After Vigilance Fatigue

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing about vigilance fatigue.

We’ve talked about nervous systems, anticipation, hypervigilance, recovery, regulation, and all the strange ways a body can remain prepared for things that may never happen.

For the most part, I wrote those posts in a fairly educational voice.

I enjoy that voice.

I like learning.

I like patterns.

I like connecting ideas and turning them into things that might help someone else.

But before I move on to the next season of writing, I feel like I should step out from behind the curtain a bit more.

Because the truth is that I didn’t become interested in vigilance fatigue by reading about it.

I became interested in it because I have lived with it for literally my entire life.

🐣🐤🐥🐧

My Substack is called I Am Many.

That title first belonged to an old retired blog, then a published book.

Originally, I intended this Substack to be a place where I could write more openly about living with multiple personalities, childhood trauma, neurodivergence, chronic nervous system dysregulation, and the practical realities of navigating ordinary life when your history is anything but ordinary.

Then something funny happened.

I started teaching.

And once I started teaching, I found myself writing series:

The Tiny Leaf Game.

Control vs Acceptance.

Vigilance Fatigue.

And a few little parts and pieces that filled in the gaps.

I enjoy creating series, and I plan to continue.

But somewhere along the way, the person behind the series became a little less visible.

So perhaps this is a reintroduction.

Hello.

I’m Fran.

I am Many.

And the things I write about are not just academic interests.

They’re home territory.

🌳🏡🏠🌿

I live with the lingering effects of severe childhood trauma.

I live with dissociation.

I live with a significant head injury that left me with auditory and vestibular dysregulation.

I live with a neck injury.

I live with a nervous system that sometimes reacts to the present as though it still needs to survive the past.

I also live with curiosity.

Gratitude.

Wonder.

Creativity.

Faith.

A good husband.

A creek.

Birds.

Trees.

Books.

Ideas.

And an ongoing determination to build a life that contains more than just recovery.

Because eventually a person has to ask a difficult question:

What happens when survival is no longer the only goal?

That question has been following me around for a long time.

Not because survival suddenly becomes easy.

It doesn’t.

Many of the challenges I write about remain part of my daily life.

I still get overwhelmed by noise.

I still have days when my nervous system behaves as if danger is around every corner.

I still encounter limitations that other people never have to think about.

But I have also noticed something else.

The longer I recover, the more interested I become in things that are not about recovery.

Beauty.

Connection.

Meaning.

Companionship.

Small blessings.

Creative work.

The texture of ordinary days.

The things that make a life worth living rather than merely enduring.

When I was a small child under five years old, I learned to run to nature and to the Spirit who seemed to meet me there.

When I returned home from one of my father’s trips to Detroit, I would quietly slip out of sight and down to the creek behind our house.

There, I would sit my freshly battered body down on the cool earth and start to let out all the rage, all the sorrow, all the longing for protection and order.

I did not have words, but I used sound.

I cried, I whined, I sang.

I punched the earth as hard as my tiny fists would allow.

And after the tears subsided, slowly and gently, I would begin to feel something new.

As the well of grief inside my body began to empty, my attention shifted to the world around me.

I watched the ants.

I watched the clouds.

I watched the cottonwood leaves twinkling in the sunshine.

I listened to the birds call to each other.

I listened to my own voice growing quieter and less urgent.

And I began to feel alive again.

My capacity for hope and for JOY returned.

Not because my circumstances had changed.

But because my focus had changed.

The world became larger than the thing that hurt.

I didn’t have language for all this back then.

Today I do.

That experience has shaped nearly everything I create.

The receiving.

The connecting.

The companioning.

The emphasis on noticing.

The importance of small moments.

The belief that…

Recovery is not only about reducing pain but also about increasing our ability to receive goodness.

I’m increasingly interested in what happens in the beautiful country beyond recovery.

Not after everything is fixed.

Not after we become some idealized version of ourselves.

After survival.

While still carrying our scars.

While still having limitations.

While still being human.

👶🧒👩‍🦱👩‍🦳

Will you join me on this quest?

To see what’s on “the other side”?

I’d love to read about your experiences, in the comments.

But that is a bonus. You can always just linger here, safe and unseen.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for accompanying me through the ViFa series.

And thank you for giving me a place where I can occasionally step out from behind the curtain and simply be a person.

The next season begins next Tuesday.

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