Becoming the Love You Never Got

There’s a particular childhood that shapes you long before you understand what’s happening. The kind where you become the steady one in a family that can’t hold itself upright.

• You learn to read the room before you can read a book.

• You learn to soothe adults who never learned how to soothe themselves.

• You learn to earn love by carrying weight that should’ve never been yours.

That script doesn’t stay in childhood. It follows you into adulthood like a shadow you never asked for. In friendships, the old blueprint plays out through the way you automatically carry the emotional weight for everyone around you, almost as if disappointing someone might cost you more than you’re willing to admit.

Romantic relationships bring their own familiar script, where stepping into the rescuer role feels natural because caretaking was the only doorway into closeness you ever saw growing up.

All those years spent in dynamics that pulled you thin, defended as loyalty, even though the exhaustion told a different story.

The strangest part is how normal it all feels. When chaos is familiar, stability feels foreign. You’ve always been the emotional anchor so it barely registers that no one is anchoring you back, so you keep giving pieces of yourself away because that’s the only way you ever learned to keep people close.

At some point, the pattern becomes too loud to ignore. It might be a quiet moment alone in your car or a conversation that lands wrong or a disappointment that finally tips the scale.

Something inside clears its throat and says enough. Not with anger, but with truth.

You start seeing the cost of trying to extract emotional nourishment from people who never had the capacity to give it. And this isn’t even about blaming or shaming, it’s recognizing who clearly has shown you their limitations.

That realization marks the real beginning of healing, where you stop abandoning yourself in the exact ways others once abandoned you.

And there’s grief as well as rage in it too. But there’s freedom waiting underneath it all. Once the pattern reveals itself, a different way of living starts to form…

• Steadiness becomes something you create from within instead of chasing in other people.

• Feelings get acknowledged instead of pushed aside while trying to earn understanding.

• Honesty sharpens, especially around what can no longer be tolerated, and a new kind of protection settles in around the peace you’re learning to value.

• Standards rise without fanfare.

• Boundaries take shape without apology.

Your relationships shift because you’re no longer accepting dynamics that run on your exhaustion.

As this unfolds, life feels different. Connections deepen because they’re built on mutual effort instead of silent sacrifice. Loneliness softens because you’re no longer splitting yourself in half for closeness. Self-respect becomes the baseline rather than a reward you have to earn.

Breaking the cycle isn’t about cutting everyone off or proving a point. It’s about refusing to reenact the same emotional story you were handed as a kid. It’s about stepping out of the role you never chose and finally choosing yourself instead.

For anyone in that season, here’s the truth that lands hardest once you’re ready for it. You’re not losing people. You’re losing patterns.

Every time you choose yourself, the old blueprint loses its grip. And little by little, you become the love you spent your childhood searching for.

🎙️ New Episode: Becoming the Love You Never Got

This week’s episode unpacks what happens when a childhood built on overgiving turns into an adulthood full of takers and emotional exhaustion.

I break down how I finally saw the pattern for what it was and why becoming the love I never received changed every relationship in my life.

It’s a real conversation about ending cycles, reclaiming energy, and learning to give yourself what you kept trying to earn from others.

Listen to the full episode here.

Healing, at its core, is simply this: teaching your body that it’s finally safe to feel what it never had space to feel, and to receive what it once believed was impossible.

Past versions of you carried more than they should have. Let this chapter of your life be the one where you set something down.

See you next Saturday ❤️

Suttida

P.S. I’ve now sold over 100 copies of the 4-week deep dive workbook. If prioritizing your healing and growth is sitting at the front of your mind, especially with the new year around the corner, this is one of the best places to begin. Get your own copy.