The Day the Buffalo Returned

Last year, I told myself something simple but radical: I have to go through it to get over it.

At the time, I thought that truth belonged to one relationship. As I reflect now, I see it was never that narrow. It belonged to my family. My history. My nervous system. My life.

Today, I opened my computer and a journal entry appeared—unprompted. The date stopped me cold.

Written: 2/22/23 Read again: 12/12/25

If you pay attention to patterns, you know when something is not accidental.

The Buffalo and the Storm

The entry referenced a parable I heard that day—the buffalo and the cow.

Both animals sense the storm coming.The cow runs away, trying to outrun it, staying trapped in fear and anticipation.The buffalo runs toward the storm, knowing that by meeting it head-on, the storm passes faster—and the land on the other side is fertile.

Reading my own words again, I saw it clearly:

I wasn’t trying to be brave.I was trying to be free.

Running Was Never Cowardice

From the time I was eighteen, I ran—from my family, from environments that felt deadening, from cycles I knew would consume me if I stayed.

I didn’t want the life I was raised inside of. Not because I didn’t love my parents—but because I saw how trapped they were. Trapped by their own unresolved wounds, trapped long before I ever arrived.

So I ran.

School years meant staying out until the streetlights came on. Summers meant volunteering at a museum—anywhere that wasn’t home. I told myself I learned nothing from those years.

That wasn’t true.

I learned how survivors survive. How they numb, how they adapt, how they sometimes use others—not out of malice, but out of unhealed pain.

That knowledge became both my armor and my burden.

The Lesson Took Years Because It Wasn’t Intellectual

I didn’t need insight. I had insight early. What I needed was integration.

The buffalo lesson wasn’t about charging every storm. It was about refusing to live in the shadow of one.

For years, I mistook distance for freedom and endurance for healing. I confused movement with resolution.

This entry resurfacing now—on 12/12—feels like a confirmation, not a reminder.

The buffalo didn’t return to teach me anything new. It returned to witness that I had already crossed through.

What Changes When You Stop Running,

stop proving, stop explaining, stop contorting yourself to be understood by people committed to misunderstanding you.

You learn discernment:

• Which storms are worth meeting

• Which belongs to someone else

• Which are no longer storms at all, but old weather patterns replaying in memory

Closing Reflection

Some lessons don’t arrive once. They echo back years later—not to haunt you, but to show you how far you’ve come.

The day the buffalo returned wasn’t a call to action. It was a quiet acknowledgment:

You did it. You went through it

.And you didn’t lose yourself on the way.