Healing in High Heels — Rebuilding After Abuse, Surgery, and Survival

How strong is your faith in yourself? Only the tested will know.

By Makeiba James | The Scorpion Circle Blog

There are seasons in life when everything that can fall apart… does.

When you’re simultaneously an entrepreneur, an employee, and a mother — healing from emotional, mental, and physical wounds — survival becomes an act of faith.

For me, that season began with heartbreak and ended with awakening.

I was recovering not only from mental and emotional abuse at the hands of a narcissist but also from a severe broken ankle that required five foot surgeries and five back procedures. My body and spirit were both fighting for recovery. But somehow, in the middle of that storm, I kept creating.

1. When Life Breaks You Open

Back in 2018, I was laid off between corporate positions as a Proposal Coordinator in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. That’s when I founded Scarred Scorpion Management — not from a place of comfort, but from necessity.

What started as a bridge between jobs became a foundation for purpose. Over time, I diversified it into different arms:

• MJ Professional Business Services, for the corporate world I’ve been part of for 20 years,

• Makeiba James, my artistic brand — where I write, create, and heal through words,

• and my growing ecosystem of self-healing tools, like the Pineapple Thoughts Journal (available on Amazon), the Pineapple Thoughts Notebook Series, and most recently, The Pineapple Thoughts Method™ — a transformational process to help survivors of abuse rewire their minds and reclaim their power.

2. Naming the Abuse and Breaking the Spell

It took therapy, deep self-reflection, and painful honesty to see what I was truly healing from — not just one toxic relationship, but a lifetime of abuse rooted in a narcissistic, dysfunctional family system.

I realized I had been conditioned to live in chaos since childhood. Every red flag I ignored as an adult was linked to a belief I’d inherited — that I had to earn love, overextend, or tolerate pain to feel worthy.

But once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. And that awareness became my freedom.

3. Sitting in Silence and Rebuilding from the Inside Out

Healing demanded stillness — not comfort.

I spent months in silence, sitting with my feelings, crying through the pain, and writing my way back to myself. Between doctor appointments and physical therapy sessions, I journaled every emotion, every insight, every prayer.

I learned that healing isn’t about bouncing back; it’s about building new ground.

It’s giving yourself grace when your body hurts, your mind is heavy, and you still show up for your dreams anyway.

4. Faith, Therapy, and Radical Self-Belief

My faith carried me when nothing else did.

Prayer kept me alive; therapy kept me aware. Together, they built a bridge back to myself.

I learned that healing isn’t a straight line — it’s a daily practice of choosing peace over pain, truth over denial, and self-love over self-sacrifice.

When I started Scarred Scorpion Management, I didn’t realize I was also building a mirror for my life — learning to manage the “projects” of my own healing. Every client win, every business milestone became proof that I was capable of rising again.

5. Teaching My Daughter Through My Transformation

My daughter is 25 now — a young woman navigating her own path in a world where emotional predators hide in plain sight.

Through my healing, she’s learning what real love looks like: calm, consistent, and kind. She’s learning to recognize red flags, to preserve her life force, and to stand firm in her worth before the world tries to define it for her.

My survival has become her education.

She doesn’t have to repeat the generational patterns I broke. She can walk her own path, eyes open, heart protected.

6. From Pain to Purpose: Building While Healing

Even when I couldn’t walk, I could build.

Even when I was healing, I could create.

That’s the paradox of resilience — you grow while you’re still grieving. I poured my pain into purpose, turning my experiences into a roadmap for other women who are walking through their own fire.

Today, my businesses, my writing, and my purpose are aligned in one mission:

To help others heal, rebuild, and rise — from the inside out.

7. You Can Rebuild, Too

If you’re reading this while trying to hold it all together — the job, the business, the motherhood, the heartbreak — know this: you are not alone.

You can start over.

You can heal.

You can rewrite your story — one prayer, one boundary, one business idea at a time.

I am living proof that even after a lifetime of pain, you can build a life that feels like peace.

💛 Final Thought

You are not what happened to you.

You are what you choose to do with it.

And even when it feels like you’re standing in the ruins of everything you’ve lost, remember — you are the builder, the foundation, and the architect of your next chapter.

Because healing — just like entrepreneurship — starts with believing in yourself.

🌿 Connect & Heal

• Read my book When the Spell Breaks and Pineapple Thoughts on Amazon.

• 
  

• Explore The Pineapple Thoughts Method™ — a mindset transformation system for survivors ready to rewire their lives. visit my other website www.makeibajames.com

• Join The Scorpion Circle, my empowerment community for women reclaiming their voice, purpose, and peace.

• Follow me on Instagram @MakeibaJames for daily encouragement and truth talk.