For much of my life, I mistook endurance for strength and acts of service for love. I didn’t grow up knowing what healthy looked like, so I learned to accept pain, imbalance, and emotional labor as the cost of being in relationship. But what I’ve come to realize is this: love should not leave you depleted.
I spent years in partnerships where rest was one-sided. Where I worked multiple jobs, carried the emotional and financial weight of the day, and still came home to someone announcing they were “off to take a nap.” As if I didn’t need one too.
There was a time I thought cooking daily meals, showing up in routines, and simply staying put was enough to define love. But love isn’t duty. It isn’t simply doing the same thing over and over again. And it surely isn’t one person doing the heavy lifting while the other calls it “support.”
That wasn’t love. That was survival – dressed up as loyalty, normalized through generations, and rooted in unhealed wounds.
But I’ve grown tired of mistaking dysfunction for familiarity. I’ve decided to break the cycle.
I no longer crave partnership for the sake of not being alone. I’m not interested in proving my worth through exhaustion. I’m not impressed by performative gestures that lack emotional presence.
What I want is peace.
Peace that doesn’t require performance.
Rest that doesn’t come with guilt.
Presence that doesn’t cost me my self-worth.
This is my new tradition – and I will not apologize for choosing it.
If you’re reading this and it resonates, you’re not alone. Peace is possible—and you’re worthy of it.
Becoming Whole: My Story of Survival, Motherhood, and Finding Me 