Trauma Informed Dog Rescue

Coming Home: Searching for Safety

Founder Reflections No. 001

"The day your nervous system feels safe, is the day your personality comes back." - Linnea Passaler

For as long as I can remember, I have carried a quiet feeling that I never quite fit the world around me — as though everyone else had been handed an instruction manual for navigating life that I somehow never received.

The world seems wired for people who move quickly, think quickly, speak quickly, and are energized by constant activity, noise, and connection. I have never been that person.

I have always experienced the world deeply. I pick up on people’s energy and the emotional atmosphere in a room. I notice tension that often goes unseen. My mind and body seem to take in everything around me, whether I intend them to or not. Because of that, moving through the world has often felt like living with my nervous system turned up much louder than everyone else’s.

For much of my adult life, home became more than simply the place where I lived.

Home became the place where my nervous system could exhale. Where I could slow my pace. Go deep instead of staying on the surface. Experience peace instead of constant stimulation. It was where I could simply be.

Because that is what home does. It does not just shelter you. It allows you to become more fully yourself.

And ever since I was a little girl, there has only ever been one other place that felt exactly like that.

With dogs.

When I was with dogs, I knew myself better.

Dogs have always felt like home to me.

Not in a sentimental way, but in the deepest sense of the word.

When I was with dogs, something inside me settled. The world became quieter. Safer. More understandable.

My first day of school, with my first dog, Sammy.

They offered me something I could not always find elsewhere: presence without pressure, companionship without performance, and a kind of belonging that never required explanation or justification. I never had to earn my place with them. I never had to become someone different. I could simply exist beside them, exactly as myself.

Looking back now, I realize they were teaching me about emotional safety long before I had words for it.

After moving to the beautiful mountains of Ellijay in retirement, I decided to volunteer at our local animal shelter.

Walking into the shelter for the first time was overwhelming. The noise. The barking. The constant movement. The uncertainty. It challenged every part of a nervous system that had spent a lifetime searching for quieter, safer places. Along with that came another familiar feeling — that quiet sense of standing just outside the circle, wondering where I fit, wondering if I belonged.

But then there were the dogs.

With them, everything else faded into the background. I cannot fully explain it, but they pulled me toward them, and every fear and insecurity became secondary.

Especially the vulnerable ones.

The shy ones.

The shut-down ones.

The overwhelmed ones.

The ones who seemed to spend every moment on high alert, quietly asking:

Am I safe?

I found myself asking the one simple question that would eventually become the heart of Artemis House and its trauma informed dog rescue approach:

How do I help this dog feel safe?

Looking back now, I realize that long before I ever knew to ask that question, I was living the human version of it. I had spent a lifetime searching for the same thing myself.

I was not looking at dogs who needed to be fixed. I was looking at individual souls whose behavior made perfect sense once you understood what they were experiencing.

Without realizing it, they were quietly changing the questions I asked and leading me toward a completely different way of seeing dogs.

More importantly, they were changing the way I understood myself.

And that would change everything.

Next week, we'll continue the journey home...