{"id":1707,"date":"2026-03-25T19:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildpoise.com\/?p=1707"},"modified":"2026-05-07T17:57:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T17:57:29","slug":"the-mind-expands-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildpoise.com\/?p=1707","title":{"rendered":"The Mind Expands Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Mind Expands Again<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Day 53 – January 15, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today my brain felt bigger. I know that sounds odd, but it\u2019s the cleanest word I have for what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For months, my mind has been living on a very strict diet: fear, healing, routine, recovery, legal aftermath, survival, repetition. Necessary things. Very serious things. But narrow things. Tight things. Things that shrink your world until it starts to feel like your whole life is taking place in a hallway lined with alarms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what trauma does. It compresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes a full, messy, interesting life and reduces it to essentials. Safety. Breathing. Endurance. Damage control. It turns the mind into an emergency room and then has the nerve to call that living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when I say my brain felt bigger today, what I mean is it reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not toward danger. Not toward analysis. Not toward some familiar, well-worn fear loop with excellent attendance and a miserable personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toward ideas. Toward possibility. Toward things that had nothing to do with surviving and everything to do with being a person again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That startled me a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found myself thinking about writing, creative direction, what I might want to make, where certain threads of thought could lead if I followed them all the way to the end instead of shutting them down with the usual internal bureaucracy. There was more room in my head than there has been in a while. More space between me and the things that have been haunting the center of my attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that space felt holy. Or at least expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because if you\u2019ve spent months living in a mind that\u2019s been rearranged around threat, you know how strange it is when the furniture starts moving back into the rooms where life used to happen. You notice it. You stop and stare a little. You almost don\u2019t trust it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was me today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half excited. Half suspicious. Fully aware that my nervous system has the temperament of a traumatized little aristocrat and doesn\u2019t like abrupt changes in atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the expansion was real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I could feel how badly I needed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I am not built for mental smallness. I can survive in it, sure. I can do emergency mode. I can become terrifyingly efficient when I have to. But it is not where I shine. I am a woman with a mind that likes rooms with high ceilings. Corridors. Side doors. Strange little staircases that lead to fascinating places. I like ideas that flirt back. I like the world when it is wide enough to be interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all day. Not perfectly. I am not suddenly cured and frolicking through cognitive freedom in a silk robe and expensive lip gloss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough for me to notice that some part of me is expanding beyond the damage now. Beyond the maintenance. Beyond the endless emotional bookkeeping of surviving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because maybe healing is not just feeling safer. Maybe it is also feeling larger again. Feeling capable of interest again. Feeling your mind reach beyond the perimeter it built to keep itself alive and discovering the world is still there, waiting, weird and unfinished and full of things to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roger attempted to expand his own personal horizons by trying to reach a snack that was so obviously not his it almost felt insulting that he tried anyway. However, the performance of heartbreak that followed my refusal was extraordinary. He contains multitudes. None of them particularly reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But tonight the apartment feels calmer and inside my head there is more space than there was yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not empty space. Living space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kind where something new could happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And my mind, finally, remembering that fear may be loud but it is not the only thing worth giving square footage to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 53 – Today my brain felt bigger. That might sound like a strange way to describe a day, but it\u2019s the closest word I can find. 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