Metaphysical Mama

What do you believe you deserve? 🤍

Trauma can affect more than how you see yourself.

It can affect what you believe you deserve from other people, and from life.

✨You might get used to putting your needs last.

✨Feel uncomfortable asking for what you need.

✨Feel guilty when someone is kind to you.

✨Or stay in situations that don’t feel good simply because they’re familiar.

Sometimes we don’t realize how much we’ve learned to accept.

Healing can mean starting to question those beliefs.

𝐃𝐨 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬?

𝐃𝐨 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬?

𝐃𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡?

Here’s one place to start:

Notice the things you would never want someone you love to accept for themselves.

Then ask yourself:

Would I tell them to keep tolerating this?

Would I tell them their needs were too much?

Sometimes it’s easier to recognize what we deserve when we’re looking at someone we care about.

And maybe that’s where you can begin extending that same compassion to yourself. 🪷

You can miss someone and still know they weren’t good for you.

Healing can bring some complicated emotions.

You can miss someone you chose to leave.

You can remember the good moments.

You can still care about them.

And you can still know that being around them wasn’t healthy for you.

Those things can exist at the same time.

Missing someone doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision.

It doesn’t mean you need to go back.

Sometimes it simply means that relationship mattered to you.

Healing isn’t always about letting go of your feelings for someone.

Sometimes it’s learning that you can hold those feelings without letting them pull you back into something that hurt you.

You can love someone from a distance.

You can grieve what you wished the relationship could have been.

And you can still choose yourself. 💖

Sometimes we spend so much time trying to figure ourselves out.

❓Why did I react that way?

❓Why does this bother me so much?

❓Why can’t I just let it go?

Understanding yourself can be an important part of healing.

But you don’t need to have an explanation for every feeling before you can respond to yourself with compassion.

Sometimes you can simply say:

This is hard for me.

Something about this brought up a lot.

I need to take care of myself right now.

You don’t have to solve every feeling.

You don’t have to analyze every reaction.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is meet yourself where you are and give yourself what you need.

Understanding can come with time.

Compassion doesn’t have to wait. 🤍

Healing can take up a lot of space.

There may be memories to work through.

Patterns to understand.

Triggers to navigate.

Parts of yourself you’re still learning to care for.

But there can be so much more alongside that.

Laughter.

Connection.

Spontaneity.

Good days that don’t need to be analyzed.

Moments where you’re simply present and enjoying your life.

Healing isn’t only about looking back at what hurt you.

It’s also about making room for what feels good now.

Because your life is happening while you heal.

And sometimes, you don’t need to work on yourself.

Sometimes you just need to live. 💜

Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never struggle again. 💖

You can have months of feeling stronger and then suddenly have a really hard day.

You can be triggered by something you thought you’d worked through.

You can find yourself slipping back into an old coping strategy.

You can feel overwhelmed, angry, scared, or exhausted.

That’s part of being human.

Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never struggle again.

It means you begin to understand yourself differently when you do.

You notice what you’re feeling.

You have more compassion for yourself.

You recognize the old patterns.

And maybe, this time, you make a different choice.

Sometimes progress is subtle.

It’s not that the hard moments disappear.

It’s that you meet them differently. 🪷

And that matters.

“𝑨𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕.”
— 𝑯𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒏 𝑲𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓

There is so much suffering in the world.

It’s easy to see the pain.

The loss.

The fear.

The things people are carrying quietly.

But what if we also looked for the resilience?

The person finding their way forward after something broke them.

The person learning to trust again.

The person choosing compassion after experiencing cruelty.

The person getting back up after life knocked them down.

Suffering isn’t something we experience alone.

So many of us are carrying things others may never see.

And so many of us are healing in ways others may never know.

We are not alone in this journey.🤝

And perhaps one of the most beautiful parts of healing is that the compassion we develop along the way can become something we give back to the world.

So yes, notice the suffering.

But don’t forget to notice the overcoming too.

There is resilience everywhere.

Sometimes you just have to look for it. 💖

When you’ve experienced trauma where you had little or no control over what was happening, it can change your relationship with control.

Afterward, you may start looking for ways to create it wherever you can.

👉You might plan everything.

👉Think through every possible outcome.

👉Need to know what’s going to happen.

👉Seek reassurance.

👉Control your environment.

👉Have a hard time making decisions without knowing how they’ll turn out.

Sometimes, what looks like overthinking or being controlling is actually an attempt to create the sense of safety and control that was missing during the trauma.

And it makes sense.

But over time, the need for control can become exhausting.

Healing can mean slowly discovering that you don’t have to control every outcome to feel okay.

You can make a choice without knowing exactly how it will turn out.

You can allow some uncertainty.

You can trust yourself to respond to whatever comes next.

Because sometimes healing isn’t about finding more ways to control your life.

It’s about realizing you have more choices than you once did.

And learning to trust yourself with them. 🤍