The hardest part was facing what this choice would mean—being parentless, fully and finally. One parent left when I was a little girl, and the other was someone I spent my entire life trying to earn love from. Cutting ties meant surrendering to a grief I’d carried since childhood: the grief of never having the parents I longed for. It meant acknowledging a painful truth—that sometimes love is given in ways that wound more than they nourish.

Codependency doesn’t just exhaust you—it slowly breeds resentment. You start feeling frustrated when the people you care for don’t reciprocate the same energy, even if they never asked for that level of involvement. You feel unappreciated because you’ve tied your worth to your efforts, and when they go unnoticed (or simply aren’t needed), it’s easy to spiral.

First lesson: healing can be all consuming. Once I knew there was “work to do,” I threw myself into it. I became a self-help machine—reading every book, listening to every podcast, filling out every workbook. My mind was a workshop of coping strategies and trauma theories. I ~thought~ that meant I was healing. But looking back, I realize I was more interested in “fixing” myself than actually feeling my way through.