u/Serious-Pound8175

For almost two years, an alarm has gone off on my phone at the same time every evening, after my daughter has gone to bed.

It isn't a reminder to answer emails, check social media, or finish work.

It's a reminder to pick up a pen.

For somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes, I write. Twenty minutes is my guide, but if I'm in the middle of something important, I allow myself long enough to finish what I've started. Then I close the notebook.

Not for an audience. Not for social media. Not even to create something worth reading.

Most of what I've written over those two years will never be seen by another person. It's messy. Honest. Sometimes irrational. Sometimes angry. Sometimes grateful. Sometimes it's nothing more than me trying to make sense of why something won't leave me alone.

And I think that’s the point.

People often describe journalling as a way to gain clarity. I think they're right, but not in the way most people mean. When I sit down to write, I rarely have clarity. I'm not looking for answers. I'm simply acknowledging what exists.

Something happened today. Something didn't sit right. I overreacted. Someone hurt me. I hurt someone else. I'm grieving. I'm disappointed. I'm ashamed. I'm joyful.

Whatever it is, I put it on paper. Not because writing solves it. Because carrying it around in my head doesn't.

Once I've written it down, something changes. I no longer have to keep rehearsing it in my mind so I don't forget it. I've acknowledged it. I've witnessed it. I've entrusted it to the page. The notebook carries it for a while, so I don't have to.

That doesn't mean I understand it.

It doesn't mean I've forgiven anyone.

It doesn't mean I've found the lesson.

I think we've become far too quick to search for silver linings. Some experiences simply shouldn't have happened. Some pain doesn't need to be wrapped in a neat lesson to justify its existence.

Sometimes all we need to do is acknowledge that something happened. And let it breathe.

The clarity comes later. Sometimes days later. Sometimes months later. Sometimes I'll read something I wrote a year ago and suddenly see what I couldn't possibly have seen at the time.

The writing didn't create the insight.

It created the space for the insight to arrive.

When I first came across research by psychologist James Pennebaker into expressive writing, recommended by a friend, I was intrigued. His studies found that spending around fifteen to twenty minutes writing about emotionally significant experiences could improve psychological and physical wellbeing over time. The idea wasn't that writing magically solved problems. Rather, giving difficult experiences somewhere to exist outside ourselves appeared to interrupt rumination and allow our minds to process them differently. That resonated deeply with me, so I decided to try it, not because I thought it would change my life, but because I had nothing to lose.

Looking back now, I know it changed me. It didn't remove hardship. It didn't prevent grief. It didn't stop difficult seasons.

What it did stop was the rumination. I've come to think we repeat a pattern until something interrupts it, not necessarily until we've learned from it. The notebook wasn't teaching me anything new. It was interrupting the loop I was trapped in.

When life became particularly difficult, I stopped writing for a couple of months. Nothing else changed.

But I did.

I became more reactive. My boundaries became weaker. I made choices that weren't aligned with the person I wanted to be.

The notebook hadn't been fixing my life. It had been helping me stay connected to myself. When I returned to those evenings with a pen, I felt myself return too.

That's why, despite using technology every day, I still believe there's something uniquely valuable about putting pen to paper. Handwriting isn't superior, and technology isn't the enemy. But handwriting asks something different of us. It slows us down. It asks us to stay present. It doesn't let us skim over ourselves quite so easily.

And perhaps that's something worth protecting.

We're raising children in a world where typing is replacing handwriting and speed is replacing stillness. I don't know what we'll gain, but I am curious about what we may lose. Not just the ability to write by hand, but the habit of sitting quietly with ourselves long enough to understand what we're carrying.

Some of the most important writing I'll ever do will never be published. It won't become a social media post. It won't become an article. It won't even become a conversation.

Its purpose isn't performance.

Its purpose is presence.

Ironically, many of the pieces I eventually share begin in those private pages. Not because they were written for other people, but because time has granted me perspective. The raw emotion eventually settles. The patterns become visible. The understanding quietly arrives.

Only then do I write something meant to be read. Everything before that belongs only to me.

So if there's one thing I'd encourage people to try, it's this. For a month, put your phone down. Pick up a pen. Write for fifteen or twenty minutes, or thirty if you need it. Don't worry about grammar. Don't worry about making sense. Don't worry whether anyone will ever read it.

To be fair, I hope they don't.

Because some of the most important conversations you'll ever have are the ones you'll only ever have with yourself.

Sometimes healing doesn't begin with answers.

Sometimes it begins with a blank page, a pen, and finally giving yourself permission to say:

This happened.

And for today, that's enough.

The irony is that most endings aren’t sudden. They are built, one interaction at a time. At work, in friendships, in families, and in relationships, a little more respect, a little more kindness, and a little more listening can change the entire trajectory. By the time you’re scrambling to keep someone, the opportunity to make them feel valued has often long since passed.

Chapter One

Kindness, Curiosity and Boundaries

I have been thinking a great deal about kindness lately. Not the kind of kindness that avoids difficult conversations, excuses harmful behaviour, or sacrifices truth in the name of keeping the peace. Real kindness is much more demanding than that. It asks us to hold two truths at once: that people are responsible for the choices they make, and that every person is more complicated than the worst thing we know about them.

Over the years, I have noticed how quickly we reduce one another. We hear one sentence and decide we understand an entire life. We see one behaviour and believe we know someone's character. We discover one part of a story and assume we have heard the whole story. That makes me really uncomfortable.

Not because I think all behaviour is acceptable. It isn't. Violence is wrong. Abuse is wrong. Manipulation is wrong. Non-consensual behaviour is wrong. People are responsible for the choices they make, and people should seek help and be accountable for the harm they cause. Those things are not negotiable.

But I have also come to believe that accountability and shame are not the same thing.

A boundary says, 'I will not participate.' Accountability says, 'This behaviour caused harm.' Shame says, 'This tells me who you are.' Those are profoundly different statements. One addresses behaviour. The other attempts to define a human being.

I have learned that I can disagree with someone without humiliating them. I can decide someone is unsafe without deciding they are beyond humanity. I can recognise harm without assuming I know the whole person. I can hold compassion while also walking away. Those ideas used to feel contradictory. Now they feel inseparable.

People sometimes misunderstand what I mean by compassion. Compassion is not agreement. Curiosity is not endorsement. Understanding is not permission. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Boundaries are not rejection. Compassion without boundaries becomes self-abandonment. Boundaries without compassion become contempt. Neither leads to healing.

I think we have become uncomfortable with uncertainty. We rush to certainty because certainty feels safe. If I can decide who you are quickly, then I don't have to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing. But human beings are rarely that simple. I no longer want to make assumptions before I have become curious enough to understand. That doesn't mean I owe everyone access to my life. It doesn't mean I stay where I am being harmed. It doesn't mean I suspend discernment.

In fact, I have learned the opposite. Some people repair when they understand they have caused harm. Others continue to choose behaviours that wound those around them. When someone repeatedly chooses to harm me after understanding the impact of their actions, my responsibility shifts. It is no longer my responsibility to understand them. It is my responsibility to protect myself. I can hold compassion for another person's humanity while refusing to remain available to their behaviour. Those two things are not contradictory. They are both expressions of love, one for another person, one for myself.

People often ask me why I think this way. The answer is simple. I know what shame does. I know what assumptions do. I know what it feels like to have people decide who you are before they have ever asked who you are. Everything I believe about curiosity, compassion and boundaries grew from that experience.

This is the story of how I learned that kindness is strongest when it walks hand in hand with truth, accountability and courage.

Chapter Two

The Weight of Being Misunderstood

Leaving wasn't the end of my story. In many ways, it was the beginning of another. People often imagine that once someone leaves a controlling environment, they become free. I thought so too. Instead, I discovered that sometimes you can leave a place physically while carrying it inside you for years.

I left the group. But shame came with me. Not because I believed I had done something terrible. Because I believed I was something terrible. There is a difference.

When people discovered where I had come from, very few became curious. Most were sure they already knew. They Googled the group. They read articles. They watched documentaries. And then they believed they understood me, not because they knew me, but because they believed my history was enough.

No one asked what it had been like to grow up inside it. No one asked what it had cost to leave. No one asked what had happened afterwards. They filled in the blanks themselves.

Slowly, I stopped trying to explain. It was easier to let people think whatever they wanted than to keep proving I deserved to belong. Looking back, I can see that this was shame doing exactly what shame does. It isolates. It convinces us that if people really knew us, they would leave. So we leave first. Not always physically. Emotionally. We hide. We become careful. We become productive. Busy. Helpful. Successful. Anything except known.

For years, I poured myself into work, into study, into achievement. Not because success healed shame, but because achievement gave me somewhere to hide from it. If I kept accomplishing enough, perhaps no one would look closely. Perhaps they would never discover where I had come from. Perhaps I could become someone new.

But shame is exhausting, because no amount of achievement answers the question it keeps asking: 'Am I still enough if people know the truth?' I didn't know it then, but shame was still making my decisions. It shaped who I trusted, how much of myself I revealed, the way I saw the world, it even shaped the communities I was drawn towards.

When you have spent your life believing that belonging must be earned, being told who you are can feel strangely familiar. High-control environments don't always look the same. Sometimes they wear different clothes, speak a different language, carry different beliefs. But underneath, they promise the same thing: belong here, follow us, we'll tell you who you are.

I wish I could say I recognised that immediately. I didn't. Because familiarity can feel like safety, especially when shame has convinced you that you don't know how to belong anywhere else.

It has taken me years to understand that what I was searching for was never to be sure. It was belonging. Real belonging, the kind that doesn't require perfection, the kind that survives questions, the kind that makes room for mistakes, the kind that doesn't disappear when someone learns your history.

I didn't find that belonging in an institution, or a belief system, or a community built on being sure. I found it much later, in ordinary people. People who became curious before they became certain.

And perhaps that is why I have become so passionate about curiosity. Because I know what it feels like to be reduced to a story someone else wrote about me. And I know what it feels like when someone is willing to ask, 'Tell me what it was like for you.' One question creates shame. The other creates healing. That difference has shaped everything that came afterwards.

Chapter Three

Character Before History

Healing did not arrive in a therapist's office. It did not happen because I finally found the perfect book. It did not come because I had answered every question about my past. It arrived quietly, almost unnoticed. It looked like children playing on the floor.

When my child was young, life asked something different of me. I had returned to work earlier than I wanted because we needed the income. I was carrying the financial responsibility for our family while also caring for a sick partner. Nights were short. Sleep was rare. My body eventually told me what my mind had been refusing to admit.

Something had to change. So I made a decision that surprised a lot of people. I stepped away from my career, not because I lacked ambition, not because I wanted less, but because I knew I would never get those early years with my daughter back. I wanted to be present. I wanted to attachment parent. I wanted my daughter to know, in the deepest part of herself, that she was safe.

Through a local group of mothers who shared similar values, I began caring for their children as well. Those women were intelligent, thoughtful professionals, some worked in fields centred on child development. All of them had choices. Yet they entrusted me with the people they loved most.

Looking back, I realise something profound. They trusted me long before they knew my story. They knew my character before they knew my history. That changed everything.

There were four of them on the busiest days, all small, all needing something different at once. It wasn't calm. It was chaos, most of the time, tantrums and tears and the occasional bite. When one child bit another, I would kneel down and say, 'I can see you're angry, but I won't let you hurt her.' When a child was mid-spiral, thrashing and past the reach of words, I knew they didn't need reasoning. They needed to release the energy. I would bring pillows, make the space soft, sit close enough that they could feel me there without being crowded. Sometimes I put a hand where they felt safe, a back, a shoulder. Sometimes I rocked them, or carried them in the sling until they settled against me and fell asleep.

So I would quietly make the space safe. 'I won't let you hurt yourself.' 'I won't let you hurt me.' 'I won't let you hurt anyone else.' 'I'm here.' Those words became familiar. They weren't punishment. They were boundaries. They weren't abandonment. They were presence.

We went to the park most days. One afternoon we got caught in the rain and hid together under the playground equipment, waiting for my daughter's father to come and collect us. The children were a little worried, and I shielded them as best I could, but by the time the car pulled up they were already turning it into an adventure, asking if they could stomp in the puddles on the way. It was a mess. It was also something I had never had growing up, four children, muddy and laughing, certain that someone was there to keep them safe. Just ordinary moments. But they were mine to give.

It took me years to realise I wasn't only speaking to the children. Some part of me was speaking to the child I had once been, the child who had never learned that someone could stay present without controlling, shaming or abandoning them. Every time I held space for another child, I unknowingly offered something to myself: safety with boundaries, compassion without chaos, love that didn't disappear simply because emotions became overwhelming. Those children were healing me without ever knowing it.

Eventually something extraordinary happened. After years of knowing me, those women began asking questions about my life. By then they had already decided who I was, not because of my past, but because of how I had shown up. How I loved their children. How I held boundaries. How I cared.

Only then did I tell them where I had come from. I expected the familiar silence, the awkwardness, the subtle shift that usually followed. Instead, I was met with something I had almost no experience receiving. Compassion. One of them looked at me and simply asked, 'How are you the person you are today after everything you've experienced?'

No one had ever asked me that. For so much of my life people had wanted to understand where I came from. She wanted to understand who I had become. There is an enormous difference. For the first time, I realised my past did not have to be the first thing people knew about me. My history was real. It had shaped me. But it did not define the entirety of me.

Those women gave me a gift they may never fully realise they gave. They became compassionate witnesses. Not rescuers. Not therapists. Not people trying to solve me. Simply witnesses, people who already knew my character and chose to hold my story with gentleness.

Something shifted inside me. I realised I had spent years protecting myself from the people who judged me. In doing so, I had also prevented safe people from loving me. I had assumed everyone would respond the way a few people had. That assumption had become another prison.

In the beginning, I did tell a few people. I had little choice. The people at the welfare office needed to understand my circumstances. Later, someone at the employment office did too. I also told one or two other people. Those conversations were hard. I often felt misunderstood. Explaining where I had come from was exhausting, and I left feeling more exposed than understood.

So I stopped telling people. It felt easier to let them know me without my history than to keep trying to explain it.

Years later, something unexpected happened. I began telling people who had already known me for years. People who had first come to know my character. This time the response was different. They looked at the life I had built rather than only the life I had survived. Little by little, shame began to loosen its grip, not because my past had changed, but because I finally discovered that being fully known did not inevitably lead to rejection. It could also lead to belonging.

That experience transformed the way I see every person I meet. I cannot know someone's whole story. I cannot know the wounds they carry, or what it took for them simply to arrive in front of me today. So I choose curiosity first. Not because curiosity always changes the outcome, sometimes people continue to cause harm, and sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is walk away, but because I never again want to become someone who decides another person's worth before I have cared enough to know who they are.

That lesson did not come from a philosophy book. It came from a circle of women, a handful of children, and the extraordinary grace of being known by my character before my history.

Chapter Four

Compassion Needs Boundaries

For a long time, I thought kindness meant understanding everyone. If I could just understand why someone behaved the way they did, surely I could respond with enough compassion to make a difference. After all, hadn't curiosity changed my life? Hadn't someone choosing to understand me, instead of judging me, allowed me to begin healing?

So I tried to offer that same gift to others. I listened. I asked questions. I looked beneath behaviour instead of reacting to it. Sometimes that mattered, sometimes people simply needed someone willing to see the human being underneath the pain. Those conversations strengthened my belief that shame rarely helps people change. Curiosity often does. Compassion often does. Being seen often does.

But somewhere along the way, I quietly began believing something that wasn't true. I began believing that understanding someone else's behaviour meant I had to tolerate it. Those are not the same thing. Understanding explains behaviour. It does not excuse it. Compassion recognises another person's humanity. It does not require sacrificing your own.

That distinction took me years to learn. Sometimes people hurt us because they are frightened, or overwhelmed, or simply don't yet know another way. When there is honesty, accountability and a willingness to repair, relationships can grow through those moments. I have experienced that. I have lived that.

But there are other times. Times when someone understands the impact of their behaviour and chooses it anyway. Times when your empathy becomes something they rely on instead of their own responsibility. Times when your willingness to understand becomes the very thing that keeps you stuck.

That is where boundaries become an act of kindness, not only towards yourself, but towards the other person as well. Because rescuing someone from the consequences of their choices rarely helps them grow. It only delays the moment they must face themselves.

I have learned that boundaries are not punishment. They are information. They quietly say, 'This is what I can live with. This is what I cannot. I care about you, and I care about me too.'

There was a time when setting a boundary felt cruel, felt selfish, felt as though I was becoming the kind of person I never wanted to be. Now I understand something different. Every healthy relationship I have ever known has had boundaries. The mothers who welcomed me into their lives had boundaries. The people who loved me well had boundaries. The relationships that felt safest were never the ones without limits, they were the ones where expectations were clear, repair was possible, and both people's humanity mattered equally.

I want to remain curious. I want to continue believing that people are more than the worst thing they have ever done. I want to continue asking what happened before asking what is wrong. But I no longer believe that understanding someone means I must remain available to them. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stay. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is leave. Wisdom is learning the difference.

That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. It has also been one of the kindest, because every boundary I have learned to set has quietly whispered something I spent years needing to hear: you matter too.

Perhaps that is what healthy kindness looks like. Not choosing between compassion and boundaries. Holding them together, one in each hand.

Chapter Five

Compassionate Witnesses

One of the unexpected gifts of my own healing has been the conversations it has opened. Over the years, people have told me things they had never told anyone else. Not because I have special answers. Not because I could fix them. But because they sensed they would not be shamed. Those conversations have taught me as much about humanity as my own life ever has.

Again and again, I have met people carrying unbearable shame. People convinced that if anyone truly knew them, they would be rejected. Some carried shame because of what had happened to them. Some because of thoughts they couldn't understand. Some because of choices they deeply regretted. Some because they believed they had become the worst thing they had ever thought, felt or done.

Almost every one of them expected judgement. Very few expected curiosity. I have learned that curiosity creates a different kind of conversation, not because it removes accountability, but because it makes honesty possible. When someone no longer has to spend all of their energy hiding, they finally have enough energy to begin healing. That has changed the way I think about people.

I still believe accountability matters. Deeply. If someone harms another person, they are responsible for that harm. Compassion does not erase consequences. Curiosity does not excuse abuse. Kindness is not permission.

But shame has never struck me as a particularly effective teacher. Most people who already carry overwhelming shame do not become kinder because they are given more of it. They simply become quieter, more isolated, more convinced they should hide. Others become defensive. Some even become cruel. I call this shame projection, the way shame has of turning itself outwards and landing on the people around us. None of that excuses the harm it causes. But it reminds me that shame rarely heals anyone. Healing begins somewhere very different. It begins the moment someone realises they no longer have to pretend.

The moment another human being says, 'Thank you for trusting me. Tell me more. I'm listening.' Those words are not solutions. They are invitations, invitations to step out of hiding, to become known, to tell the truth.

Sometimes the truth is painful. Sometimes it requires accountability. Sometimes it leads to difficult choices: professional help, distance, repair, consequences. But none of those things become less important because compassion is present. If anything, compassion makes them more possible, because people who no longer believe they are beyond redemption are often more willing to face themselves honestly.

I don't know what became of every person I have spoken with. That isn't mine to know. Healing belongs to the person doing the work, not the person witnessing it. I was never there to rescue anyone. Only to offer what had once been offered to me, a space where another human being could tell the truth without first having to prove they deserved compassion.

Perhaps that is all any of us can really offer each other. Not certainty. Not perfection. Presence. The willingness to stay curious a little longer, to ask one more question before reaching a conclusion, to remember that every person we meet carries a history we cannot see.

Looking back, I realise that my life has been shaped by compassionate witnesses, the mothers who trusted me, the friend who asked how I had become the person I am, the people who saw my humanity before they saw my past. They changed me. Not because they ignored my history, but because they refused to let it become my identity.

That is the kind of person I hope to be for others. Not someone who rescues. Not someone who excuses harm. Simply someone who remembers that every human being is more complicated than the story we first tell ourselves about them. And perhaps that is where kindness quietly begins.

Chapter Six

A Little More Kindness

A few days ago, I went into a shame spiral. I recognised it immediately. It was once home.

Not because I had done something wrong. But because strangers, who had never lived a moment of my life, chose certainty before curiosity. They assigned meanings I had never intended and judged positions I had never taken.

Years ago, I would have stayed there. I would have questioned myself. Wondered whether perhaps everyone else knew something about me that I couldn't see. I would have apologised for existing.

This time I recognised what was happening. I was feeling sensitive and misunderstood. It was a shame spiral. So I stepped away and gave myself some space. It was never meant to be permanent. I finally understood that protecting myself is different from proving myself.

Healing hasn't meant that shame disappeared. It means I recognise its voice. I know where it came from. And I know I don't have to believe everything it tells me.

That doesn't mean I always get life right. Far from it. I am not a perfect parent. I still lose my patience. I still say things I wish I had said differently. I am not beyond any of this. I still become defensive when I feel misunderstood. I still have to remind myself that being understood by everyone is not the same as being at peace with myself. When I hurt someone, I repair. I apologise. I listen. I take responsibility. Then I begin again.

But there are other choices I have made that never required someone else's forgiveness. Only my own. Relationships I stayed in for too long. Boundaries I didn't yet know how to set. Moments I ignored my intuition. Times I abandoned myself because I believed understanding another person mattered more than protecting myself.

Like everyone, I have made choices I am proud of and choices I wish I had made differently. Some reflected the person I hoped to become. Others reflected fear, loneliness, exhaustion, or simply being human. I don't need to catalogue them here. Every reader already has their own list. For a long time I believed my worst moments were evidence of my character. Now I understand they were moments in my life. Not the whole of it.

Therapy helped me understand something that changed everything. We don't discover our boundaries perfectly. We discover them by living, by crossing them, by saying yes when we wish we had said no, by trusting someone we later realise wasn't safe, by making choices that teach us something about ourselves. Mistakes become teachers if we are willing to learn from them. Not because mistakes are good, but because they can become the beginning of wisdom.

For me, the greatest shift wasn't learning to make perfect choices. It was learning that the next right choice is only ever one choice away.

Shame says, 'You've failed. This is who you are.' Grace says, 'You still have today.'

Today I can choose differently. Tomorrow I can choose again. If I stumble, I can choose again. If I lose my way, I can choose again. That doesn't diminish responsibility. It makes responsibility possible. Because shame keeps us looking backwards. Grace allows us to move forwards.

Our lives are rarely changed by one extraordinary decision. They are changed by ordinary choices, repeated over time, a healthier boundary, a difficult apology, a moment of honesty, an act of courage, a decision to stay, a decision to leave, a choice to become curious instead of certain. Little by little those choices become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes a life. I didn't choose where my story began. But every day I have another opportunity to choose where it goes next.

When I look at my daughter, I don't hope she becomes someone who never makes mistakes. I hope she becomes someone who knows that mistakes never make her unworthy of love. I hope she knows she can repair. She can apologise. She can learn. She can choose again.

I hope she grows into someone who is kind without disappearing. Compassionate without abandoning herself. Strong without becoming hard. Curious without becoming naïve. Perhaps that is all any of us are really trying to do, become a little more ourselves, a little less afraid, a little more honest, a little more compassionate, a little more willing to let people earn our trust instead of demanding our perfection.

I don't know whether these pages will change anyone's mind. That isn't really why I wrote them. I wrote them because I wanted to understand the thread that ran through my own life. The thread that connected shame, curiosity, compassion, boundaries, and healing.

What I found waiting at the end wasn't certainty. It was kindness. Not the kind that avoids difficult truths, but the kind that can hold truth and compassion in the same hands. Kindness that asks questions before reaching conclusions. Kindness that remembers every person carries a story we cannot see. Kindness that holds people accountable without forgetting their humanity. Kindness that includes ourselves.

If my life has taught me anything, it is this: my worst decisions do not define me. Your worst decisions do not define you. What defines us is what we choose next.

So if I hope to leave anything behind, it isn't certainty. It isn't an argument. It isn't even this story. It is simply this: meet people with curiosity before certainty. Hold accountability and compassion together. Protect your own humanity as fiercely as you protect someone else's. And when you lose your way, choose again.

Kindness is nothing more, and nothing less, than choosing, again and again, to become the person you hope to be. One day at a time.

* A note on process: AI has been used as an editor for this piece.

Chapter One

Kindness, Curiosity and Boundaries

I have been thinking a great deal about kindness lately. Not the kind of kindness that avoids difficult conversations, excuses harmful behaviour, or sacrifices truth in the name of keeping the peace. Real kindness is much more demanding than that. It asks us to hold two truths at once: that people are responsible for the choices they make, and that every person is more complicated than the worst thing we know about them.

Over the years, I have noticed how quickly we reduce one another. We hear one sentence and decide we understand an entire life. We see one behaviour and believe we know someone's character. We discover one part of a story and assume we have heard the whole story. That makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Not because I think all behaviour is acceptable. It isn't. Violence is wrong. Abuse is wrong. Manipulation is wrong. Non-consensual behaviour is wrong. People are responsible for the choices they make, and people should seek help and be accountable for the harm they cause. Those things are not negotiable.

But I have also come to believe that accountability and shame are not the same thing.

A boundary says, 'I will not participate.' Accountability says, 'This behaviour caused harm.' Shame says, 'This tells me who you are.' Those are profoundly different statements. One addresses behaviour. The other attempts to define a human being.

I have learned that I can disagree with someone without humiliating them. I can decide someone is unsafe without deciding they are beyond humanity. I can recognise harm without assuming I know the whole person. I can hold compassion while also walking away. Those ideas used to feel contradictory. Now they feel inseparable.

People sometimes misunderstand what I mean by compassion. Compassion is not agreement. Curiosity is not endorsement. Understanding is not permission. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Boundaries are not rejection. Compassion without boundaries becomes self-abandonment. Boundaries without compassion become contempt. Neither leads to healing.

I think we have become uncomfortable with uncertainty. We rush to certainty because certainty feels safe. If I can decide who you are quickly, then I don't have to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing. But human beings are rarely that simple. I no longer want to make assumptions before I have become curious enough to understand. That doesn't mean I owe everyone access to my life. It doesn't mean I stay where I am being harmed. It doesn't mean I suspend discernment.

In fact, I have learned the opposite. Some people repair when they understand they have caused harm. Others continue to choose behaviours that wound those around them. When someone repeatedly chooses to harm me after understanding the impact of their actions, my responsibility shifts. It is no longer my responsibility to understand them. It is my responsibility to protect myself. I can hold compassion for another person's humanity while refusing to remain available to their behaviour. Those two things are not contradictory. They are both expressions of love, one for another person, one for myself.

People often ask me why I think this way. The answer is simple. I know what shame does. I know what assumptions do. I know what it feels like to have people decide who you are before they have ever asked who you are. Everything I believe about curiosity, compassion and boundaries grew from that experience.

This is the story of how I learned that kindness is strongest when it walks hand in hand with truth, accountability and courage.

Chapter Two

The Weight of Being Misunderstood

Leaving wasn't the end of my story. In many ways, it was the beginning of another. People often imagine that once someone leaves a controlling environment, they become free. I thought so too. Instead, I discovered that sometimes you can leave a place physically while carrying it inside you for years.

I left the group. But shame came with me. Not because I believed I had done something terrible. Because I believed I was something terrible. There is a difference.

When people discovered where I had come from, very few became curious. Most were sure they already knew. They Googled the group. They read articles. They watched documentaries. And then they believed they understood me, not because they knew me, but because they believed my history was enough.

No one asked what it had been like to grow up inside it. No one asked what it had cost to leave. No one asked what had happened afterwards. They filled in the blanks themselves.

Slowly, I stopped trying to explain. It was easier to let people think whatever they wanted than to keep proving I deserved to belong. Looking back, I can see that this was shame doing exactly what shame does. It isolates. It convinces us that if people really knew us, they would leave. So we leave first. Not always physically. Emotionally. We hide. We become careful. We become productive. Busy. Helpful. Successful. Anything except known.

For years, I poured myself into work, into study, into achievement. Not because success healed shame, but because achievement gave me somewhere to hide from it. If I kept accomplishing enough, perhaps no one would look closely. Perhaps they would never discover where I had come from. Perhaps I could become someone new.

But shame is exhausting, because no amount of achievement answers the question it keeps asking: 'Am I still enough if people know the truth?' I didn't know it then, but shame was still making my decisions. It shaped who I trusted, how much of myself I revealed, the way I saw the world, it even shaped the communities I was drawn towards.

When you have spent your life believing that belonging must be earned, being told who you are can feel strangely familiar. High-control environments don't always look the same. Sometimes they wear different clothes, speak a different language, carry different beliefs. But underneath, they promise the same thing: belong here, follow us, we'll tell you who you are.

I wish I could say I recognised that immediately. I didn't. Because familiarity can feel like safety, especially when shame has convinced you that you don't know how to belong anywhere else.

It has taken me years to understand that what I was searching for was never to be sure. It was belonging. Real belonging, the kind that doesn't require perfection, the kind that survives questions, the kind that makes room for mistakes, the kind that doesn't disappear when someone learns your history.

I didn't find that belonging in an institution, or a belief system, or a community built on being sure. I found it much later, in ordinary people. People who became curious before they became certain.

And perhaps that is why I have become so passionate about curiosity. Because I know what it feels like to be reduced to a story someone else wrote about me. And I know what it feels like when someone is willing to ask, 'Tell me what it was like for you.' One question creates shame. The other creates healing. That difference has shaped everything that came afterwards.

Chapter Three

Character Before History

Healing did not arrive in a therapist's office. It did not happen because I finally found the perfect book. It did not come because I had answered every question about my past. It arrived quietly, almost unnoticed. It looked like children playing on the floor.

When my child was young, life asked something different of me. I had returned to work earlier than I wanted because we needed the income. I was carrying the financial responsibility for our family while also caring for a sick partner. Nights were short. Sleep was rare. My body eventually told me what my mind had been refusing to admit.

Something had to change. So I made a decision that surprised a lot of people. I stepped away from my career, not because I lacked ambition, not because I wanted less, but because I knew I would never get those early years with my daughter back. I wanted to be present. I wanted to attachment parent. I wanted my daughter to know, in the deepest part of herself, that she was safe.

Through a local group of mothers who shared similar values, I began caring for their children as well. Those women were intelligent, thoughtful professionals, some worked in fields centred on child development. All of them had choices. Yet they entrusted me with the people they loved most.

Looking back, I realise something profound. They trusted me long before they knew my story. They knew my character before they knew my history. That changed everything.

There were four of them on the busiest days, all small, all needing something different at once. It wasn't calm. It was chaos, most of the time, tantrums and tears and the occasional bite. When one child bit another, I would kneel down and say, 'I can see you're angry, but I won't let you hurt her.' When a child was mid-spiral, thrashing and past the reach of words, I knew they didn't need reasoning. They needed to release the energy. I would bring pillows, make the space soft, sit close enough that they could feel me there without being crowded. Sometimes I put a hand where they felt safe, a back, a shoulder. Sometimes I rocked them, or carried them in the sling until they settled against me and fell asleep.

So I would quietly make the space safe. 'I won't let you hurt yourself.' 'I won't let you hurt me.' 'I won't let you hurt anyone else.' 'I'm here.' Those words became familiar. They weren't punishment. They were boundaries. They weren't abandonment. They were presence.

We went to the park most days. One afternoon we got caught in the rain and hid together under the playground equipment, waiting for my daughter's father to come and collect us. The children were a little worried, and I shielded them as best I could, but by the time the car pulled up they were already turning it into an adventure, asking if they could stomp in the puddles on the way. It was a mess. It was also something I had never had growing up, four children, muddy and laughing, certain that someone was there to keep them safe. Just ordinary moments. But they were mine to give.

It took me years to realise I wasn't only speaking to the children. Some part of me was speaking to the child I had once been, the child who had never learned that someone could stay present without controlling, shaming or abandoning them. Every time I held space for another child, I unknowingly offered something to myself: safety with boundaries, compassion without chaos, love that didn't disappear simply because emotions became overwhelming. Those children were healing me without ever knowing it.

Eventually something extraordinary happened. After years of knowing me, those women began asking questions about my life. By then they had already decided who I was, not because of my past, but because of how I had shown up. How I loved their children. How I held boundaries. How I cared.

Only then did I tell them where I had come from. I expected the familiar silence, the awkwardness, the subtle shift that usually followed. Instead, I was met with something I had almost no experience receiving. Compassion. One of them looked at me and simply asked, 'How are you the person you are today after everything you've experienced?'

No one had ever asked me that. For so much of my life people had wanted to understand where I came from. She wanted to understand who I had become. There is an enormous difference. For the first time, I realised my past did not have to be the first thing people knew about me. My history was real. It had shaped me. But it did not define the entirety of me.

Those women gave me a gift they may never fully realise they gave. They became compassionate witnesses. Not rescuers. Not therapists. Not people trying to solve me. Simply witnesses, people who already knew my character and chose to hold my story with gentleness.

Something shifted inside me. I realised I had spent years protecting myself from the people who judged me. In doing so, I had also prevented safe people from loving me. I had assumed everyone would respond the way a few people had. That assumption had become another prison.

In the beginning, I did tell a few people. I had little choice. The people at the welfare office needed to understand my circumstances. Later, someone at the employment office did too. I also told one or two other people. Those conversations were hard. I often felt misunderstood. Explaining where I had come from was exhausting, and I left feeling more exposed than understood.

So I stopped telling people. It felt easier to let them know me without my history than to keep trying to explain it.

Years later, something unexpected happened. I began telling people who had already known me for years. People who had first come to know my character. This time the response was different. They looked at the life I had built rather than only the life I had survived. Little by little, shame began to loosen its grip, not because my past had changed, but because I finally discovered that being fully known did not inevitably lead to rejection. It could also lead to belonging.

That experience transformed the way I see every person I meet. I cannot know someone's whole story. I cannot know the wounds they carry, or what it took for them simply to arrive in front of me today. So I choose curiosity first. Not because curiosity always changes the outcome, sometimes people continue to cause harm, and sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is walk away, but because I never again want to become someone who decides another person's worth before I have cared enough to know who they are.

That lesson did not come from a philosophy book. It came from a circle of women, a handful of children, and the extraordinary grace of being known by my character before my history.

Chapter Four

Compassion Needs Boundaries

For a long time, I thought kindness meant understanding everyone. If I could just understand why someone behaved the way they did, surely I could respond with enough compassion to make a difference. After all, hadn't curiosity changed my life? Hadn't someone choosing to understand me, instead of judging me, allowed me to begin healing?

So I tried to offer that same gift to others. I listened. I asked questions. I looked beneath behaviour instead of reacting to it. Sometimes that mattered, sometimes people simply needed someone willing to see the human being underneath the pain. Those conversations strengthened my belief that shame rarely helps people change. Curiosity often does. Compassion often does. Being seen often does.

But somewhere along the way, I quietly began believing something that wasn't true. I began believing that understanding someone else's behaviour meant I had to tolerate it. Those are not the same thing. Understanding explains behaviour. It does not excuse it. Compassion recognises another person's humanity. It does not require sacrificing your own.

That distinction took me years to learn. Sometimes people hurt us because they are frightened, or overwhelmed, or simply don't yet know another way. When there is honesty, accountability and a willingness to repair, relationships can grow through those moments. I have experienced that. I have lived that.

But there are other times. Times when someone understands the impact of their behaviour and chooses it anyway. Times when your empathy becomes something they rely on instead of their own responsibility. Times when your willingness to understand becomes the very thing that keeps you stuck.

That is where boundaries become an act of kindness, not only towards yourself, but towards the other person as well. Because rescuing someone from the consequences of their choices rarely helps them grow. It only delays the moment they must face themselves.

I have learned that boundaries are not punishment. They are information. They quietly say, 'This is what I can live with. This is what I cannot. I care about you, and I care about me too.'

There was a time when setting a boundary felt cruel, felt selfish, felt as though I was becoming the kind of person I never wanted to be. Now I understand something different. Every healthy relationship I have ever known has had boundaries. The mothers who welcomed me into their lives had boundaries. The people who loved me well had boundaries. The relationships that felt safest were never the ones without limits, they were the ones where expectations were clear, repair was possible, and both people's humanity mattered equally.

I want to remain curious. I want to continue believing that people are more than the worst thing they have ever done. I want to continue asking what happened before asking what is wrong. But I no longer believe that understanding someone means I must remain available to them. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stay. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is leave. Wisdom is learning the difference.

That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. It has also been one of the kindest, because every boundary I have learned to set has quietly whispered something I spent years needing to hear: you matter too.

Perhaps that is what healthy kindness looks like. Not choosing between compassion and boundaries. Holding them together, one in each hand.

Chapter Five

Compassionate Witnesses

One of the unexpected gifts of my own healing has been the conversations it has opened. Over the years, people have told me things they had never told anyone else. Not because I have special answers. Not because I could fix them. But because they sensed they would not be shamed. Those conversations have taught me as much about humanity as my own life ever has.

Again and again, I have met people carrying unbearable shame. People convinced that if anyone truly knew them, they would be rejected. Some carried shame because of what had happened to them. Some because of thoughts they couldn't understand. Some because of choices they deeply regretted. Some because they believed they had become the worst thing they had ever thought, felt or done.

Almost every one of them expected judgement. Very few expected curiosity. I have learned that curiosity creates a different kind of conversation, not because it removes accountability, but because it makes honesty possible. When someone no longer has to spend all of their energy hiding, they finally have enough energy to begin healing. That has changed the way I think about people.

I still believe accountability matters. Deeply. If someone harms another person, they are responsible for that harm. Compassion does not erase consequences. Curiosity does not excuse abuse. Kindness is not permission.

But shame has never struck me as a particularly effective teacher. Most people who already carry overwhelming shame do not become kinder because they are given more of it. They simply become quieter, more isolated, more convinced they should hide. Others become defensive. Some even become cruel. I call this shame projection, the way shame has of turning itself outwards and landing on the people around us. None of that excuses the harm it causes. But it reminds me that shame rarely heals anyone. Healing begins somewhere very different. It begins the moment someone realises they no longer have to pretend.

The moment another human being says, 'Thank you for trusting me. Tell me more. I'm listening.' Those words are not solutions. They are invitations, invitations to step out of hiding, to become known, to tell the truth.

Sometimes the truth is painful. Sometimes it requires accountability. Sometimes it leads to difficult choices: professional help, distance, repair, consequences. But none of those things become less important because compassion is present. If anything, compassion makes them more possible, because people who no longer believe they are beyond redemption are often more willing to face themselves honestly.

I don't know what became of every person I have spoken with. That isn't mine to know. Healing belongs to the person doing the work, not the person witnessing it. I was never there to rescue anyone. Only to offer what had once been offered to me, a space where another human being could tell the truth without first having to prove they deserved compassion.

Perhaps that is all any of us can really offer each other. Not certainty. Not perfection. Presence. The willingness to stay curious a little longer, to ask one more question before reaching a conclusion, to remember that every person we meet carries a history we cannot see.

Looking back, I realise that my life has been shaped by compassionate witnesses, the mothers who trusted me, the friend who asked how I had become the person I am, the people who saw my humanity before they saw my past. They changed me. Not because they ignored my history, but because they refused to let it become my identity.

That is the kind of person I hope to be for others. Not someone who rescues. Not someone who excuses harm. Simply someone who remembers that every human being is more complicated than the story we first tell ourselves about them. And perhaps that is where kindness quietly begins.

Chapter Six

A Little More Kindness

A few days ago, I went into a shame spiral. I recognised it immediately. It was once home.

Not because I had done something wrong. But because strangers, who had never lived a moment of my life, chose certainty before curiosity. They assigned meanings I had never intended and judged positions I had never taken.

Years ago, I would have stayed there. I would have questioned myself. Wondered whether perhaps everyone else knew something about me that I couldn't see. I would have apologised for existing.

This time I recognised what was happening. I was feeling sensitive and misunderstood. It was a shame spiral. So I stepped away and gave myself some space. It was never meant to be permanent. I finally understood that protecting myself is different from proving myself.

Healing hasn't meant that shame disappeared. It means I recognise its voice. I know where it came from. And I know I don't have to believe everything it tells me.

That doesn't mean I always get life right. Far from it. I am not a perfect parent. I still lose my patience. I still say things I wish I had said differently. I am not beyond any of this. I still become defensive when I feel misunderstood. I still have to remind myself that being understood by everyone is not the same as being at peace with myself. When I hurt someone, I repair. I apologise. I listen. I take responsibility. Then I begin again.

But there are other choices I have made that never required someone else's forgiveness. Only my own. Relationships I stayed in for too long. Boundaries I didn't yet know how to set. Moments I ignored my intuition. Times I abandoned myself because I believed understanding another person mattered more than protecting myself.

Like everyone, I have made choices I am proud of and choices I wish I had made differently. Some reflected the person I hoped to become. Others reflected fear, loneliness, exhaustion, or simply being human. I don't need to catalogue them here. Every reader already has their own list. For a long time I believed my worst moments were evidence of my character. Now I understand they were moments in my life. Not the whole of it.

Therapy helped me understand something that changed everything. We don't discover our boundaries perfectly. We discover them by living, by crossing them, by saying yes when we wish we had said no, by trusting someone we later realise wasn't safe, by making choices that teach us something about ourselves. Mistakes become teachers if we are willing to learn from them. Not because mistakes are good, but because they can become the beginning of wisdom.

For me, the greatest shift wasn't learning to make perfect choices. It was learning that the next right choice is only ever one choice away.

Shame says, 'You've failed. This is who you are.' Grace says, 'You still have today.'

Today I can choose differently. Tomorrow I can choose again. If I stumble, I can choose again. If I lose my way, I can choose again. That doesn't diminish responsibility. It makes responsibility possible. Because shame keeps us looking backwards. Grace allows us to move forwards.

Our lives are rarely changed by one extraordinary decision. They are changed by ordinary choices, repeated over time, a healthier boundary, a difficult apology, a moment of honesty, an act of courage, a decision to stay, a decision to leave, a choice to become curious instead of certain. Little by little those choices become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes a life. I didn't choose where my story began. But every day I have another opportunity to choose where it goes next.

When I look at my daughter, I don't hope she becomes someone who never makes mistakes. I hope she becomes someone who knows that mistakes never make her unworthy of love. I hope she knows she can repair. She can apologise. She can learn. She can choose again.

I hope she grows into someone who is kind without disappearing. Compassionate without abandoning herself. Strong without becoming hard. Curious without becoming naïve. Perhaps that is all any of us are really trying to do, become a little more ourselves, a little less afraid, a little more honest, a little more compassionate, a little more willing to let people earn our trust instead of demanding our perfection.

I don't know whether these pages will change anyone's mind. That isn't really why I wrote them. I wrote them because I wanted to understand the thread that ran through my own life. The thread that connected shame, curiosity, compassion, boundaries, and healing.

What I found waiting at the end wasn't certainty. It was kindness. Not the kind that avoids difficult truths, but the kind that can hold truth and compassion in the same hands. Kindness that asks questions before reaching conclusions. Kindness that remembers every person carries a story we cannot see. Kindness that holds people accountable without forgetting their humanity. Kindness that includes ourselves.

If my life has taught me anything, it is this: my worst decisions do not define me. Your worst decisions do not define you. What defines us is what we choose next.

So if I hope to leave anything behind, it isn't certainty. It isn't an argument. It isn't even this story. It is simply this: meet people with curiosity before certainty. Hold accountability and compassion together. Protect your own humanity as fiercely as you protect someone else's. And when you lose your way, choose again.

Kindness is nothing more, and nothing less, than choosing, again and again, to become the person you hope to be. One day at a time.

* A note on process: AI has been used as an editor for this piece.

People often think intention means more than it does.
I think it simply means treating another human being like they continue to exist between the moments you share.
Think of partner acrobatics, pair skating, ballet, or any kind of dance where one person places themselves in another’s care. They don’t promise to perform together forever, or that there won’t be mistakes. What they promise, through action, is that once they engage, they do so with full attention to the person in front of them. They stay aware. They don’t stop paying attention because the lift is over, and they don’t walk away while their partner is still in the air. Once they choose to dance, that responsibility becomes part of the dance itself. That’s what trust requires. The way we treat people today shapes whether they’ll ever trust us with access to them tomorrow. No one is forced to dance, but if you repeatedly let people fall, eventually no one will choose to dance with you.
That’s the cost of engagement - intention.
Not commitment. Not ownership. Simply recognising that another person continues to exist after the moment you shared has ended. People don’t disappear because you’ve left. They exist between the moments, and intention is remembering that.
I wasn’t asking for daily communication, you knew that. You were the one who asked to come back into my life. The cost of that was intention.
I believed that if someone chooses to take space in another person’s life, they do so understanding that the person they’re choosing in that capacity continues to exist between the moments.
But if days pass after you’ve asked for access - after conversation, laughter and care - and it never crosses your mind to ask how my week’s going, you’ve told me something. Not with words. With behaviour.
When I said we weren’t a good fit, it wasn’t because I wanted more commitment. It was because I wanted more humanity, to be treated as though I continued to exist once I wasn’t in front of you. Not because anyone owed me that, but because that’s how I choose to move through the world.
If I engage with another person, I don’t stop recognising their humanity because the moment has ended. People are whole human beings before intimacy, during intimacy, and after intimacy.
It isn’t romance. It isn’t obligation. It’s respect, expressed consistently enough that another person never has to wonder whether they only exist when they’re convenient.
Your silence afterwards told me everything I needed to know. Not about my worth. About your intention. That was enough.
I know it’s often said, ‘Never let someone show you twice who they are’. Sometimes I agree, I’ve said these words myself; but sometimes I don’t. Human beings are more nuanced than slogans.
Sometimes people misunderstand. Sometimes they’re overwhelmed. Sometimes they make mistakes. I don’t want to assume ill intent from the outset, so I usually take a softer approach. I leave room for people to reflect, to repair, and to choose differently, because I hope someone would do the same for me.
Walking away is never my first response. It’s my last.
But there’s a difference between making a mistake and repeating a pattern. When one person’s behaviour repeatedly requires grace, the burden quietly shifts onto the other person to keep extending it.
The cost isn’t simply another disappointment. The cost is becoming less trusting, less generous, and less willing to assume good intent in the next person. I don’t think that’s fair either.
So I want to be clear about where the accountability sits. It belongs to the behaviour that came before, not to the boundary that came after.
Choosing to walk away might look, from the outside, like the easier choice. It isn’t. It’s choosing not to become someone who expects less of humanity because someone else did. It’s choosing to preserve my own humanity.
I don’t resent you. I don’t wish you harm. I genuinely hope you find someone who is a better fit for what you’re looking for.
I simply choose not to dance with you.
And that’s a cost I’m willing to pay.

Today I was reminded that healing isn’t the absence of old fears.

I came across something that seemed to connect one of the darkest chapters of my life with you. It may have meant something. It may have meant nothing. I still don’t know. What I do know is how quickly my mind filled in the gaps, how fast the old fear arrived - the urge to quietly disappear before I could be hurt, to protect myself before I had all the information. For a moment, I almost walked away from you.

That still feels strange to admit because you’ve done nothing to deserve it. We hadn’t even seen each other in a couple months, not since you last visited home, yet an old wound almost convinced me that distance was safer than trust. The more I’ve sat with it, the less that reaction makes sense.

You know where we came from. You know what that environment was like because you lived it too. You know the wounds, not because I had to explain them, but because you carry your own. We’ve watched many of our peers spend years trying to untangle what that childhood left behind. Some never found a way through it. Sometimes it feels as though our friends lists have quietly become memorials. We even saw the same therapist, each of us trying to make sense of it all. Our friendship was never built on pretending. It never needed to be.

I’ve trusted you with some of the moments I was most ashamed of. I remember how vulnerable that felt, and how I wondered whether being fully honest would change the way you saw me. It didn’t. Looking back, I realise something important - our friendship wasn’t built on carefully edited versions of ourselves, on pretending we’d always made the right choices, or on hiding the parts we wished had been different. It was built on complete honesty, on knowing each other’s difficult seasons, on understanding that surviving something doesn’t always bring out the best in us, but that taking responsibility for who we become afterwards matters.

Maybe that’s why, instead of disappearing, I came to you. I didn’t accuse you. I didn’t demand explanations. I simply told you what I’d seen, admitted I didn’t know the full picture, explained why it frightened me, and trusted you enough to tell you the truth about where my mind had gone.

Your response was immediate, kind and respectful. You didn’t know why the connection existed any more than I did. I never asked you to change anything. I simply told you what I’d seen, why I experienced it as a threat, and the boundary I needed for any future interaction. I still don’t know what it meant on the other side, and I never will. I do know now that it meant nothing to you. You never made me feel foolish for being afraid. You simply acted, and in doing so reminded me that I was safe with you.

The irony isn’t lost on me that you quietly follow my writing. There is very little anyone could ever tell you about me that I haven’t already told you myself. The people who truly know us aren’t the people who believe the loudest story. They’re the people who have watched us live honestly… yes, even our poorest choices.

I still don’t know the full story, and maybe I never will. But today wasn’t really about that. It was about remembering that trust isn’t built in moments like today. It’s built over years of choosing honesty over shame, truth over image, and friendship over performance.

For someone who spent much of her life believing she had to hide parts of herself to stay safe, realising that I am safest with the people who know me completely has been one of the greatest gifts of healing.

Thank you for reminding me that I’m safe with you. In a world carrying everything we both do, you have become another reminder that safe people exist. That safe men exist. I hope that when you next visit, I get the chance to tell you just how much this meant to me.

When a handful of men were tragically killed in one punch attacks, governments found the political will to act.

Politicians spoke.

Laws changed.

The media rightly humanised the men who died.

There was a collective understanding that this level of violence demanded urgent action. The outrage at such cowardice could not be stomached by our nation.

Yet women continue to be killed by violent men, year after year, and I cannot help but wonder where that same urgency has gone.

Australia has a population of only around 27 million people, yet women continue to be killed by violence at a rate that should be impossible for any government to treat as anything less than a national emergency.

But the deaths are only the most visible and irreversible end of the crisis.

Behind every woman whose name becomes a headline are countless survivors living with domestic violence, coercive control, sexual violence, physical violence, psychological abuse, financial abuse, stalking, intimidation and the long term consequences of having their safety systematically dismantled.

Women should not have to die before the violence against us is treated as serious.

Many survivors remain alive while carrying injuries no one can see - the loss of safety, agency, financial security, trust, identity and years of their lives spent surviving another person’s control.

The absence of a body does not mean the absence of profound harm.

And on top of all the explanations, excuses, minimisation and systemic failures, funding for domestic and family violence services is being reduced.

We know the scale of the crisis.

We know women and children are being harmed.

We know survivors can carry the consequences for decades.

We know repeat offending remains a serious problem.

We know the reported average time to reoffending is around two years.

And the response is to cut funding?

Sorry, what?

When governments wanted urgent action on one punch attacks, they found the political will. They changed laws.

But domestic and family violence is repeatedly described as a national crisis, and we are reducing the resources intended to prevent harm and support the people surviving it.

What the fuck are we doing?

Women should not have to die before this violence is treated as urgent.

Survivors should not have to carry lifelong psychological, physical, social and financial consequences while governments reduce the support available to them.

Sit with that.

Women are increasingly giving up on the idea of dating because they do not feel safe.

And before you tell me about the male loneliness epidemic, consider what dating requires from women.

Those ‘dreaded dates’ before you get to sleep with her are not an arbitrary obstacle between you and sex. They are part of her safety assessment.

She is trying to establish whether you respect her boundaries, whether your interest extends beyond access to her body and whether she is safe with you.

Women are not creating male loneliness by refusing immediate access to themselves.

Women are responding to risk.

And if you resent the time a woman needs to decide whether she feels safe with you, you may be demonstrating exactly why she needs that time.

Women are changing how we live. We modify our behaviour. We share our locations. We watch our drinks. We calculate risk. We are told to leave earlier, leave sooner, choose better and recognise the warning signs.

We carry the burden of trying to stay alive.

Yet so many remain silent.

Then women are told we are exaggerating.

We are told we should feel safe.

We are told not all men.

We are asked to soften the message because the reality makes other people uncomfortable.

Stop telling women we should feel safe when so many of us do not.

Stop suggesting women are exaggerating the harm.

The scale of the violence tells its own story.

Justice systems are simply not working when women are consistently blamed for the violence inflicted upon them - even for rejecting the advances of the men who later harm or kill them - while accountability is diluted and consequences fail to act as a meaningful deterrent.

I wish more men would stand beside women on this issue with the same conviction many ask women to show when they say mens suicide matters.

We do.

We advocate.

We grieve.

We listen.

Mens suicide matters.

So does accountability for femicide.

So does accountability for the domestic violence, coercive control and psychological abuse that survivors may carry long after the relationship has ended.

Neither issue diminishes the other. But if we expect solidarity for one, we should be willing to offer it for the other.

And to the men who hate feminists:

I never considered myself a feminist - I do now.

A few years of dating, listening to women, recognising the patterns and watching society explain, excuse and minimise harm changed that.

Every report adds to our numbers.

Every woman harmed.

Every child terrorised.

Every survivor blamed for what was done to her.

Every woman told to choose better while the man who chose violence is explained, excused or humanised.

You do not get to create the conditions that make feminism necessary and then resent women for becoming feminists.

I wasn’t recruited by feminism.

I was introduced to its necessity by experience.

Women’s anger is not the crisis. The violence making us angry is.

And our intolerance of abuse is not a moral failing.

Women rejecting coercion, control, violence and psychological abuse are not destroying relationships. We are refusing to preserve relationships that require our harm.

Stop harming women and children, then blaming women for the consequences of that harm.

Stop demanding women carry responsibility for mens violence, mens emotional wellbeing and, sometimes, even men’s decisions to end their own lives.

If you want fewer angry feminists, give women fewer reasons to become angry feminists.

And if women are no longer offering endless chances to people who control, abuse and terrorise them, that is not society losing its morals.

It means you are fresh out of chances to find another woman willing to tolerate your control and abuse.

Sorry, not sorry.

If you do not like hearing women say men are not safe, do not ask women to soften the message.

Become a voice that does something about the men creating that reality.

Challenge the violence.

Challenge the excuses.

Challenge the minimisation.

Challenge the silence.

Women have spent generations changing our behaviour in an attempt to survive.

It is time society changed its response.

Do better.

Not one more.

No one will ever be you… I know that now.

People say time heals, that eventually someone else will come along. That we let go, move forward, find something better.

But people are not interchangeable.

No one else will have your face.

Your eyes.

Your smile.

Your voice.

Your humour.

No one else will carry our history or know the private language that existed between us.

No one else will ever be you, and no one is supposed to be.

Some people leave a mark on us that cannot be erased.

A mark that defies all will.

In time, scars become less obvious. We learn to live around them until we almost forget they are there.

But they can still hurt when touched.

I have tried to reason with it.

I have tried to understand it.

I have held every beautiful memory beside every painful truth and asked myself how both could have belonged to the same person.

How love could feel so much like home while the relationship left me feeling unmoored.

I know why I had to leave.

I have not forgotten what happened.

I have not forgotten the confusion, the silence, the things that hurt me, or the parts of myself I kept abandoning to preserve hope.

But knowing why I cannot return has never been the same as no longer loving you.

Perhaps that is the part others don’t understand. I did not close the door because there was nothing left behind it. I closed it while carrying more love than I knew what to do with.

And sometimes grief arrives without warning.

A sentence written by a stranger.

A song.

A memory.

The thought of you.

And suddenly I am standing in the ocean again. Broken beneath the weight of a wave I thought had already passed.

But the waves do pass… they always do.

And I remain.

I don’t know whether you ever understood how deeply I loved you.

Maybe I didn’t understand it either.

I thought love meant continuing to hope.

Continuing to forgive.

Continuing to search for the person I knew inside the person who kept hurting me.

But I know now that loving someone does not always mean staying.

Sometimes love remains long after the relationship becomes impossible, sometimes the heart holds what the hands have had to release.

You will always occupy a place in me that no one else can occupy.

Not because I am waiting.

Not because I want to return.

Not because I have forgotten.

But because you were you.

And I loved you.

No one will ever be you.

And even now, after everything, there are moments when that truth breaks my heart.

I will always wonder where life took you.

I hope you have found peace.

I hope you are happy.

Always x

I gave you the benefit of the doubt because I saw you as a person. I didn’t measure your worth by appearance, status or anything else. I met you with kindness, honesty and genuine consideration.
But kindness is not something you prove by describing yourself as kind.
And respect is not something you prove by describing yourself as respectful.
You are not the person you portray yourself as.
You are the person you behave as.
Your behaviour is your character on display.

I was sitting beside my daughter while she painted with bright colours - Cookie Monster, Curious George, flowers, all the joyful chaos of a child creating without worrying whether it was useful, productive or perfect.

And I found myself thinking about all the things I never got to do. Watch any of those shows, for starters. There was no television, no music, no books - nothing produced outside the cult.

Not because I get to relive my childhood through hers, but because I get to witness what childhood can look like when a child has the freedom to create, explore, make a mess, try new things and simply be a child.

I don’t get my childhood back.

But when I sit beside her with paint and glue, make things with her, take her to the beach, sing, explore nature or join her in experiences I never had, I am discovering parts of myself too.

For those of us without a pre trauma self, words matter.

I don’t call it recovery.

Recovery implies there was a before - and identity to return to.

For some of us, there wasn’t. There was no before.

So this is discovery.

Calling it discovery gives me a different kind of permission - not to search for someone I was before, but to meet myself as I am now. To create, explore, play, choose and find out what I enjoy without needing any of it to return me to a person I never had the chance to become.

Ask someone who knows what it is to live for a significant part of their life without agency what agency means to them.

The answer will be different.

Sometimes agency is paint and glue. Choosing what colour comes next. Going to the beach because I want to. Making a mess without fear. Trying something without needing to be good at it. Finding out what I enjoy rather than what is expected of me.

These things may look small to someone who has always been free to choose them.

To me, they are discovery.

What I’m finding isn’t a return. It’s a first.

I asked my child, Would you prefer to have a nicer house or more adventures?

Of course, she chose adventures.

She is my child, after all.

And she will have adventures.

I will too.

And somehow, watching her experience all the things I never got to do gives me permission to discover them alongside her.

Naming it that isn’t semantics. It’s honesty.

One of the cruellest aspects of complex trauma is that it doesn’t always end when the abuse does.

Many of us leave the original environment carrying adaptations that once kept us alive but later leave us vulnerable to being hurt again.

Not because we’re weak, but because we learned to survive.

We learned to people please, to be small, to stay quiet, to become agreeable and to disappear in plain sight. And when we couldn’t disappear, we learned to dissociate.

Children rarely have the luxury of seeing their caregivers as dangerous. Their survival depends on preserving the belief that the people they rely on are safe. So instead of seeing the danger clearly, we learn to question ourselves, minimise our experience, or leave our bodies altogether.

We had to preserve the belief that our caregivers were safe.

We had to survive.

Those weren’t personality traits, they were survival adaptations.

The tragedy is that the very adaptations that once protected us can later make us more vulnerable to people who exploit them.

So we find ourselves in another unhealthy relationship. Another manipulative friendship. Another workplace where our boundaries are quietly eroded. Another situation where we walk away asking ourselves, How did this happen again?

Each experience reinforces the same belief:
People aren’t safe.

As we heal, something unexpected can happen.

We become more suspicious.

Not because we’re becoming cynical, but because we’re finally seeing what we once had to explain away. We notice inconsistencies. We recognise manipulation sooner. We stop mistaking empathy for obligation and understanding for tolerance.

Sometimes that’s hypervigilance, and sometimes it’s wisdom finally catching up with experience.

The challenge is learning the difference.

Healing isn’t about becoming less discerning. It isn’t about trusting everyone. It’s about learning to distinguish between expectation and evidence, while building boundaries strong enough that we no longer have to abandon ourselves to preserve a relationship.

Over time, something else changes.

The world doesn’t necessarily become safer.

But we do.

Not because we’ve stopped seeing the warning signs, but because we’ve learned to trust ourselves to respond when they’re there.