A Decades of Healing, Learning, and Earning My Wisdom

Brandilyn Hallcroft, creator of Journals to Healing.

This project was born over decades of deep inner work, spiritual exploration, and self-guided recovery. After walking away from everything familiar, I committed to healing in every sense, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I’ve been studying psychology since I was 17, but it wasn’t until I began applying what I knew that real change happened. Along the way, I explored everything from trauma recovery to spiritual paths. These journals came from real-life struggles, hard-earned breakthroughs, and a journey that taught me how to face myself fully. I created them to help others do the same.

She was an Angel

My mom always told people I was an angel when I was a little girl. And she wasn’t wrong. I did my chores without being asked, was quiet and shy, finished my homework, and was the sweetest, most well-behaved kid you could imagine.

The turning point was when we moved from Wyoming to California, when the bullying kicked in. They called me a country bumpkin and made dumb jokes like, “Does your family ride horses to school?” I remember thinking, “These kids are mean as hell. I just want to go back to Wyoming.”

That sweet girl changed when I hit my teenage years.

I remember a specific moment in junior high when I decided not to be good anymore. I was constantly bullied and rejected at school. Kids teased me for being a goody two-shoes, and I thought maybe if I acted out, I’d finally feel accepted. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I never got the popularity I was chasing.

The one thing I didn’t let fall apart was my grades. I struggled due to learning disabilities, but I knew from a young age that if I kept my grades up, I could get away with more. My mom didn’t play around when it came to schoolwork.

I Didn’t Just Study Healing, I Lived It

Unfortunately, my desperation to belong led me down a dark road filled with trauma. Before I turned 18, I had:

Been put on probation for shoplifting
Survived a sexual assault
Gotten stalked by a former best friend
Experimented with drugs
Drank like it was my job
Got into fights, sometimes physically violent ones
Learned to live with a mentally and physically abusive sibling
Abandonment by friends and family

Mom & Dad divorced, remarried, then divorced again

Mom & second husband married, then divorced

Dad remarried to a woman who did not like me

I was angry. I had a serious temper. I once punched a wall until my hand bled. I cursed people out, fought them, and mirrored the pain that had been inflicted on me growing up. It worked for me at the time, or so I thought. I carried that rage well into my twenties and was convinced I’d be dead before I hit 30.

When I was 21, I got arrested for a DUI. What made it worse was that I literally ratted myself out. After a night of drinking in Hollywood, I got into a car accident. The other driver was also drunk. They took off, and my friends and I started walking up Crescent Heights looking for a payphone when a cop car pulled up and asked who had been driving. Without hesitation, I raised my hand and confessed. Cuffed. Arrested. Full meltdown in the backseat of the squad car.

I was lucky, though. I had drugs in my purse that night. The cops searched my bag, but the drugs slipped into a hole in the lining, and they never found them. That could have been a felony. I walked away with a misdemeanor. Divine protection watched me, even when I didn’t deserve it.

By 22, I married a man I barely knew during a night of partying in Vegas. It nearly cost me my life. He later held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me. That disaster is a story of its own.

Through all of this, I felt like I was playing a role. I wasn’t being true to myself. But I found a strange comfort among the misfits I ran with. We all had trauma and low self-worth. Our broken pieces recognized each other.

At one point, I was homeless for three months, and no one knew. I couch-surfed, showered at friends’ places, and slept in a tent at Dockweiler Beach. I used public libraries to charge my laptop and access the internet so I could build websites. I even contracted with a law firm in Century City for $3,000. I remember sitting in their high-rise office thinking, “They have no clue a homeless girl is building their website.”

But life wasn’t all rock bottom.

I also lived a wild, glamorous lifestyle. I stayed in a fancy hotel for five months with an older boyfriend who got us into all the hot Hollywood clubs. I was invited to celebrity parties. I worked in the entertainment industry for eight years. I appeared on TV shows, in commercials, and even in films. I traveled to 27 states, visited Paris, Mexico, and Hong Kong. I went to college, studied marketing, psychology, and multimedia.
But I blew almost every opportunity that came my way. Bad choices and partying always took priority.

My 29th birthday was the last "Hoo Rah". It started at the Key Club in Hollywood at a Kottonmouth Kings concert. We had VIP passes, and B-Real from Cypress Hill was there. He sat at our table, smoked a joint with me, and after he left, I lit a one-hitter and accidentally lit my hair on fire. It had just been dyed black and was full of chemicals. My eyebrows got singed, and the smell of burning hair was disgusting. I slapped it out quickly, the rest of the night was a blur, I got so wasted I blacked out. There’s even a picture of me with Lou Dog from that night... though I don’t remember a damn thing about meeting him. The following night, the party continued. I was at a bar with friends, and one of my friends hit the bottom of a beer bottle while I was drinking it, and then broke my front tooth.

After that weekend, something inside me changed.

I knew I had to get away from all of it. I started telling people, “I’m moving to Texas soon.” I didn’t know how or when, I just knew, I'd never even been to Texas but that was where was going to go. Then, in January 2008, I walked into work and got laid off because of the market crash. They offered me a severance package. I took the money and drove off to Texas. That’s when the real healing began.

I was lucky. There was always something bigger than me keeping me from going too far. I didn’t end up addicted. I didn’t end up dead. I made it back to myself.

Healing Is the Path I Chose

Moving away from everything and everyone I knew was the beginning of my healing journey. It didn’t happen overnight. It took over a decade of diving deep into the darkest parts of my past, confronting truths I didn’t want to face, and untangling the beliefs and patterns I had internalized since childhood.

When I left California for Texas, I knew I needed a reset. I had been studying psychology since I was 17, but I hadn't truly applied any of it. Texas was where I finally did the work. The real work. I began digging through every resource I could find. I read about Wicca, Astrology, Paganism, Buddhism, Christianity, Spirituality, and Hinduism. I realized one commonality: something out there is bigger than us.

I circled back to psychology, this time with intention. I consumed books, watched videos, wrote in journals, reflected on trauma, and challenged the internal stories I had been carrying. I broke myself down and became unapologetically responsible for myself. I killed the victim inside of me and took ownership of my journey.

When I first moved to Texas in 2008, jobs were scarce. Unemployment wasn’t just common, it was expected. So I created my own job. I became a business owner, working from home before it was considered cool. I started freelancing as a graphic designer, launched an Etsy shop, and eventually became the top 1% of sellers. I also opened a Zazzle shop. I built it all from scratch and kept it going through sheer grit, working day and night to turn survival into success.

When I moved to Colorado, I was in a different growth phase. I still had more to learn, and there were people I needed to finish karmic contracts with. It was uncomfortable, sad, and necessary. Healing doesn’t skip steps. Each city I lived in shaped a different layer of my transformation.

When I arrived in Las Vegas, everything finally clicked. I experienced yet another bad relationship which made me question my patterns. I guess I can't call it bad since it helped guide me to the place I am at today.

During the pandemic, I lost my grandmother, a woman who embodied unconditional love and patience. Her passing devastated me, but it also ignited something in me. It forced me to stop looking outside myself for answers and start turning inward.

In 2020, while the world shut down, I opened up. What finally clicked was that I understood the integration of the three parts that make us whole: body, mind, and spirit. I quit smoking, became mindful of what I was consuming, not just what I was eating, but also what I was watching and exposing my mind to. I started walking regularly, dancing like nobody was watching. I understood the psychology, but I had ignored my spirit due to the rejection I experienced in my youth at the church I was involved with until I was 15.

I started journaling every single day. I wrote about gratitude, grief, past beliefs, triggers, and daily reflections. Each one became a tool for emotional regulation and clarity. I didn’t have access to therapy, but I was my own therapist. I used what I had: books, psychology, writing, spirituality, nutrition, exercise, and reflection. I trusted the universe to guide me to what I needed to learn and understand.

In 2021, I came up with the idea of creating my journals. My father was the first person I told about creating healing journals. His suicide in January 2022 was devastating, but I had the tools to get through it. I channeled my grief into finishing these tools that could help others. I launched the first set of journals in 2024. Each journal is a piece of my soul, a roadmap for others to heal in the ways I had to teach myself.

I am not ashamed of my past. I powered through it, lived through it, and learned to heal myself. That experience allows me to help others without judgment. I don’t look down on anyone for where they are. I understand them because I’ve been there. That’s why this work matters to me.

I’m so damn proud of myself. My life has been wild, challenging, chaotic, beautiful, and badass. I’ve rolled through the fire, and I’ll keep rolling until the wheels fall off.

I look at who I’ve become, and sometimes I can’t even believe it. Healing wasn’t easy, but staying broken? That was unbearable. People don’t always get me—and honestly, I’m not here to be understood. I’m here to rise.

I am a PHOENIX. I came from the ashes, and I made fire my home. If I can do it, so can anyone else. IT'S WORTH IT!

Healing isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about learning how to live with it in a way that makes you stronger, softer, wiser, and more whole. And that is the mission behind Journals to Healing.