Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls your life.

Me, a millennial: silence my phone for numbers I don’t recognize until I can google the number to see if I should answer

Going from, “I don’t deserve to set boundaries” to “Having a relationship with me is a gift not everyone is entitled to.”

part of being neglected as a child is that you grow up feeling as though no one knows who you are on the inside, and sometimes when have low self-esteem you see yourself through the eyes of your parents and beat yourself down because you couldn’t meet their expectations. when in reality they caused you to split from your experience of reality and your needs and wants because they just didn’t accept you as you were.

Why do I still have empathy for you after all you’ve done?