I flick the lighter and watch the flame catch, inhaling until certain pathways spark inside my skull the way they do when I open a bag of fresh coffee beans. That recognition. That release. I never thought I’d smoke this much pot, I’ll tell you that. I never thought I’d do a lot of things I did, and sometimes I’m not surprised that I did any of them at all.
That’s the thing about life. It’s a walking contradiction.
I’m sitting here trying to write about 2025, about this word accountability and how it has changed for me this year. But in writing this, I keep circling the things I didn’t write about. The reason I didn’t write about them is because I couldn’t tell the truth.
So I find myself wondering what truth am I not telling. To myself. To the reader. To the characters I keep constructing on the page.
Maybe it’s this: I am so split between what success is and why it still isn’t enough.
I know what success is. I am successful. I’ve built something real here on this mountain. Broken cycles I was told would follow me forever. Raised children differently than I was raised. Held my mother through grief and stayed whole. Let my husband see parts of me I spent decades hiding.
But what I can’t define is why it still isn’t enough.
I can’t tell what I want anymore. And I don’t mean that I can’t tell you what I want. I mean I genuinely cannot identify it. Would naming it change where I’m going? Probably not. So what is the point of saying it at all? Of thinking it?
That’s the burden of longing. To constantly be searching the woods for something that’s missing. Making up stories for who’s responsible for it. Looking for closure that won’t come.
I watched my youngest daughter today roam the hillside, calling the name of her cat. We had taken in a mother cat and her three kittens. “The Three Kittens of Serendip,” we called them.
Annie! Annie! she called.
Four nights gone, and she was still convinced she would find her. Still climbing the hill with that certainty only children carry before the world teaches them to expect loss.
At first, I didn’t follow her. I let her walk up the hill alone, knowing what it was to search for something that a parent knew would never be found. I’ve been that child. My body remembered the shape of that search before my mind caught up.
And then the name itself. Annie.
My grandmother had a cat named Annie. An ornery diluted calico that my mother left behind when she ran away from home to marry my father. I remember that cat from summers at my grandmother’s house, watching it prowl through rooms heavy with old grief. My mother abandoned that cat like she abandoned everything else that anchored her to a life she needed to escape.
And now here was my daughter, screaming that same name into the Santa Cruz mountains, searching for something with a name that carries three generations of leaving.
I didn’t want to feel seven again.
I finally followed her. But the sound of her voice made me want to scream.
You’re not going to find her. Just stop trying.
The words sat in my throat like stones. I almost said them. I almost said, She’s gone. Just stop looking.
But I know what it is to lose hope. I know what it is to have someone tell you to stop searching when searching is all you have left. So I just kept following her. Past the arena. Past the pet cemetery where we buried my mother’s Maine Coon last spring. Past the places I’d promised would protect us.
And then she got to the top of the hill, and I heard her voice waver.
That waver. That crack in her certainty. I could feel her heart breaking from twenty feet behind her.
I wanted to hold her, but I haven’t always done a good job at doing that. My arms know how to absorb other people’s grief. They don’t always know how to offer comfort before being asked. So I reached for her, and she turned me away.
She kept yelling for Annie.
So I just kept following her.
My mind kept trying to escape the moment. The horses needed to be checked. The vacation rental needed turnover help. My mother was waiting. The emails were piling up. The list that never ends was calling me back to productivity, back to the version of myself that measures worth by how much she accomplishes.
I wanted her to find her kitten. I wanted that more than anything, to watch her face light up with the kind of relief that might inoculate her against all the losses to come. And simultaneously, I did not want her to find it. Because what she might find wouldn’t be what she was looking for.
I slipped on the hill. My foot caught on a root or a rock, and I went down hard enough that something inside me almost snapped.
Let’s be done with this.
The thought rose up like bile. The exhaustion of watching someone search for something you know they won’t find. The weight of holding space for hope you’ve already surrendered. The generations of women in my family who left things behind and the generations who spent their lives searching for what was lost.
Not the physical fall. The other thing. The urge to end her search by crushing her hope. The impulse to protect myself from her grief by denying her the right to feel it on her own terms.
I let her go her own way down the hill. Not because I was abandoning her, but because I needed to calm down. Because if I stayed too close, I would say something I couldn’t take back. Because sometimes the most loving thing you can do is create enough distance to become the parent your child needs instead of the child your parents created.
I sat on that hillside and waited for my breath to return. Waited for the anger to pass. Waited to become someone who could hold her disappointment without drowning in my own.
And then I went to find her.
I don’t know what I want anymore. To still have hope, or not at all.
Hope is heavy. It asks you to keep searching when your body knows the search is over. It asks you to watch your daughter call into the woods for something that won’t answer. It asks you to hold space for miracle and loss at the same time, to believe in finding while preparing to grieve.
But hopelessness is heavier. It’s the weight my mother carried when she left that first Annie behind. It’s the weight I almost passed to my daughter on that hillside when I wanted to tell her to just stop looking.
Maybe that’s the truth I haven’t been telling. Not that I know what success is and it isn’t enough. But that I’m still searching too. Still calling into the woods for something I can’t name. Still climbing hills with a certainty I no longer fully possess, hoping that if I just keep looking, I’ll find what I left behind.
Or maybe I’ll find what my mother left behind. Or her mother before her.
Three generations of women calling the same name into different woods.
Annie. Annie. Annie.
That’s when I ask myself: How the fuck did I get here?
Continue the Story
I walked down that hill having caught myself in time. I did not end her search. I stayed.
What I learned that evening: restraint does not end when the crisis passes. It carries into the quiet moments too. Into the small asks. Into the making. Into the choice to stay present when nothing dramatic is happening and no one is watching.
If you want to see what came next, how that same discipline showed up at the art room instead of the hillside, continue here:
About This Series
How the Fuck Did I Get Here? is a memoir-in-progress told through interconnected chapters. Each piece stands alone, but together they trace a journey from numbness to presence, from survival to integration, from choosing between two halves to learning to be whole.
This isn’t a story about healing being linear or easy. It’s about what happens when you finally stop running from yourself and ask the hard questions. When you sit with the uncomfortable answers. When you realize that breaking generational cycles means learning to hold both strength and softness at once.
This is the heroine’s journey told in real time: the messy middle, the ongoing practice, the moment-by-moment choice to stay present even when everything in you wants to run.
How to Read This Series
This is a choose-your-own-adventure memoir. Throughout each chapter, you’ll see key words and phrases underlined as hyperlinks. Click them to discover other stories exploring the same themes. Or browse the tags below to find what calls to you.
This interconnected web lets you:
Follow specific themes across the series
Discover related chapters organically
Navigate by what resonates with you
See patterns and connections emerge
Start anywhere. Follow the threads that call to you. Each chapter stands alone, but together they reveal the larger story.
Explore By Theme
This chapter touches:
The Staying
Presence | Being Witnessed | Trust
The Inheritance
Generational Trauma | Motherhood | Breaking Cycles
The Restraint
The Loss
Death and Loss | Heartbreak | The Ghosts We Carry
The Integration
Inner Child Healing | Integration
The Choice
Witnessing Others | Foundational Safety
Click any theme to explore related stories.
About the Author
Alisa Sieber is a writer, former Marine Corps pilot, and mother exploring the intersections of healing, motherhood, and breaking generational cycles. Through raw, embodied storytelling, she examines what it takes to move from armor to integration, from choosing between strength and softness to learning to embody both.
She writes openly about complex trauma, postpartum depression, military identity, and the ongoing practice of staying present. Her therapy is her writing: public, accountable, and in real time.
She lives on a small farm in Northern California with her husband, two daughters, and too many animals. She’s building Chez Serendip, a cultural sanctuary and intentional community space centered on movement, creativity, and transformation.
Share How the Fuck Did I Get Here?
How the Fuck Did I Get Here? is a personal essay series exploring generational trauma, healing, and self-transformation. Through raw storytelling and deep introspection, it unearths the past to understand the present: reckoning with the cycles we inherit and the courage it takes to integrate what the world tells us to split.
If this piece resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to know they’re not alone.
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Join the Conversation
Real talk: This shit is hard.
Breaking cycles. Staying present when it’s unbearable. Learning to hold anger and love simultaneously. Some days it works. Some days it doesn’t. Most days, somewhere in between.
If you’re doing this work too (asking the uncomfortable questions, sitting with what doesn’t resolve, practicing integration even when every instinct says run), join the subscriber chat. That’s where we process between posts, share what we’re learning, and stay present together.
And leave a comment below. Not to perform insight or prove you’ve healed. Just to be witnessed. To witness others. To let the messy middle be exactly what it is.
Healing isn’t linear. Let’s stop pretending it is.
You’re not alone in this. Your presence here reminds me I’m not either.
