The Absence of Neglect

Over the last year, something has changed.

Actually, it feels more like a decade of growth finally reached a point where my beliefs about myself caught up with the life I had been building.

You see, for most of my life, I didn’t understand how deeply neglect had shaped me.

Neglect doesn’t only leave you believing you have no worth.

It teaches something much quieter.

That your needs don't matter.

That wanting is dangerous.

That asking is selfish.

That almost is enough.

That once someone offers you love, attention, or belonging—even inconsistently—you hold on tightly because something feels safer than nothing.

You protect what you have, even when what you have is hurting you.

You learn that losing it might be even worse.

So you spend years longing for more while clinging to less.

You imagine a life filled with greater love, greater happiness, greater reciprocity, yet struggle to release what is familiar because familiar feels safer than the unknown.

Eventually, that way of living stops feeling unusual.

It simply becomes normal.

Looking back, I can see that I outsourced my own worth.

I waited for other people to decide whether I mattered.

Whether I was lovable.

Whether I was worth choosing.

Whether I was worth investing in.

I gave other people authority they were never meant to hold.

Authority over how I saw myself.

Authority over what I believed I deserved.

Authority over what I was willing to accept.

I don’t think I ever made that decision consciously.

I think I learned it.

The remarkable thing about beliefs is that they don’t stay contained.

They shape everything.

The relationships we enter.

The people we invite into our inner circle.

The opportunities we pursue.

The boundaries we set.

The way we spend our time.

The way we spend our money.

The way we care for ourselves.

Over the last decade, something else has been happening.

Therapy gave me language for experiences I had never understood.

I learned to recognize my own emotions instead of overriding them.

I began choosing myself in moments when the old version of me would have endured.

I experienced friendships filled with consistency, generosity, presence, and care.

I discovered that relationships could feel peaceful.

I accepted that having needs didn't make me needy, they made me human.

I led through some of the hardest seasons of my life and found strength I didn’t know I possessed.

I lost my dad, and with that loss came grief I never would have chosen, along with a freedom I never expected.

Every one of those experiences challenged an old belief.

Every one of them became evidence that the story I had carried about myself wasn’t true.

Slowly, almost without noticing, I began reclaiming that authority.

Every boundary.

Every hard conversation.

Every relationship I chose to leave.

Every healthy relationship I chose to nurture.

Every act of care toward myself.

Every decision that reflected the life I wanted instead of the life I had settled for.

Piece by piece, I became the person deciding what my life would feel like.

Somewhere along the way, another realization emerged.

I don’t have to love and hurt at the same time.

That sentence seems almost impossibly simple now.

It wasn’t simple to learn.

For much of my life, love and pain arrived together so consistently that I assumed they belonged together.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Love can be peaceful.

Care can be freely given.

Beauty can simply be enjoyed.

Receiving doesn’t require guilt.

Wanting doesn’t require justification.

Investing in myself doesn’t require permission.

Because the permission was never someone else’s to give.

It was always mine to claim.

And walking away from a person who loves and hurts me is better than staying.

I used to think neglect was something that happened to me.

Now I understand how easily it can continue long after the people who taught it are gone.

Every time I ignored my own needs.

Every time I settled for less than I longed for.

Every time I believed I had to hold on to something that was hurting me because something was better than nothing.

I was living inside lessons I learned long ago.

Today, I am learning something different.

I listen when my heart longs for beauty.

I respond when I need rest.

I protect my peace.

I surround myself with people who are capable of love without harm.

I invest in the life I am building with the same care I have always given to everyone else.

I recognize and speak my needs, wants, and desires with less fear and shame.

Maybe that’s why my life feels so good.

Because for the first time ever it includes

The absence of neglect.