The Middle Soil

I’ve uprooted so much of my life.

Torn through beliefs, identities, and ways of being that no longer served me.

Walked away from versions of myself that were built on survival.

But this—

This is the layer I didn’t even realize I was avoiding.

The one that stayed tucked just beneath the surface, holding the weight of it all.

It’s not the loud traumas.

Not the obvious wounds.

It’s the grief that never had words.

The habits I didn’t consciously choose but found myself living in, over and over again.

The way I flinched at softness, even when I craved it.

This is the layer where tenderness lives—

Where memories don’t always speak in full sentences

but in the quiet clench of my jaw, the tired ache in my shoulders,

the way I sometimes forget to breathe all the way in.

It’s easy to think healing is a straight line.

That once you name something, or leave something, or grow beyond something—

you’re done.

But healing is circular. Spiral-shaped. Rooted.

And sometimes, we come back to old ground,

not because we’ve failed,

but because we’re ready to meet it differently.

More resourced.

More whole.

More honest.

This is what I’ve found in the middle soil.

The place beneath survival.

The quiet hum of becoming.

It’s not glamorous.

There are no finish lines.

Just the steady rhythm of turning toward myself again and again.

Of touching the parts I once believed were too tender to hold.

Of noticing what lives inside me now—not just what I’ve lost.

This is the part of me that’s finally ready to breathe.

To soften.

To witness.

And to write—not just about the pain, but the life that pulses beneath it.

I hold what was buried,

and I write what is living.

—The Story Witness

Welcome to The Story Between

This space was never meant to be polished.

It was never about having the answers, wrapping things up with a perfect bow, or offering a clean beginning or end.

Instead, The Story Between was born from the messier truth—the part most of us try to rush past.

The middle. The ache. The stretch. The becoming.

This is the story between.

Not the origin. Not the resolution.

But the space where healing happens slowly—where grief softens and sharpens at once.

Where motherhood and loss blur.

Where trauma still echoes, even as softness begins to speak louder.

I created this living archive to hold all of it. The pieces I didn’t always have language for until now.

The stories I once buried to survive.

The moments I thought were too unfinished to matter.

And the sacred truths that have only started to find their voice now that I’ve stopped bracing for the next blow.

Here, I write from the in-between:

between trauma and healing

between silence and story

between surviving and rooting into life again.

Some pieces will be carried by R.M. Seren—the version of me learning to soften, to mother myself, to let the breath come back.

Others will be voiced by Reni M. Ashen—the part still holding fire, still untangling herself from survival.

Each one holds truth. Each one matters.

You won’t find linearity here. You’ll find cycles, seasons, spirals.

You’ll find unfinished thoughts and deep reckonings.

And you’ll find room—room to witness your own story in whatever shape it takes right now.

If you’ve ever felt caught between who you were and who you’re becoming, I want you to know you’re not alone.

You’re not behind.

You’re not broken.

You’re just in the middle.

And maybe, that’s exactly where you need to be.

Welcome to The Story Between.

—The Story Witness

I hold what was buried, and I write what is living.