Magical Possibilities

I wanted all of us to a poem or prose about TRAUMA. What kind of trauma do you deal with and how it affected you or disorders bc they can be traumatic and how are you healing now?

I will start ...

Learning to Love the Woman I Never Knew

Loving yourself sounds simple, but it’s one of the hardest things a person will ever do. Some folks never think about it at all. Others spend their whole life trying to figure it out. Truth is, learning to love yourself is the biggest fight you’ll ever face, because it’s you against the old stories in your own head.I didn’t love myself for most of my life. I didn’t even know I didn’t. 

It wasn’t until a few months before I started this whole self‑awareness journey back in 2018 that it hit me. My partner was the first person who ever made me feel like I mattered. He showed me I was worth loving, and that shook me, because deep down I never believed that. I didn’t see it on my own. But once he showed me I mattered, I started researching and that’s when I saw the truth: I had never loved myself at all.

All my life I thought I must love myself because I was kind, caring, thoughtful, always showing up for everybody else. So if someone didn’t love me back, then it had to be my fault, right? That’s what years of negative thoughts will do to you. I know you’ve had them too. We all have.I was also a people‑pleaser because of my mother. I spent my entire life trying to please her, trying to earn even a scrap of approval, and no matter what I did, it was never enough. That kind of childhood teaches you to chase love you’ll never receive, and it follows you into adulthood until you finally see the truth.

When I finally realized I didn’t love myself, it crushed me. I wanted to know why. I was ready to hunt that answer down if it damn near killed me. Looking back, I was cruel to myself. Meaner than anybody else ever was. And that’s how so many of us end up in toxic relationships, DV situations, addictions, or stuck under a narcissistic parent or partner. When you don’t love yourself, you stop fighting for yourself. You settle for pain because you think that’s all you deserve.

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to learn how to love myself was because I was tired. Tired of being hurt by people who were supposed to care. Tired of being the one who always gave and never got anything real back. I didn’t know back then that I was attracting toxic folks because I didn’t think I deserved better.But here’s the truth I finally learned: nobody can love you unconditionally until you learn to love yourself that way first. Once that clicked, everything made sense. I wanted that kind of love so bad — the real kind, the steady kind — and I knew I had to change how I saw myself. Not through other people’s eyes. Through my own.That’s when the steps started forming in my mind, the same steps that changed everything for me —

•Spend time with yourself — Sit with your own soul. Not running, not numbing, not pretending. Just you… with you. When you finally get to know who you really are — underneath the fear, the noise, the survival — everything else starts to make sense.

•Accepting yourself—Once you know yourself, acceptance stops being a fight. You stop trying to fix every part of you someone else called wrong. You start seeing the reasons behind your patterns, and suddenly the things you hated about yourself make sense. Acceptance is quiet. It’s soft. It’s the first breath that doesn’t hurt.

•Forgive yourself — Forgiveness isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s a slow loosening of the grip you’ve had on your own throat. It’s whispering, “I did the best I could with what I had,” and letting that truth finally land. Forgiveness is the release that lets your shoulders drop for the first time in years — Even when you don’t feel like you deserve forgiveness — do it anyway or do it afraid but do it✓

•Love yourself — Real love doesn’t rush in. It grows quietly in the places you once avoided. And by the time you notice it, it’s already holding you steady. When you’ve spent time with yourself, accepted yourself, and forgiven yourself… the love comes on its own. Soft. Steady. Unconditional. The kind you were never given, but always deserved.

Live FULLY from that love — When you truly love yourself, you stop hurting yourself and you stop letting others hurt you. Your choices change. Your standards rise. Your whole life shifts.

So I started with the basics. What does unconditional love even mean? It means loving someone — or yourself — even when you mess up. You don’t have to like the choices. You don’t have to agree with the wrong. But you love anyway. “Love the sinner, not the sin.” Turns out that applies to us too.

I had never been loved unconditionally. So that’s where my journey began.I had to sit with myself and get to know the real me, the one under all the noise. I had to forgive myself for every mistake, even the ones I thought were too ugly to ever let go of and when I couldn’t forgive myself, I did it by faith. I did my part, and God did the rest. Then I had to accept myself — all of me — the good, the broken, the healing and once I did those things, the unconditional love came on its own. I’m living proof. 

Even if you don’t feel like you deserve forgiveness, forgive yourself anyway. How can anyone else forgive you if you won’t?

Spending time alone with yourself is paramount.

Spending time with yourself is the key here. Talk to that little girl/boy you once were and tell them whatever you feel the need to say to them. 

It was not your fault, ease that guilt.

Forgiving yourself opens the door to accepting yourself. Accepting yourself opens the door to loving yourself. And loving yourself changes everything.

If more people loved themselves, we’d see less depression, less self‑harm, less hurting each other. Less hatred and more compassion and kindness will take root. 

When you truly love yourself, you can’t hurt yourself or anyone else. It just doesn’t happen.Love yourself without conditions. Every time.

Author's Notes:

The author is a writer whose work blends emotional honesty with lived experience. Raised in the South, she brings a clear and compassionate voice to subjects like self worth, anxiety, betrayal trauma, ADHD and autism dual diagnosis, healing, resilience, and personal growth. 

Her writing is direct and grounded, shaped by her own journey of learning to love herself after years of self neglect.

She writes with a balance of strength and softness, offering readers a truthful look at the hard parts of healing without losing hope. Her work speaks to those who feel deeply, give freely, and often forget themselves in the process. She aims to help others rebuild their sense of self from the inside out, using the same steps that transformed her own life. 

Her voice is known for its authenticity, emotional depth, and commitment to telling the truth without sugarcoating. 

She continues to create work that encourages positive mostly self reflection, personal responsibility, and unconditional self love and inspires others as she uses her God given gift of writing to make the world a better place! She writes what she needed to hear as a young girl long long ago.