Healing through Nurture, Grace, and Remembering

There are moments—quiet, in-between moments—when I can still feel her. The little girl I used to be. Wide-eyed, tender-hearted, and trying so hard to make sense of a world that often didn’t make sense at all. She shows up in flashes—in my fears, in my creativity, in the soft ache of missing a mother I never truly had.

And I’ve learned not to push her away.
I’ve learned to sit beside her, to hold her close, and to tell her what she always longed to hear: You are safe now. I’ve got you.

This is a letter to her.
This is a letter to all the little versions of us still waiting to be seen, to be chosen, to be loved back into wholeness.

My love,

You were never too much.
Never too emotional, too loud, too needy, too sensitive. You were a child—craving love, safety, softness—and none of that was wrong.

But the love you deserved didn’t always arrive.

My mother struggled with things I still don’t fully understand—alcohol addiction, narcissism, deep pain of her own. Our relationship was… complicated. Tumultuous. Sometimes tender, often wounding. She couldn’t give what she didn’t have. And yet, the absence of nurturing still left its mark.

I learned to survive by becoming small, by pleasing, by performing worthiness I never truly felt.

I also learned how to mother myself.

Becoming the Mother I Never Had

Healing my inner child has looked like this:
Unlearning the belief that I have to earn love.
Letting go of the shame that was never mine to carry.
Allowing myself to need. To rest. To be held—even if only by me.

I’ve had to become my own sanctuary.
To reparent the parts of me that were never soothed.
To whisper to that little girl: I believe you. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault.

And through that, something sacred has begun to unfold.
Where pain used to live, love is growing.

Healing What Came Before

When we choose to nurture ourselves—truly, deeply—we begin to heal more than just our own wounds. We soften the impact of generations of silence, scarcity, and shame.

I’m not just tending to my own heart.
I’m breaking patterns my mother couldn’t.
I’m creating new rhythms of love and safety—ones I hope ripple forward into every life I touch.

And maybe, in some small way, I’m also offering a prayer of peace to my mother’s soul. Letting her go. Letting her be. No longer needing her to show up differently—because I’ve learned how to show up for myself.

A Life Rooted in Self-Love

Jen Sincero says, “Love yourself like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

And I believe that.
Because the more I care for myself—my body, my heart, my boundaries, my dreams—the more I become someone I trust.

Not just surviving anymore. Not just coping. But thriving.
Rooted. Radiant. Resourced.

This is the gift of self-nurturing:
Not only do we reclaim the love we missed, we redefine what love is.
And we learn that being soft with ourselves is not weakness—it’s holy.

So to the little one inside me—
I will never abandon you again.
Even when the world feels hard.
Even when grief sneaks in like a tide.

I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.

We’re safe.
We’re free.
And we are so deeply loved.