Burning The Bridge I was Born On: When home is your first heartbreak: a coming-of-age in survival mode.

by W. Berry

But you don’t have to keep sitting at a table that never fed you in the first place.

Because when the person who was supposed to love you the most can’t — or won’t — it rearranges your insides. It tells you something must be wrong with you. Maybe love is something you have to earn. Something you have to shrink for. Starve for. That’s what the mother wound does. It rewrites your sense of worth when you’re too young to know better. And eventually, you stop trying to be seen by the person who never looked in the first place. You just try to disappear.

Around her, I wasn’t a person. I was a mirror. I was a problem. I was someone to manage, to mold, to fix, to criticize. Everything I liked was “too much.” Everything I felt was “dramatic.” Every choice I made had to be filtered through how it would make her look.

And then I remember, I was raised to perform. I was raised to make everything look okay, even when I was falling apart. I was raised to be a reflection of someone else’s image. And now I’m unlearning all of it. But it’s still in me. In how I don’t ask for help. In how I keep people at arm’s length. In how I hate being touched sometimes, even by the people I love most.

She could not love you the way you deserved, but that does not mean you did not deserve it. Let it end with you. Build a life where love is not rationed. Give the next girl; whether she is your daughter or the child still living inside you. a world where she never once has to wonder if she is enough. Because she is.