“I, like many other women, have fallen victim to the idea that someone someday will show up and save me. To be quite honest, I have been waiting for that moment my entire life. Growing up with a terminally ill, single mother and an absent father meant that I spent a lot of time wondering if I had done something wrong to have been dealt these cards. It meant that at my core I believed that I did not deserve good things and that there was something wrong with me. Yet, I held onto the hope that one day someone would show up and save me. I wanted so badly for someone to understand me, hold me, and love me. I wanted to feel safe. I was around 11 years old when I began feeling the effects of my mother’s illness. Her mortality hung above my head from then on. I met anxiety and depression around the same time and navigated those feelings alone because no one wanted to talk about anything else besides the hope for her to survive. One of my favorite breakthroughs in therapy was during one of my EMDR sessions where I have been able to look back into certain memories to process my emotions. I remember vividly going back into a memory where I felt ashamed of the way I wanted my father’s comfort the few times I saw him growing up. The point of this session was to figure out why I felt so ashamed, but what I learned was far more valuable. For years I felt as though I was too needy and required so much attention from people around me because of the way I overshared growing up. Turns out, I was looking for comfort and safety in anyone that allowed me the space to talk. Revisiting this memory showed me that I wasn’t craving attention. I was extending my hand hoping someone would take it and hold me. I did not feel safe at home because I knew my mom’s health was declining, and so I searched for safety elsewhere. I looked at fifteen-year-old me in that memory and handed her compassion. I also saw that I took care of myself without realizing it; I cried in my room, I wrote, I hung out with friends, I read books, I worked out, I joined extracurricular activities at school. I did everything I could to take care of myself and not fall into bad coping mechanisms. I realized that every single time I felt sad or anxious, I was there ready to take care of me. In that moment I learned that through it all, myself love was always stronger than any hardship. I have never needed anyone to come and save me because I have done it for myself every single time. I never thought of myself as someone who loved herself, but I know now that I have always done exactly that. I just had to learn how to see it. I started therapy at seventeen after my mother died and I lost my sense of home and it was through therapy that I found a home within myself.”

-GSL