The other day I realized something about myself, something that hit so hard it almost took my breath away.
For the past five years, I’ve been stuck in a cycle I couldn’t fully explain. Every time I started to get in a good place, I would find a way to pull myself back down. Whether it was self-sabotage, slipping into old habits, or just refusing to let myself fully embrace joy, I kept stopping myself from moving forward. And now I understand why.
Deep down, I was terrified that healing would send the message that I was better off without my kids.
I never wanted them to think that. I never wanted them to believe, even for a second, that I had moved on, that I had built a life where their absence didn’t matter. So I stayed in the pain. I let it consume me, because somehow, in my mind, suffering was proof of my love.
But here’s the hard truth I’ve had to face: staying broken doesn’t bring them back. It doesn’t prove anything except that I let the injustice win.
My love for my children has never been in question. Whether they see it now or not, I know the truth. And I’m realizing that holding myself back, keeping myself stuck in misery, doesn’t make me a better mother—it just makes me a mother who is barely surviving.
That’s not what I want for them. That’s not what I want for me.
So if you’ve been doing the same thing—if you’ve been subconsciously sabotaging yourself because healing feels like abandonment—hear me now: healing doesn’t mean you’re better off without them. It means you’re fighting for the day they come back. It means you’re choosing to stand, to build, to be someone they can find again.
I don’t want my children to return to a mother who gave up on herself. I want them to return to a mother who never stopped believing, never stopped hoping, and never stopped becoming the woman they deserve to come home to.
And that starts now.
So if you’re struggling with this same weight, this same guilt—let’s lay it down together. We are not betraying our children by healing. We are showing them that love, real love, survives even this.
And one day, they will see it too.