He neverhurt me.I still braced.

Our dog Ernie cowers.

We've never raised a hand to him. Not once. And still, when one of us walks toward him, his first instinct is to drop low and pull back. Even when we're holding something yummy in our fingers.

We wish it weren't true. He's safe. His body just doesn't believe it yet.

I understand Ernie more than I'd like to.

I would have sworn I felt safe.

If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have told you, with my whole chest, that I FELT safe. I told everyone. I wasn't lying. I believed it.

And I want to be really clear about something, because people who know us are going to read this: Jimmy has never hurt me. Not once. He's the gentlest man I know. He rarely raises his voice and almost never tells me no.

We used to see energy readers together, and they'd always say Jimmy's throat chakra wasn't fully open. I'd laugh and say, "Let's keep it that way."

I thought that was a joke. It was a tell. A quiet man felt safer to me than a man with a voice. Some part of me was still watching for a turn that never came.

Jimmy didn't make me feel unsafe. I came to him already braced. He married the woman I'd been taught to be.

I WAS safe. I AM safe. So why didn't I feel it? And, why didn't I KNOW it until now?

How can a person be safe but feel unsafe?

You don't have to have been hurt

Here's the part I most want you to hear.

Yes, I learned to read the room early, in a house where moods could turn. But you don't need a story like mine to live braced.

Ernie doesn't need a reason to cower. Neither do we.

Every woman you know has walked to her car with her keys between her fingers. Plenty of them were never attacked in a parking lot. They didn't learn it from being hurt.

They learned it from knowing they could be.

That's the tax. It isn't paid because something happened. It's paid because something could. And when your body is busy paying it, scanning and bracing and watching, there isn't much room left to feel anything else. Like what you actually want.

This isn't about men being bad. Most men will never hurt anyone. It's about what a woman's body has to account for, all the time, quietly, often without her ever noticing.

Noticing is where it starts

I didn't fix this by trying harder. You can't think your way out of a braced body.

What changed was noticing. First, that I was braced at all. Then, that I didn't have to be. Not here. Not with him.

One day at our son's soccer game, it hit me: I finally felt safe. Not just with Jimmy. In my life. In my body. I told him I'd like to thank him for it. Then I told him I wasn't going to, because safety shouldn't be something we owe a thank-you for. It's the floor, not the gift.

He got it.

Here's how I finally noticed.

It started with mortgage paperwork. Jimmy came home from work worried about documents we needed to get to the bank. I wasn't worried. He was. And somehow, I knew he wanted me to go with him.

I didn't want to go. But I kept feeling like I should, because I could tell how much he wanted me there.

How could I tell he wanted me to go to the bank when he'd never asked me with his words?

So I asked spirit to thicken my insulation so I wouldn't feel his feelings. I don't think I fully knew what I was asking for.

All of a sudden, there was a void. That's the only word I have for it. I watched him wander around doing a dozen little things while the clock crept toward 4:30, with the bank closing at 5, and I felt nothing. I told him I wasn't going. He waited for me to change my mind. I didn't. He went alone.

For days, I kept waiting to feel something. It was stark. Empty. Bizarre. And a little funny, because for the first time in my life I wasn't doing a single thing I didn't want to do. Nobody's wanting was pulling on me.

Then, just over two weeks in, I woke up feeling light. A little tingle in my solar plexus, right where my ribs meet. That night, lying next to Jimmy while he slept, I felt it: the first buzz of my own desire. Not strong. But mine.

I almost woke him up just to tell him. I barely slept.

Two weeks. At 52. That's how long it took to hear myself under everyone else's emotional noise.

The way I explained it to Jimmy: for longer than I know, my body was like the fuse box in the garage. Everyone else's signals ran so strong that my own fuse was blown. When everyone else got switched off, nothing came on right away. I had to wait for my own pilot light to catch.

Now mine is on. And I get to choose which ones I turn back on.

I always knew when anyone walked into any room I was in, whether I was looking or not. I could never understand how Jimmy didn't know when I walked in.

The other day I was painting at my easel. Jimmy came all the way into the room and sat down right next to me, and for the first time ever, I didn't know he was there until he touched my arm.

It was fascinating.

That's what bracing costs. Not just peace. Ourselves.

Your turn

This week, don't try to fix anything. Just notice.

Notice where your body braces. In the parking lot. When a voice gets loud two rooms away.

Notice the footsteps behind you when you're walking alone. And when you turn around and no one is there, notice that too. Was someone there? Or was it your body, bracing for what COULD be?

Notice the moment everyone leaves the house. Do you take that breath? The one that says, finally, they're all gone? I did, for years.

Notice the party. The moment something shifts, before anyone's voice changes. You know what's coming before it comes.

Notice it without judging it. That radar kept you safe. Some of it is even a gift, the same knowing that tells a new mom her baby is stirring before she hears a sound.

Then ask one question:

Am I bracing for something that's happening, or something that could?

That's Ernie just the other day. Belly up. The most trusting thing a dog can do.

And this morning, when I walked toward him, he still cowered.

Both are true. He feels safe enough to show us his belly, and his body still flinches. Safe and braced, in the same dog, in the same week.

That's what this actually looks like. Not a switch that flips. A slow, uneven turning toward trust.

So if you're not sure you feel safe yet, or you feel safe and still catch yourself bracing, you're not doing it wrong. Neither was I. Neither is Ernie. We're still working on it with him, one slow, gentle walk at a time.

Safety is the floor. For all of us.

This is Done Fawning. Who's with me?

If you're not safe at home, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788). More numbers on the Who to call page.