Waking From the Illusion of Love

I sat in the garden this morning with a cup of cacao warming my palms, letting myself sink into the quiet of a Slow Monday. I created these Mondays as a commitment to myself, a non-negotiable ritual to calm my nervous system after a lifetime of alarm clocks, urgency, expectation, productivity… and survival. For the first time in days, I wasn’t rushing. I wasn’t bracing. I wasn’t performing.

And that’s when it surfaced…

the memory I never allowed into the sunlight, the one I buried beneath responsibility, competence, adulthood, the memory of being touched inappropriately by my cousin as a child.

A wave of old guilt rose up, not just because it happened, but because a part of me accepted it. A part of me even wanted the attention.

And this is the part that has always frightened me most. It wasn’t that I wanted something sexual. It was that I wanted to be seen.

Held.

Chosen.

Noticed.

I didn’t receive enough warmth, tenderness, or affection from my parents…

and I mistook any physical attention for love, even when it was harmful.

And as I grew up, I subconsciously sought out the same pattern. I attracted men whose attention felt like love, even when their touch reaffirmed my unworthiness. Somewhere inside me, a part whispered: “This must be love — this is what attention feels like.”

And for years, I carried silent shame for the fact that a part of me liked the affection, not the abuse, not the contact, but the experience of being desired. Today, in the garden, I finally turned inward and spoke to my inner child:

“You weren’t sick.

You weren’t dirty.

You were lonely.”

She answered back:

“I never wanted something wrong,

I just wanted to be held.”

Then I felt the voice of my teenage self, the angry one, the one who wore armor made of fire. She said, “I wasn’t angry because I was broken. I was angry because no one protected me. I had no safe place to put the pain.”

She didn’t need discipline.

She needed comfort.

She didn’t need judgment.

She needed someone to say, “I know you’re hurting.”

And then I heard another voice…

the voice I never expected:

my father’s —

not as he was in life,

but as he is in spirit.

He said:

“You reached for what was available,

because what should have been yours was missing.

You filled the absence of my love

with whatever substitute came to you.

That was not a flaw in you,

but a failure in your environment.

Not your soul.”

I cried hearing that. Because for the first time, I felt permission to let go of the guilt. Then my womb spoke, not in words at first, but in sensation, warm and forgiving:

“I was never ashamed of you.

Your innocence remains intact.”

And finally, the voice of the woman I am becoming, the me at age 50 - rooted, wise, unafraid:

“You no longer need to carry this.

Your worth is unquestionable.

You know the difference between attention and love now. You are safe.”

Why I’m writing this? Because somewhere out there, another woman is carrying this same secret shame, the shame of

“I didn’t resist hard enough.”

or

“A part of me liked the attention.”

And she thinks that makes her complicit.

Or dirty.

Or broken.

Or unworthy.

So let me speak directly to her, to you:

You were not longing for abuse,

you were longing for warmth.

You were not drawn to the harm

you were drawn to recognition.

You were not consenting

you were coping.

There is nothing wrong with the child you were.

She was simply trying to survive

in a world that failed to nurture her.

If this resonates with you

Let your younger self know:

You deserved real love.

You deserved safe affection.

You deserved gentle hands and kind eyes.

You deserved protection.

And if nobody said this to you back then,

then hear it now:

You did nothing wrong.

Your innocence was never lost.

Your light remains untouched.

And today, I make space for your healing

as I make space for mine.

With so much love,

Solarys