorway welcome her.

And I bless you —

whoever you are,

whatever part of your life

still waits outside a door

that has not yet opened.

You do not have to beg for entry.

You do not have to shrink

to be welcomed.

There is a threshold in you

waiting to open.

May this be the week

you refuse the old architecture,

release the shame that was never yours,

and feel the ground shift

from beneath-the-table hiding

to the wide doorway

of your own becoming.

May your blessing meet you

in the exact place

you once felt unworthy —

and may it rename you

with truth.

I am with you at the threshold.

And I Bless You.

Love,

Jenny

If this story speaks to something in you — a childhood wound, a moment of exclusion, or a part of yourself that has been waiting to be seen — I hope you’ll share it forward.

Someone in your world may need these words tonight.

And if you feel comfortable, I’d love to hear what line or moment stayed with you.

Your voice helps others find their own.