Healing in High Heels — Recovering from Narcissistic Abuse While Running a Business, Working, and Mothering

When you’ve been under narcissistic attack, it can feel like your entire world has been burned down. The emotional, psychological, and spiritual fatigue seeps into every corner of your life — especially when you’re a mother, a professional, and an entrepreneur with dreams that won’t wait for your healing to catch up.

I know this road intimately. For years I juggled client deadlines, parenting, and recovery from mental and emotional abuse. What kept me going wasn’t perfection — it was persistence. It was faith. It was the quiet conviction that even if I felt broken, I was still chosen to rise.

Below is the step-by-step guide I used to rebuild myself — and my business — from the inside out.

1. Acknowledge What Happened — Without Downplaying It

The first step is honesty. Narcissistic abuse leaves deep confusion — it tricks you into minimizing your pain. I had to stop telling myself “it wasn’t that bad” and start naming the truth.

Once I stopped protecting the image of the abuser and started protecting my peace, the fog began to lift.

Try this: Write down what really happened. Read it aloud to yourself. Witness your own story without judgment.

2. Sit in the Silence

I stopped running from the quiet. Silence can feel unbearable at first because it exposes the noise in your mind — the guilt, the self-blame, the “what ifs.”

But sitting with your feelings is where the detox begins. I learned to let the tears come, to journal through the confusion, to breathe through the flashbacks. Healing demanded my full attention.

3. Seek Therapy and Spiritual Grounding

I prayed. I cried. Then I found a trauma-informed therapist who helped me connect the dots between my childhood wounds and my adult relationship patterns.

Therapy taught me that the little girl inside me deserved safety, not survival mode. Prayer helped me believe that peace was possible.

Key lesson: Healing is not a one-lane road — it’s therapy and spirituality and self-education.

4. Learn About the Abuse and Break the Cycle

Knowledge was power. The more I learned about narcissism, gaslighting, and coercive control, the more I saw how manipulation works — and how it had rewired my self-belief.

Understanding it didn’t excuse it, but it freed me from it. I started choosing awareness over attachment.

5. Re-evaluate Your Life and Set Boundaries

Healing demanded I edit my environment. Some clients, friends, and even family members could no longer have access to me in the same way.

Boundaries became my new form of self-respect. I simplified my business offers, restructured my schedule around my daughter’s peace, and started saying no without apology.

6. Rebuild Your Business with Compassion for Yourself

As entrepreneurs, we often push through pain because bills don’t stop. But burnout only delays your breakthrough.

I gave myself permission to pause — to rebuild my business on alignment, not adrenaline.

I asked, “What services truly light me up?” and “How can I serve from wholeness, not survival?”

That shift birthed MJ Professional Business Consulting and later Scarred Scorpion Management, both rooted in purpose, not pain.

7. Believe in Yourself — Relentlessly

When everything else failed, belief sustained me. I didn’t always know how, but I knew why — because my daughter was watching. Because I wanted to live, not just survive.

Every time I doubted myself, I reminded my spirit: “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”

8. Keep Going — Even When It Feels Impossible

Some days the only victory is getting out of bed, sending that email, or showing up for your child with softness instead of anger. That counts.

Healing and hustling are both forms of courage. Every small action is a seed — and one day you’ll wake up in the garden you prayed for.

Final Thought

The journey from abuse to abundance isn’t linear. It’s messy, sacred, and slow — but it’s yours.

You are not behind. You are rebuilding. And your story, like mine, will one day be someone else’s survival guide.

Because the real venom was never in your heart — it was in their lies. Your sweetness is still intact.

💛 If this message resonated:

• Read my book When the Spell Breaks — a memoir on reclaiming power after abuse.
• Join The Sweet Venom Blog for healing stories, mindset tools, and entrepreneurial support.
• Follow @MakeibaJames for daily encouragement and truth talk.