Some of us were raised in rooms where silence was survival. Where love came with conditions, and peace was always paid for in self-abandonment.
Honorable credit to Dr. Sharon Martin LCSW
Some of us were raised in rooms where silence was survival.
Where love came with conditions, and peace was always paid for in self-abandonment.
We learned to read moods like weather forecasts.
We learned to apologize for existing.
And for a long time, we thought that was love.
But it wasn’t.
It was training.
Training in how to shrink your light so fragile egos wouldn’t shatter.
Training in how to disappear when truth got too loud.
Training in how to mistake endurance for grace.
If this was your schooling, you are not broken—
you are brilliantly adaptive.
Your spirit did what it had to do to keep you here.
But now, you’re allowed to learn something new.
You are allowed to have peace without earning it.
You are allowed to rest without guilt.
You are allowed to stop explaining your worth to people who only understand control.
Healing begins when you stop calling chaos “home.”
It begins when you whisper to yourself, I don’t have to play this role anymore.
It’s not rebellion to seek calm. It’s remembrance.
Your nervous system is not your enemy—it’s your compass.
Take small steps toward safety:
Speak kindly to yourself.
Write the truth you never said out loud.
Surround yourself with people who don’t need you to bleed to prove loyalty.
Practice saying “no” without a sermon to justify it.
You are unlearning what you had to believe to survive.
That’s sacred work.
And though it feels lonely sometimes, you are walking toward real love—
the kind that doesn’t keep score or require permission to exist.
You are not too damaged to be whole.
You are becoming the kind of peace you never received.