I didn’t realize I was healing until I stopped dealing with things that no longer suited me—like negativity in the media, toxic people, and caring about what anyone thought of me. The more I let go, the more I found pieces of myself. What once felt impossible—quieting the noise, choosing myself—became the only way forward.
There was a time when I shrank myself. For my ex. I thought he was so smart. He encouraged me to go back to college, and for that I gave him more credit than he deserved. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree, but that’s where his encouragement ended.
He was a man who played video games for hours, ignored me when his friends came over, and saw me not as a partner, but as a body. I remember waking up to him on top of me, having sex without my consent. Other times, I tried to talk to him, to make him understand me. I began cutting myself out of frustration and a desperate need for help, and he dismissed me, saying he didn’t have time for my “nonsense.”
I saw him as a refuge from the chaos of living with my parents in my mid-20s. I put him on a pedestal—above even my own daughter—believing he was a genius, that he could save me from the dysfunction I was drowning in. But he didn’t save me. He became another chapter in the pain I had to climb out of.
The pain didn’t start there. Years earlier, I became pregnant as a result of sexual assault. I was young, lost, and terrified. And while I was trying to care for my newborn daughter, I was also forced to care for foster children I didn’t ask for. My parents were out partying. I was exhausted. Alone. And emotionally raw.
I remember one moment that still haunts me: my daughter, crying in her crib, and me—overwhelmed and at my breaking point—screaming “SHUT UP!” so loudly that it startled her. She paused, confused, then resumed crying. That moment pierced me, and it never left. I cried when I remembered it, cried when I apologized to her years later. I had been a child raising a child in chaos. And I didn’t know how to be the mother she needed. But I said I was sorry. And I meant it with every fiber of my being.
Even then, I didn’t realize how strong I was becoming. I just knew I had to survive.
And I did. I’ve lived through trauma, abandonment, disrespect, and heartbreak. I’ve felt the sting of being invisible and the weight of responsibilities that weren’t mine to carry. I tried to find acceptance by changing myself—my hair, my body, my voice. But nothing worked, because I hadn’t yet learned how to love the person underneath it all.
Something changed. I stopped coloring my hair. I cut it off. I started fresh. I embraced the gray, the curls, the raw, real me. I started going to the barber and let myself be reborn—one fade, one taper, one self-loving decision at a time. And when I looked in the mirror, I stopped seeing damage. I saw strength.
The version of me who survived all of that is the woman speaking now. A 52-year-old woman with a grown daughter and four grandchildren. A woman who’s reached milestones, who’s fallen and gotten back up, who acknowledges there’s still work to do—but walks with her head held high anyway. She is no longer the lost girl searching for love in all the wrong places. She is not desperate for validation. She has become her own best friend.
Until the day she dies.
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I love your essay! Keep writing.