This album, which is album 2, was supposed to document the messy middle. The fog. The slow climb out of betrayal trauma. But it became something much darker.

When I finished the betrayed album and released it to the world, I thought the worst was behind me. I’d processed the acute trauma. I’d documented the collapse. I thought this phase would be lighter. Quieter. The beginning of healing. I was wrong.

A deep depression settled in after that album released. Heavier than anything I’d experienced during the betrayal itself. And I made a choice. The same choice I made with the first album. I stayed in it.

Like the betrayed album, where I forced myself to stay in active betrayal trauma for eighteen days to capture the truth of it, I stayed in this depression for three weeks. My mind and body wanted out, but I kept pushing myself. I went down into the depths to find the words. To document what this phase actually feels like when you’re in it.

I kept reminding myself: maybe someone out there needs to hear this. Maybe one verse, one song, will help someone feel less alone in their own darkness. So I kept going. But I went too far.

The depression got thicker. Heavier. I kept sliding down with no way to stop. My body was screaming to come up for air. My mind was begging me to start healing. But I kept pushing deeper. I reached out to a couple friends. Told them where I was. How dark it had gotten. I needed someone to know. And I kept creating.

As the album progressed, things got darker. The nights became unbearable. I was barely sleeping again. I was reliving everything all over again, but even deeper this time. Lying awake, heart pounding, mind looping endlessly. The stories I’d been holding onto became an anchor, pulling me deeper into the ocean.

Then a friend asked me a simple question: “What if you just let go of all the stories?”

My mind initially fought the thought. What else would I hold onto? What would keep me afloat? That night, I let them go, not knowing if I’d sink further into the abyss. But the unexpected happened. The looping stopped. Immediately. And it never came back. For the first time in many, many months, I could sleep normally again.

But I was still in the depression. Still creating. Still going deeper.

Then I had a realization that changed everything. I saw clearly, for the first time, that I had betrayed myself. By staying in a relationship where I had to silence my voice. Where I had to watch every word. Where I accommodated someone else’s pain at the cost of my own wellbeing. For months, I had abandoned myself just to keep her close.

That realization shifted my entire focus. I stopped looking at what she did to me. I started looking at what I did to myself. And more importantly, why I did it.

A friend taught me some body-based trauma work. Not thinking about the pain. Not analyzing it. Just feeling it. No stories. No loops. Just following where it leads. I spent an hour in deep pain, feeling my way through my past, and I found the roots. The patterns I’d been carrying for years.

That was the massive turning point. The heaviness lifted within hours. I began to rise.

Then I went to a friend’s wellness center and I made a decision. The album was nearly complete and I was ready to heal. I used some equipment there that completely reset my nervous system. I sat in silence actively releasing everything I was holding onto. And just like that, I popped out. The fog lifted. I could no longer tap into the depression I’d been living in for weeks. It was gone. And things began to shift around me. Faster than I could have imagined.

During this process, I also discovered something I hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t dealing with one trauma. I was dealing with two. There was the betrayal and everything that came with it that lasted for months The lies, the gaslighting, the emotional affair, the massive energy leaks in the relationship that took everything from what had been created. That’s what the first album documented. 

But hidden behind that was another trauma that happened. Two months where I was slowly destroyed. Where my confidence drained from a hundred to zero. Where I had to walk on eggshells, censor myself, accommodate her stress. By the time the betrayal was finally uncovered and more truth was revealed, I was already a shell of myself.

I created a song called “Before the Fire” to capture that realization. Because the betrayal didn’t kill me. I was already dead from those two months before it.

Through these processes, I learned that I had to fully feel in order to shift. But not in ways I expected. The name Feel Shift wasn’t created for this. That name came long before the betrayal. But it has become this. I had to feel to heal. Not through thinking. Not through understanding. Through feeling in my body. 

Through letting go of the stories. Through turning inward instead of searching outward for answers that will never arrive. And through letting go of trying to make sense of things someone chose to do that will never make sense.

If you’re in Month 1, Month 6, or Month 12, and you’re wondering why you’re still affected, why you’re still triggered, why you’re not “over it” yet, know you’re not broken. Your timeline is your timeline. Healing doesn’t follow anyone’s schedule. We all have our own healing paths and every one of them is different.

So this album documents the messy middle. The part nobody talks about. The part that comes after the acute crisis, but before the transformation. The part where you’re functional but hollow. The part where you look fine to everyone else, but inside you’re still fighting for air.

I’m sharing this because I want you to know: if you’re still in it, you’re not alone. If you’re still struggling months or even years later, that’s normal. There is nothing wrong if you heal quicker than expected or it is taking far longer than you imagined. Betrayal trauma literally changes your brain. It lives in your body. It doesn’t just go away because time passes.

But here’s what I also want you to know: the shift is real. When you stop looking outward for answers and start looking inward. When you let go of the stories and start feeling what’s underneath them. When you stop trying to understand why they did it and start asking why you stayed. Why you allowed certain things. Why you were allowed to be talked to or treated in certain ways. That’s when things can start to move and shift.

I call it the hall of mirrors. I spent months looking at the hundreds of mirrors of her. Questioning why she did what she did. Why she destroyed something we worked hard to build. Why she said something to me the very last time we talked, that rang in my mind like a bell endlessly. 

I had hundreds of questions that would loop endlessly in my mind and drive me crazy at night. But the moment I shifted the questions on myself and started asking the tough questions without the stories and endless looping, I felt the shift.

AFTERMATH documents where I was. Not where I wanted to be. Where I actually was. In the fog. In the depression. And then in the surprisingly quick shift out of it.

Album 3 will be different. Because I’m different. I’m not in the darkness anymore. I’m not creating from trauma. I’m not creating from depression. I’m creating from healing. From transformation. From a place I couldn’t even imagine when I started this journey. 

And album 2 completes any songs that have to do with her, the betrayal, and the pain I suffered for more than a half a year. I have moved on and I’m keeping the promise to myself, to only create from the space I am in now, not what was or where I want to be.

If this album helped you feel less alone, that’s why it exists. If these songs gave you words for what you couldn’t say, then the three weeks I spent in that depression were worth it. I cannot tell you how many times that was the only thing that kept me pushing forward… The thought that maybe this album or even just a song would reach someone who needs to hear it and it helps them in some way.

Keep going. Keep feeling. Keep shifting. And keep healing on your timeline, not anyone else’s. You’re not broken. You’re not crazy. You’re in the process of becoming someone stronger than you’ve ever been.

I see you. I feel you. You’re not alone.