I Broke What Broke Her

An intimate reflection on healing the mother wound and reclaiming self trust. Through this piece, I explore the coexistence of softness and strength, and what it means to move forward without abandoning what has been lived. This work is part of a larger body of practice centered on transformation, emotional inheritance, and generational healing.

Year: 2026
Medium: Archival pigment print

Purpose Statement:

It didn’t start with you. You were raised by a love that provided everything, except what you needed most.

There was always “enough”. Enough structure, enough expectation, enough to survive.

But never enough warmth to feel safe inside of it. And I know how hard you tried.

How you learned to perform for love. To be good. To be quiet. To try again, and again, and again…. hoping that this time, you would be enough to be seen.

But you weren’t seen the way you deserved and I need you to know none of that was your fault.

And so you did what you thought would be best, you adjusted. You softened your needs. Lowered your voice. Stayed close, even when closeness meant disappearing.

And without realizing it, you carried that into everything.

Into the way you loved. The way you stayed too long. The way you abandoned yourself before anyone else could.

For a long time, you called that love. But it wasn’t love. It was survival. And survival has a cost.

I need you to hear this now, even if you couldn’t back then: the emotional absence, the criticism, the feeling of never quite measuring up…. was never a reflection of your worth.

Not then. Not ever.

But knowing that won’t be enough. You will have to feel it all. The anger you were taught to suppress. The grief of not receiving what you needed. The quiet resentment of a child who kept showing up and was never fully met. Just feel it all. Without guilt. Without rushing to forgive. Without abandoning yourself again.

And I will meet you there. Not as a memory, but as something still alive in me. The part of you that learned to need less. To accept love that felt like distance. To confuse attention with care. And this time, I won’t leave you. I will give you what you were denied: care without conditions, validation without doubt, love that does not ask you to shrink to receive it.

This is what it means to reparent ourselves. To become the one who stays. The one who protects. The one who chooses differently. Because I have seen what happens when the pattern goes uninterrupted. And I refuse to carry it forward.

And so I broke what broke her. Not by rejecting where we come from, but by ending what hurt us both. By setting boundaries that once felt impossible. By no longer confusing love with endurance. By choosing us, even when it comes with grief.

This is where everything changes. Where inheritance ends and self trust begins. Where you stop asking to be enough and finally understand that you always were. I’ve got you now.