Wellness
What Leanne Sheargold Learned When Childhood Memories Returned at 52
Brief memories of childhood trauma surfaced in her early 30s, then returned almost daily at 52. Leanne Sheargold explains how her body led the way.
Repressed Childhood Trauma Resurfaced at 52 – Why Memories Come Back Decades Later
Video from Innate Wisdom with Leanne Sheargold.
Generated from the canonical interview transcript and validated against source data by Guests on Air.
What happens when memories of childhood trauma return decades later?
For Leanne Sheargold, delayed memories of childhood trauma arrived as brief snapshots of two or three seconds, first in her early 30s and then almost daily from 52. Each one took days or weeks to accept, with her body reliving the sensations before she could write, then speak, about it. Weekly EMDR sessions and feeling safe helped her work through them.
Leanne Sheargold was in her early 30s, supporting a friend through her own childhood memories, when a memory of her own surfaced for just two or three seconds. It arrived like a snapshot or a postcard, and she was not sure whether it was real. In an episode of her Innate Wisdom series she explains what happened next, and why it took twenty more years to unfold.
At 52 the memories came back in force, sometimes almost every day. She describes how they arrived as she woke, as she fell asleep, or as she walked into the kitchen with the groceries, and how each one had to be felt in her body before her mind would accept it. She uses the current name for the process, delayed recall of childhood trauma.
Her account is personal rather than clinical, and she says openly that some of the brain terminology she uses is older language. What it offers is a first-hand view of how slowly these memories integrate, what that does to energy and trust, and how to respond when other people refuse to believe what you remember.
Key takeaways
- Delayed memories can surface in brief fragments of two or three seconds rather than as one complete story.
- Leanne needed days or weeks to accept each memory, often feeling it in her body before she could believe it.
- Speaking about a returned memory came in stages for her: first silence, then journaling, then simple words.
- Her advice is that other people's disbelief reflects their own understanding, not the truth of your experience.
1. A memory that arrived in seconds
The first memory came when Leanne was about 30 or 31. It lasted only two or three seconds, and because she was supporting a friend through similar memories at the time, she wondered whether her mind had simply made it up. Over the following two weeks another second or two arrived, but she still did not believe it.
At the time she was meditating morning and night, so she used meditation to return to the memory and walk through it slowly. This time she felt the sensations in her body as well as seeing the image. Afterwards she was shocked, and she says she could no longer tell herself that it was not true.
Then nothing more came for about twenty years. Whenever she tried to return to that brief image in meditation, she met what she describes as a black wall, a couple of seconds of memory followed by darkness. Through those years she went to doctors for medication for depression or anxiety, with no idea what her body was trying to tell her.
2. Why the body held on until 52
At 52 the memories returned, this time without stopping. Leanne describes them arriving as she woke in the morning, as she dozed, or just as she was falling asleep, when a memory would jolt her awake. One came as she put groceries on the kitchen bench, and she was stuck in it for about ten seconds while her husband called her name.
Looking back, Leanne believes her body held these memories for so long because it never felt safe, and she sees that as a sign of its strength. She also links the strain of holding them to earlier health crises, including the stroke she had at 28 and later heart issues. Reading The Body Keeps the Score helped her understand the signs her body had been giving her.
She noticed that feeling safe changed what surfaced. When she went to stay with her son, more detailed memories came, because she felt safe in his house. In her own explanation, each memory is only a few seconds long, like one piece of a thousand-piece jigsaw, and it can take months to see the whole picture. Sometimes, she says, you only ever get part of it.
3. Integration, energy and other people's doubts
Accepting each memory was its own process. Leanne says her body would at first insist she was making it up. Over the next few days she would feel the sensations again, as if reliving them, and only then could her mind stop denying it. Talking came later still: first silence, then journaling, then a simple first attempt at the words, and later more detail.
The cost was high. She describes living far outside her window of tolerance, hypervigilant and unsure who to trust, including herself. At times she went into total shutdown, numb and foggy, when even showering or getting dressed felt like too much. She went to EMDR sessions once a week while working full-time, and weekends were best because she had time to process and rest.
Leanne also speaks to anyone facing disbelief. People told her the memories must have been in her subconscious all along, or that she had been keeping secrets. Her answer is simple: she could not keep a secret she did not know about herself. Her advice is not to take those reactions to heart, because the people making them are not in your shoes.
