I used to think I was sharing a life with a partner who checked all the boxes. He respected my decisions and even let me be the “boss”.

So why did I feel so exhausted and angry all the time?

After my ex moved out, I once invited him back for our traditional family sushi party. We made sushi together, like we had done so many times before. But something was different this time.

After we separated, he had learned how to cook.

So when we were preparing our food together, he already knew what needed to be done. He could think with me about the next steps. He prepared the spoons and plates. He cut the vegetables. He knew what we needed without waiting for me to tell him.

Things moved much faster.

And he was so very proud of himself.

For a second, I couldn’t make up my mind whether to congratulate his growth or slap him.

This was the man who had watched TV and let me spend four hours in the kitchen figuring out how to make his favorite food from his mother’s recipe. Me, who barely knew how to hold a cooking pan properly. But somehow I had decided that I should learn for both of us—because I liked learning new skills.

And for 24 years, I thought I had to cook for all of us— because he couldn’t cook and I could.

And now he was standing there, proudly prepping.

Good for you.

But another part of me wanted to shout:

So you can do it after all. Where the heck were you all these years?

~

I remember the times when I showed tears or anger in front of him. I remember feeling that he was trying to convince me that I was overreacting. Before it turned into an argument, I usually stopped. Partly out of exhaustion, partly for the sake of peace, and partly because I wondered:

Maybe I was overreacting after all.

Slowly, I stopped showing my heavy emotions externally, without actually stopping feeling them internally.

I used to be the loud, sharp girl who wasn’t afraid to point out the truth, even when it could make people uncomfortable. But somehow I had made it my job to handle the emotions for both of us—because I’d always been good at adapting.

~

I remember the days after my first son was born. I had been awake for longer than 24 hours straight, lying like a lifeless old cloth in the hospital’s bed. But he told me that travelling from work to the hospital and back home was making him very tired. He asked if it was okay to leave me alone in the hospital for the remaining stay without visiting.

Right away his question dropped onto my heart like a giant heavy rock. It felt like he was doing his job and I was doing mine. Only, giving birth to our child wasn’t a job that belonged to me alone.

I lay in the hospital bed, staring out of the window before I could reply, trying to throw that resentment out of the window. I must be overreacting. I am just too exhausted.

Thinking about how exhausting it must be to travel such a distance after a full day at work, I said of course; he could rest at home and be ready for work; it would break my heart if he had to suffer.

I ignored the crack in my heart, and somehow I decided that his wellbeing was worth leaving me alone—because I’d always been great at taking care of myself.

~

I was really good at organising too.

Three AA batteries.

A new tube of toothpaste.

An umbrella… whatever he needed would appear like magic as soon as he opened his mouth.

My logic was quite simple: I can, so why not?

We don’t need to keep score in a marriage. Whoever has more capacity can share generously. We’re building and sharing a life together after all. There’s no you or me. There’s only us.

Until I realized there is a difference between sharing and carrying.

After decades of carrying, I was so drained there was nothing left to squeeze out of me. And I finally realized that reality was more brutally dangerous than I’d naively imagined. It is especially dangerous when you are the kind of person who feels deeply, notices quickly, acts effectively, and gives generously…ever so slightly too much.

If you solve a problem before the other person even notices there is a problem, they never experience the problem. They experience a life with no problems at all.

He didn’t see the four hours in the kitchen.
He saw dinner.

He didn’t see the heavy emotions I hid to protect the peace.
He saw a happy wife.

He didn’t see the lonely days and nights with a newborn when I could barely carry my own body.
He saw that the household still ran.

That’s the contradiction of invisible labor: the better you carry, the less evidence there is that you carried anything at all.

Slowly, almost without noticing, you become their mother.

If you’re managing their mental load, organising schedules, solving problems and regulating emotions for them while they simply step back and let you do it, you’re not sharing anymore.

Like a gentle mother, you carry your children because they can’t carry themselves—yet. You soften the world for them because they don’t know how to protect themselves—yet.

You do it out of love. Out of compassion. You know time is limited and they grow up so fast.

That’s the difference. Children grow.

Mothering a partner can keep the relationship stuck because the person being carried has little reason to learn to carry themselves.

And, the mothering isn’t happening because your partner is incapable. It’s happening because you’ve absorbed so much of what they would otherwise have to learn to carry themselves. And the more you take care of them, the more dependent they become. Before long, it feels natural to both of you. It’s a never-ending loop.

So why do we become our partner’s mother?

Maybe it is social conditioning. Maybe childhood wounds. Maybe learned helplessness or entitlement from your partner. Most likely, it’s some mixture of them.

But underneath these causes, I found something simpler:

we left ourselves out of the equation.

We thought, yes I can.

It’s easier if I do it.

It’s for us anyway.

And we forgot to ask whether we had the capacity—or whether we wanted to.

We gave everyone else permission to have limits. We forgot that we had them too.

So now I refuse to become anyone’s mom anymore except my two children.

I still notice, care, and reach out my hand when someone needs help. But not before checking whether I need it myself.

I am in for a relationship where both are strong enough to reach for each other. And when one of us stumbles, the other reaches out a hand.

I refuse to be a mother.

I am a partner.

And I want to be held sometimes, too.

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

A little p.s.

I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. 🙏 Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.
And a little drop of support 💧 helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support 💧

SECRET INGREDIENTS

The psychological map behind mothering your partner

Today’s Secret Ingredients takes you beneath the story to help you recognize your own patterns, understand the psychology behind them, and find a way forward—so you can feel better in your own life:

“How could he do this to me?”
The question haunted me for months after the relationship ended. The strange part was that I had been the one who wanted it to end.

I had been feeling unseen and unappreciated for a long time. There were so many things I no longer wished to live with. I knew I didn’t want this marriage anymore.
And yet, even when I wanted to leave, I was still thinking about how devastating he might feel.
So I was the one wishing someone new to come along and take care of him. I wanted someone to love him who didn’t need him to change, so I could leave without feeling like I was abandoning him.
And then, when someone new showed up, he agreed to end the relationship.
I felt betrayed.
I know. It sounds like I had asked for exactly this. But what I felt at the moment was:

Of course. I give and give, and the moment someone else comes along, suddenly you are ready to let me go.

After everything I did for you for so long.

The ending I had wanted became evidence, in my mind, of everything I had been carrying throughout our 24 years together.

And underneath it all was something much older:

Didn’t you see how much I gave?
Didn’t you see me?

I found myself arguing with him in my head, desperately trying to change his thinking so he could see where I was coming from. It had been a losing battle during the marriage but I kept doing it. He kept doing it too.

Now the relationship had ended. The argument was still ongoing. In my head.

Somehow, now I was spending even more time thinking about him than I had before we separated. When I was alone, I even had to watch something full of drama just to drown out the nonstop arguments, explanations, and replayed events spiralling in my head. “How could you do this to me?” would’ve otherwise become too much to bear.

I thought once he understood how I felt he would apologize, and once he apologized, I could finally have my closure. But when he actually did say sorry to me, it didn't happen inside the way I expected. Nothing loosened.

Sorry for what exactly?

There were still thousands of knots in my chest and throat. Still there, untied.

Maybe that was the problem. Even the most sincere apology couldn’t give me what I was really asking for.

I wanted it to reach backward and change what had already happened.

At the same time, I wanted to walk the higher path and forgive. It just felt so damn hard to find that “Now I can forgive” switch. Not after yet another healing method. Not after the famous Hoʻoponopono practice—repeating
I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.

I just couldn’t stop arguing in my head.

Until I realized what I needed wasn’t really his understanding, or an apology.
I needed something I thought an apology was supposed to give me:

Validation.

Peace.

One day, I was walking the dog. As usual I was drowned in constant mind chatter, arguing with him, criticizing me, desperately trying to find a loose end to start untying all the knots that were pressing so hard on me that I could barely breathe.

My head was down.
My legs were walking.
But my mind was in the arguments.
And my eyes were focused on the gravel ground.

Then suddenly I looked up. Just like that. A broad, clear sky that seemed all-encompassing was right there as it always was. To see it, I only needed to shift my focus.

It dawned on me:

He didn’t validate my feelings.
He didn’t see or hear me.
He didn’t offer help when I needed it the most.

…Everything was about him and what he did.

What if I shift the focus from him to me?
But shifting the focus back to me also meant looking at something I had been avoiding: What part did I play?

I had been criticizing myself, asking where I could’ve done better, but all the while still seeing myself as a powerless victim. Maybe because admitting that I had also participated in creating the experiences I was now grieving felt too painful.

If we really create our own lives, did that mean I had somehow created my own suffering?

If I had a part in creating this, did that mean I deserved what happened to me?

It would make me feel like a complete fool. And it’d somehow excuse his responsibility.

No. He was still the one who did this to me.

While I was arguing, golden sunshine suddenly spread across the sky. Then, it drizzled a little, forming that famous sun shower.

Yes, rain can fall while sun is shining. The sky seemed to answer me.
Two seemingly contradictory realities could exist simultaneously.

Taking responsibility for my part doesn’t make what happened my fault. It doesn’t justify what he did. It doesn’t take away what I felt, either. I can own the choices that kept me there without taking ownership of what the other person chose to do.

My part was this:
I had been hiding myself that even I couldn’t see myself anymore.
I had put other people’s needs before mine.
I tolerated things that should probably have been red flags.
“Don’t be picky”
“ Learn to like what you don’t like”.

If I kept diminishing my own value while expecting him to make me feel valuable, I was giving him an almost impossible task.

We play a part.

(And I want to be clear: I am not talking about someone who intentionally sets out to hurt you without caring about your wellbeing. There are situations where responsibility belongs squarely with the person causing the harm. That’s not what I’m exploring here.)

And maybe taking responsibility wasn’t only about looking back at what I had done. It was also about looking at what I was still doing to myself now.

I could hate him to Mars and back. It wouldn’t change what already happened one bit. He wouldn’t understand me even a little bit more.

I was the only one feeding myself the venom over and over again, waiting for someone else to understand my suffering.

This realization gave me a peculiar kind of clarity.
It was like climbing onto a pile of bones and ashes and, from the highest point, finally seeing the land beyond.

I could see beyond what he did to me.
Beyond what should’ve happened.
And I could see myself in the equation when I looked at the past.
And I could see where I wanted to be when I looked into the future.

The past is there. The future is there. I am here.

I was like, f**k it, I’m done letting anyone or anything decide what gets my focus.

I want to be validated.
I can start validating every single one of my emotions and thoughts.

I want to be seen.
I can stop vanishing for others and start showing up as who I have always been.

I want to be treasured.
I treasure myself first, like I am the finest pearl there is.

No need to wait for someone else’s behaviour to determine whether I get to feel what I want to feel, or to live the life I want to live. If someone can give me what I want, I shall receive it gladly. If they don’t, I will not spend my life waiting for it.

Ah the freedom! Once I realized this.

It was like the thousand knots were all burned down in a blink of an eye. I didn’t even bother to untie the knots. I simply burned them down.

It’s my life. My happiness.

The rain can fall while the sun is shining. I can honor what I felt without living there forever. I am no longer waiting for an answer to “How could he do this to me?”

I have a much more interesting question now

“What do I want to do with my life?”

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

💧 If you step into the paid inner circle, you'll find in today's Secret Ingredients a way that works for me—to discover what you're still waiting for someone else to give you, and to stop waiting. It contains:

• A psychology-informed tool for emotional regulation

• A guided, body-based practice that takes it further

• A simple way to identify your emotional need and begin reclaiming it

Have you ever wished you could go back to a specific time in your life and relive it?

One year ago, after a 17-year marriage, my life as I knew it completely dissolved. Standing in the dense fog that followed, immobilized, I kept wondering if I could go back and rewrite one part of my life, which moment would I choose?

Surprisingly, it wasn’t my marriage.

It was my freshman year of university.

I didn’t understand why at first. I was simply trying to find a direction out of the fog. But I didn’t even know who I was anymore after the structures that had defined my entire adult existence disappeared. Who was I when I wasn’t someone’s wife or someone’s mother?

Then I remembered I had always had a secret passion for human psychology, sprinkled with a tad of magic and threaded through with spiritual and energetic layers. But I had learned to value what looked impressive over what pulled at me. So I put my heart aside and found myself doing a PhD in epidemiology at a university hospital.

I wanted to make my parents proud.

Maybe deep down, I wanted to make sure they were proud of me so I could finally feel like I was good enough.

I didn’t know it then, but there was a high cost to becoming good enough. Some parts of me learned to go quiet.

Yet, the underlying current of human psychology always remained in that little corner of my mind. Like the brightest star in the sky. You overlook it when you are distracted. But sometimes, at an unexpected moment, you raise your head, and there it is against the silky dark sky, shining exactly where it always was.

After receiving my PhD, I had the feeling that a major life task was finally checked off. I had done the thing I had set out to do. But instead of wanting more of it, I didn’t have the drive to continue working in the field.

At the same time, my second son came into the world, and the intimate, chaotic magic of motherly life took over completely. I chose to stay at home, dedicating my time to the most precious treasures in my life—my two sons.

My world was nestled in my children’s worlds. Yet I still kept studying people. I observed. I wondered why we do what we do, why we love.

And I realized that my passion for psychology had never left me.

It had always been an unyielding part of who I am.

This September, just five days before my 46th birthday, I am doing something that feels questionably insane. I am going back to a university lecture hall to study for a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. And I’ll be doing it in my third language, German.

I can’t fully explain why I feel called to become a freshman in midlife. I can’t even fathom how it will feel to sit in a hall filled with people half my age. I can imagine myself excited, smelling the freshness in the air, and also scared, trembling and asking “what the heck am I doing?”, as I walk through those doors.

From the outside, it probably looks like I am starting from scratch. But to me I feel I am actually returning to the beginning with everything I’ve learned along the way. Somehow it is completely natural—like coming full circle. It isn’t tossing away my past and beginning anew. It is simply the next thing that became possible once I started listening to myself again.

Sometimes our bodies are pulled towards a direction before our minds figure out a reason for it.

Maybe this is my ultimate act of rebellion—a choice to own the parts of myself I abandoned.

In my old role, my children saw me at home 24/7, doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, focusing on them completely. Any time for myself felt like stealing something that never belonged to me. Anything we talked about was about them and for them.

Now, as I slowly find the pieces of myself I had hidden away, I am no longer “on call” all the time. I notice they are starting to appreciate my special effort of making space and time just for them.

I am no longer their shadow. I am beginning to reveal hues of my own.

And surprisingly, I think they are seeing the new hues, too. Our relationships have become less about me constantly being there and more about individual souls actually meeting.

So now, they are going to see me become a freshman.

They are going to witness me walk into a lecture hall, show up with imperfect German, learn things that light me up, take a couple embarrassing falls, and keep standing back up and going anyway.

And maybe that is one of the most beautiful parts of truly starting to reclaim myself: letting my children see that there is not only one right path through life, and that it is absolutely ok to change direction when the familiar one comes to an end.

There are logistics to figure out. Here, primary school children go home during their lunch break. And Wednesday afternoons are school-free— so I feel terribly sorry for my 11-year-old son, who now has to come home with his own keys on most days. But I’ll try my best to be home a little later so I can still sit down and have lunch with him.

Sure, the grand idea of “reinvention in midlife” sounds whimsical. The reality is waking up and immediately panicking because I have no clue what I’m doing. It means not knowing the exact map, but still trusting the direction where the star shines.

I’ve come to see that everything begins with remembering who I am. You don’t have to become someone completely new. You just have to recognize yourself underneath it all, and stop leaving yourself out of the choices you make.

I don’t know exactly where this path leads. I only know that the star is visible again, and this time, I’m following it.

….. ….. ….. ….. .

Publication Note

For so long I had been living in a drought although from the outside everything looked perfectly right. The rain came slowly:
through every question that woke me up in the middle of the night,
every rabbit hole I fell into,
every research and practice I did to climb out that rabbit hole.

That was the rain in my drought.

And when I research something, I go to the bottom of it. I want to know where it begins, not just to find a quick surface-level fix.

I’ve changed a lot since I started rain in the drought on the last day of 2025. I was home, all alone in front of a computer screen, while the world was celebrating New Year’s Eve.

I went from feeling completely guilty and vulnerable about publishing my words, to almost throwing up at the thought of turning on the paid tier, to being unable to put anything behind a paywall because I thought nothing coming out of me was worth putting there.

Now I’m becoming someone who believes I don’t have to be for everyone—but simply for my people. I can be me, and it’s okay if someone doesn’t like that version.

I am still me, but to my surprise, I’m not the same me anymore. It sounds contradictory but it really isn’t. I have simply let go of the masks and performances that were never mine to begin with.

So, to celebrate this moment of coming full circle, I am putting something real behind the paywall. 😱

Ha, no, it’s not so bad.

I think I am finally starting to see my inherent value—and to appreciate what I’ve picked up along the way. So I’ve decided to add some Secret Ingredients behind the paywall.

In them, I will gather the magic I’ve found and tested on myself along my strange, beautiful journey back to myself—a journey that began long before I ever came to Substack:

Tools and practices that have genuinely helped me, psychological and spiritual “truths” that have started to make sense to me, and more. And as I begin my psychology studies, I’ll also share what I continue to learn.

And I want to honour this moment with you. Below you can take the first peek into the Secret Ingredients.

If what I am brewing smells like your cup of tea, I invite you to cross the threshold and join my paid inner circle.

Join the inner circle

The Secret Ingredients

I have a couple questions for anyone who feels something stirring beneath a life that’s looked fine from the outside. One way that’s worked for me is to use them as journaling prompts.

1. The self you left behind

In my story, I wished I could go back to my freshman year and choose something I was passionate about, rather than follow the path that looked more impressive.

• If you could return to one moment, which would you choose? What would you have done differently?

2. The role you became

One choice led to another, sometimes we become so absorbed in a role that we can no longer hear ourselves underneath it. For 14 years, I was the 24/7 mom.

• What role has become so familiar that even you sometimes forget who you are without it?

3. The self you’re reclaiming

For me, reclaiming myself now means walking into a lecture hall to finally study something I’ve always wanted to, without knowing where it’ll lead. I just know something in me is pulling me there.

• What is pulling at you right now, even if it seems questionably insane to the world and you don’t know yet where it will lead?

4. Step into it
Imagine you are this person right now. What are you feeling in your body? How are you talking and walking? What feels different— just because you trust yourself a little more?

And if you feel like sharing what comes up, paid subscribers can bring their reflections into our private community chat. I’d love for that space to slowly become a place where we can share what we’re noticing and walk alongside each other as we come back to ourselves.

Let me know what you find out.

Join the inner circle

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

On 08.08.08, I officially reached happily ever after.

But on the day I should’ve been feeling magical, I felt bizarrely normal. Even relieved, after the ceremony and the party. Like an important task was checked off and the day finally belonged to me.

“Can all of this just leave me alone?” —a tiny voice appeared in my head.

I made sure that it stayed so tiny that even the voice itself could barely hear what it was saying.

In the first couple of years I thought I genuinely looked forward to celebrating this special day. For a few hours, I got to feel special again. The problem was how quickly the magic wore off. Something felt strangely off but I couldn’t quite put a name on it. But first thing’s first, I should be grateful. Let’s turn down that tiny voice a little more.

On the fourth 08.08 celebration, we had a newborn baby at home. This time I also had to cook for my mother-in-law who came to babysit, squeezed in some last minute cleaning, and somehow managed to dress up between nursing, caring for the baby, and making pleasant conversation.

By the time I sat down at the restaurant, I was already exhausted. What I really wanted wasn’t a fancy dinner. It was a long, hot bath and one uninterrupted night of sleep. Instead, the clock was still watching us. We needed to go home on time.

From then on, the day started to feel less and less like a celebration for me. I felt all the things I wasn’t supposed to feel. My mother-in-law was coming to my home for me to go out. Gratitude and happiness felt mandatory.

For the day. Also for my life in general.

On the seventh 08.08, I was four months postpartum after my second son’s birth. I didn’t feel like myself. Sitting in a restaurant dressed like the person anniversaries expected me to be, I felt like I was performing someone else’s life.

I have two adorable, healthy children and a husband who’s taking me out every anniversary. I am clearly winning in life.

But why didn’t I feel like it?

Year after year, the tiny voice asking to disappear somewhere and do nothing grew harder and harder to ignore. Sleeping until my body wanted to wake up, not according to what the clock said I was allowed to do. Eating when my stomach asked for something delicious, not when the reservation said our table was ready.

Feeling seen on a random Tuesday.

Until 08.08.18, our 10th anniversary, we were in Hawaii. I remember the white sand against the turquoise water. It looked exactly like the paradise I’d imagined. We drove along the coastline, the salty breeze on my skin.

But inside, something else had been growing around the tiny voice: resentment, like pressure gathering inside a volcano.

I could see how much effort he was putting into making the day right. I desperately wanted it to work, too. I wanted to play the part, feeling happy, grateful, content. I tried very hard to push the anger down because obviously it wasn’t supposed to be there.

I didn’t want to be such an inconvenient downer who had managed to bring a volcano into paradise. At the same time I was also furious that he didn’t see what I really wanted. Looking back, I don’t remember insisting that I didn’t want fancy restaurants or anniversary rituals. Maybe I tried some times, didn’t feel heard, and stopped trying. He kept suggesting celebrations. And I kept agreeing.

But my body simply refused to perform anymore.

It wanted something embarrassingly ordinary. The most romantic thing I could imagine wasn’t another adventure. It was something like sleeping through the flight while he took care of the kids, without me asking.

08.08.25 was shortly after our divorce became legal. We were no longer married but we still celebrated the day. Because I thought staying as friends and family meant we should keep the tradition going to celebrate “us”.

We went out for dinner, like so many previous anniversaries. At the dinner table, we talked about the kids, what happened to our friends, and random life stuff. We kept it light and friendly.

But underneath the light conversation sat all the miscommunication and hurt we had not managed to resolve.

Despite our efforts, we ended up arguing and there it was again, the volcano I thought had gone quiet.

For today, this year’s 08.08, I have had a radical plan:

Do what I actually want.

I signed up for an online workshop, a whole day of kriya practices, meditation and energy work. The kind of things that probably look like doing absolutely nothing from the outside and yet feel like doing everything for me.

This time, I’m not going to follow the “I should”.

I’m only going to ask: What do I actually want?

Just focusing on me.

That was the plan.

…

Then, he reached out and asked if I wanted to have a coffee or dinner together on that date. And right away, I hesitated.

I was already feeling guilty, and sweating at the thought of saying no. My heart was pounding so fast. I almost couldn’t breathe.

As if no wasn’t an option.

Even though my day was full, I found myself searching for millions of reasons for me to have a coffee with him.

I can skip part of the workshop.
It’s just one session that might not be important.
I can do that another time.
He was so nice to ask.

Don’t be cold.

Don’t disappoint him.

—I slipped straight back into the old version of myself, convincing myself that plans made only for me were negotiable. Even though the thought of going out brought back that familiar weight in my chest—My body was pulling me away.

Yet, the voice in my head said: You should want to have a coffee with him.

“I should go” got very loud again, almost too loud for me to hear anything else.

Then I remembered the tiny voice I could barely hear on 08.08.08. After the ceremony, the party, the presents and all that happily-ever-after business, it had asked:

Can all of this just leave me alone?

Now, 18 years later, I want to let that voice keep its volume.

I want to live a life that feels completely like mine. Even when someone else wishes I’d chosen differently.

….. ….. ….. …..

If this resonated, you might also enjoy:

💧 I Died Many Times Before I Learned How to Live
On ignoring gut instincts, becoming who everyone else needed you to be, and learning to stop looking outside yourself for what you want.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation in the comments.

P.S. I’m glad you’re here. If something stayed with you, I’d be grateful if you left a little drop of support. It helps me keep writing these pieces from the heart.

Add a drop of support 💧

And if you feel drawn to stay a little closer, you’re always welcome in the inner circle. I’m grateful to have you here as I build this space.

Join the inner circle

I remember when home became the one place my body couldn’t relax. I remember sitting at the dinner table surrounded by my children and husband, the people I loved most, and somehow feeling lonelier with every conversation.

And I remember trying to talk myself out of the one thought I wasn’t supposed to have:

I want to leave.

I have everything. A loyal husband. Two boys I adore. More than enough money. Why would I leave something so good?

So I started listening to both sides.
One side had countless arguments. It built an airtight case for staying in the marriage:

What kind of mom breaks her children’s family?
— Motherhood spoke first.
Think about your children. You would give your life for them, right? Then don’t be the one who takes their stable family away. You don’t want to do that.

~

You really want to call this a failure?
— unfolding 24 years of memories, shame stepped in.
You spent almost your entire adulthood with this man, building a home with him. If you leave now, what was all of it for? You’d be admitting you had given 24 of your prime years to a failure. You don’t want to do that.

~

Can you really afford to leave?
— scarcity simply laid my bank balance on the table.
You’re not working. You can’t find a proper job with such a long gap on your resume. How would you afford rent or even basic living expenses by yourself? How would you survive without someone supporting you? You don’t want to do that.

~

How can you leave someone you vowed to stay with forever?
— guilt spoke too, judgement in every syllable.
Stop being selfish. How could you turn his life upside down? He trusted and supported you. You don’t want to do that.

~

Do you remember how happy you once were?
— grief stepped forward clutching our love story.
Think about where and how you met. It was fate that brought you two together. Rekindle the spark. Be the one you used to be. Then maybe everything would be the way it once was.

~

You’re too old to start over.
— fear waited until the very end, talking with the usual contemptuous tone that was hard to ignore.
Who is going to want, let alone love, a 45 year old woman? What if you never find someone again and just end up being all alone? You don’t want to do that.

~

Whatever was bothering me, there was always an explanation: hormones, a phase, the full moon, maybe even the weather.

Ignore it. It’s good for everyone.

And what did the other side have to argue? Almost nothing, actually. It kept returning to one simple sentence:

“I feel suffocated and exhausted.”

That’s basically it.

Once, while riding my bike, I suddenly saw another kind of life in my head. A life surrounded by people and things, whose mere presence made me feel at home, like nothing was missing.

The kind of peace when I am next to my son. His smell, his voice, and every little move of his body brings me back to myself. The kind of contentment that doesn’t need performing.

Like feeling a cool breeze on a summer night.
So simple, yet somehow so luxurious.

Then I wondered whether this kind of effortless peace could exist between two adults. Maybe it was simply unrealistic to expect from a romantic relationship.
Maybe that feeling could only belong to a mother and a child.
Maybe I needed to grow up and accept that love eventually becomes duty…like the adults I had watched as a child.

Or maybe I had simply never experienced it before…

~

Still I should stay.
Even though it felt like someone was tightening the already tight knot in my chest.

Yet, after all that convincing month after month I still couldn’t fully bury the idea of wanting to leave. It was like a weed growing in my garden. Once it took root, I couldn’t get rid of it.

Then I asked a different question.

If I have only one more year left to live, what would I do?

Would I want to stay like this?
Or risk what I have now for a chance of finding what I long for?

When I imagined leaving, underneath all the fear, I felt something else: excitement. Freedom. Like flying to a foreign country I had wanted to visit for a very long time. I don’t know anyone there. I don’t speak the language. But it feels right.

I sat with that feeling for months. It refused to go away.

Once I felt what I wanted, I couldn’t un-feel it.

One day a realization interrupted the debate.
All the arguments for staying began with the same unspoken assumption:

You shouldn’t trust your feelings.

For a long time I thought I was being mature by carefully analyzing both sides. Some of those arguments were indeed reasonable. Yet, I realized the problem was “what” I had been using them for —

Self-rationalization.

I had produced reason after reason to make the respectable choice feel like the only possible path. I wasn’t weighing both paths. I was only searching for reasons to eradicate what I felt. By framing my desire to leave as a moral failure or a colossal waste of time, I was essentially telling me: just stop feeling it already.

So what would it actually have looked like to weigh both paths fairly?

Just follow the feelings and ignore practical considerations?
I don’t think so.

I think it starts with letting both sides exist without requiring one to erase the other. When leaving was no longer automatically an unforgivable failure, I could finally let what I felt stand beside everything else that mattered.

I desperately want to protect my children.
And I feel suffocated.

I don’t want to hurt this man.
And I don’t want to remain his wife.

These twenty-four years mattered a lot to me.
And I don’t want the next twenty-four to look the same.

I don’t yet know how I would support myself.
And I want to leave.

When both sides are allowed to stay, “I have no money, so I can never leave” could finally become a practical question: how could I support myself?

It took me a very long time to trust that something I felt instinctively was ever valid, not just scattered noise. Some decisions become difficult not because we don’t know what we want. They become difficult because we’re trying to convince ourselves to want something else.

One year after my divorce, I still read on a sofa. Lie in bed. Make a coffee. Sometimes I have more work than before. More things to carry alone. But the air feels different at home now. Like a cool breeze on a summer night.

Everything else in my life starts here, with me, breathing.

….. ….. .

I’d love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation in the comments.

If this resonated, you might also enjoy:

💧A Fool’s Journey, Midlife Edition
On the messy in-between after divorce that people rarely talk about—when the old life is gone, but the new one hasn’t arrived yet.

💧I Left the Marriage—and Found the Parts of Me I Lost
What leaving revealed about the parts of myself I had learned to put aside.

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

For years, I couldn’t figure out why being helped by my partner sometimes left me feel lonelier than doing everything alone…

When I first brought home my adopted stray dog, I had to take her outside every four to six hours, including in the middle of one of the coldest winter nights we’d had in years. I had to crawl out of a warm bed, put on every layer I owned, and drag myself outside with her for potty training.

I was doing it like I was the only person at home.

Sometimes when I was physically uncomfortable due to a cold or cramps, my husband at the time would ask, “Do you want me to take her out?” He always did if I said yes. But I always wished he had asked differently.

He’d ask with a tiredness that made me hesitate before answering. His body seemed so heavy already. As though this was one more thing he simply didn’t have room for but he‘d do me this one favour.

He did care. He did make the effort. But I couldn’t help feeling as though I had become one more chore. He could’ve been doing something for himself, but instead he was being nice to me. That feeling weighed me down a lot every single time. Eventually I avoided letting him „help“ me.

I was protecting him from one more burden….or so I thought.

Then I remembered those sleepless nights when one of my children had difficulty sleeping through.

“Just tell me when you need help.” He used to say.

It would take forever to wake him up. He seemed so tired during those nights.

“What do you need me to do?” He used to ask me very slowly and patiently standing there in the middle of the night, when all I wanted was to go back to bed as quickly as possible.

Then the next morning, he would look extremely tired like he was resisting falling asleep at the breakfast table. No conversation. Only silence distilled from exhaustion.

Sometimes when he did a house chore without me asking, he’d be very proud that he did something nice for me, and thought he deserved the sincere gratitude. Part of me wanted to be grateful.

But another part of me often felt puzzled and kept wondering,

Why was he vacuuming the floor for me?
Wasn‘t he living in the same house, sharing the same floor?

~

The housework. Raising our children. Planning vacations. Packing. One by one, they became my things to take care of. Very little felt like that it belonged to us. I even thought about making a mechanical list to divide the work clearly. But…no…that wasn’t actually what I wanted…

Maybe I was longing for a different way of seeing?

I didn’t want him to do the dishes just because I asked him to.
I wanted him to see a sink full of dishes and instinctively think,

“I’ll wash our dishes.”

But then I caught myself wondering if it was even reasonable to ask something like that from a man. There were too many stories out there about men not helping at all. My husband did help whenever I asked. So maybe I was simply being too difficult and ungrateful?

But if this was already what a good partner looked like, what exactly was I missing?

One day I finally realized I had been asking the wrong question— I wasn’t asking him to read my mind.

The dog wasn’t just mine.
The waking children at night weren’t mine alone.
The vacation wasn’t mine.
They were pieces of the life we had built together.

The same action can either feel like a favour or like partnership. The difference isn’t the action. It’s how each person sees the same shared reality.

“Wake me if you need me.” doesn’t feel the same as “The kid’s awake. I’ll go this time”.

“Do you want me to take the dog out?” doesn’t feel the same as “It’s freezing tonight. I’ve got her.”

“Tell me what to do” doesn’t feel the same as “I was already going to”.

One begins with you. The other begins with us.

~

I didn’t want to be the only one constantly keeping track of our shared life. After all, if I was going to do it alone anyway, what difference does it make whether I have a partner? And somewhere along the way, I noticed I had become the manager of a world we were supposed to be building together. I realized it wasn’t a role I was willing to keep playing.

I did appreciate the help. But I didn’t want to feel indebted.

I want a relationship where “ours” is more than two people living side by side. Where we are creating something together that only exists because both of us are fully in it.

Because even the coldest winter night can feel warm if we are walking through it together.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation in the comments.

P.S. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I’d love to welcome you into the inner circle.

Join the inner circle

If this resonated, you might also enjoy:

💧 The Guilt That Came Whenever I Chose Myself
On the guilt that surfaced when I stopped abandoning myself.

💧 I Thought I Had an Anger Problem. I Was Abandoning Myself
On discovering what looked like anger was often the pain and resentment of repeatedly leaving myself behind.

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

The loneliest years of my life weren’t the years after my divorce. They were the years I spent trying to feel loved.

Today my kids and their father, my ex, are coming home from vacation. I know that they’d be coming back to his home, to an empty fridge. They’d be arriving after the shops had closed, and nothing would be open the next day. So without anyone asking me for a favour or anything, I went shopping for them.

Ingredients for a quick pasta sauce, because they’d be hungry when they arrived late. Cucumber, because kids need vegetables. Nectarines, because they are their favorite of the season. Good bread. Italian mortadella. Fresh fruit juice for breakfast.

No one asked me to notice those things.

No one asked me to think two meals ahead.

That’s simply how I love people.

As expected, he asked me if I’d have something home for their dinner—Hours later than I had already been thinking about it.

I enjoy tending to the details. Giving my best to the people I love has never exhausted me. What exhausted me was discovering, yet again, that I was tending to those details alone. It was the disappointment of never receiving that same thoughtfulness in return. Eventually, it drained the last bit of energy from me.

People can’t know what you want just like that. You need to communicate. Make yourself understood. — I would hear this kind of advice over and over again. It would’ve been unrealistic to expect magical telepathy. So I tried to communicate.

I asked about a cup of tea.

Which tea?
Sugar?
How hot?
In which cup?
Where’s the tea bag?

I couldn’t make up my mind.

Let me know when you decide. He’d say.

Every little thing had to be translated. Then, I ran out of energy from constantly teaching someone how to care for me.

~

Why don’t you just ask?
He used to say it to me all the time. Even now, some friends still ask me the same thing.

As if the joke is all on me because I didn’t open my mouth and ask.

What about noticing my needs before I ask? Maybe not in the beginning. But after years of sharing a life together? Some reciprocation would have gone a long way. It would have made me feel less alone inside the relationship.

For years I thought this was about communication— If only I found a better way to communicate.

Until I realized it wasn’t.

I was confusing communication with something more important:

Attunement.

Communication listens to words. Hot and cold are just words.
Attunement sees me rubbing my hands together and quietly closes the window before I say I’m cold.

We could learn better ways to communicate. But I could never teach someone to notice the world the way I naturally do.

Once I had words for it, I finally understood why I’d struggled for so long.

For more than 20 years, I struggled trying not to equate his actions with how loved I felt. I know love can’t be measured, either in quantity or in quality.

Love is to be felt. And I love people the way I want to be loved.

I’ve never liked soccer, or dinosaurs before my sons came into my life. Now I’m genuinely interested in them because my sons are. Not to please them. But because they are part of their worlds.

To me, love is not a thousand balloons or 100 red roses on my birthday. Love is when I come home exhausted, feeling a little weighed down by this world, he sees it from the way my shoulders fall the moment I come home. He’d make my favorite coffee just the way I love it and tell me, “Don’t worry about dinner”.

It’s not the same as having to explain that I was too exhausted to cook and hearing “Of course, darling”.

I can ask.

I just don’t want to have to ask all the time.

~

Every time I had to summon the energy to explain, I felt like we were not sharing a life.

I was rehearsing one.

~

When I told people I divorced because I wanted to experience the kind of love I longed for, the reactions varied. Some looked at me as if I were being selfish. Others admired my courage for leaving safety to pursue what seemed like an impossible dream.

Selfish or courageous. Right or wrong. Neither was the point to me. I was simply answering a question only I could answer.

There was enough love.

I left because I finally understood our hearts didn’t speak the same kind of language. And I was tired of translating mine.

At last, I know what feeling loved means to me.

Being noticed before I have to explain.

The kind of care that arrives instinctively.

….. ….. ….. ….

I'd love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation in the comments.

P.S. I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I'd love to welcome you into the inner circle.

Join the inner circle.

If this resonated, you might also enjoy:

💧 When Being Alone Began to Feel Like Freedom
On discovering that loneliness and solitude are not the same.

💧 The Kind of Gaslighting with a “Good Man” No One Talks About
On doubting your own emotional reality.

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

Whether we admit it or not, none of us hits that Publish button hoping to be ignored. Otherwise, we’d simply keep a journal. When my words didn’t attract as many people as I expected, naturally I wondered:

Did I do something wrong? Or am I simply really bad?

I researched, as a researcher by training and by blood. There are probably hundreds of articles promising the “secret” to growing on Substack.

After spending too many hours reading them, I realised something funny.

They all looked different on the surface. But underneath, they were answering the same three questions.

Visibility. Recognition. Connection.

People tell you to:

• post 2 to 3 Notes daily,

• leave 5 to 10 thoughtful comments daily,

• reply as quickly as possible,

• publish consistently,

• find your niche. and so on.

Some even tell you exactly what time to post, what type of notes perform best, and how to alternate between educational, personal and insightful content for notes.

Naturally, I tried almost all of them.

Some worked.

Let’s start with visibility.

More activity, thoughtful comments, collaborations, or optimising your tags, SEO, URL—they’re all trying to do the same thing: give people more opportunities to discover you.

I noticed that many people are struggling with the Algorithm God, but not so many are clear about how they want to be seen.

A fellow Substacker once had a note of a beautiful bird sitting on her windowsill that went absolutely viral. Later she wrote that many of those new readers expected her posts to be about birds—or animals as little messengers. Over time, many quietly disappeared or rarely engaged with her actual writing.

That made me realise visibility alone isn’t enough. The people who discover you also have to discover the real you.

I imagine it like solving a statistics problem. Every note, comment and collaboration is another small stone I throw towards the target. Even if my aim is terrible, if I keep throwing, eventually some will hit.

So, although all the hacks about notes, comments, SEO, etc. sound like the missing key, they are really only one piece of the puzzle. Even if you somehow win the visibility game, what do people see? So perhaps the first question isn’t:

How do I post better notes?

Rather:

How do I want to be seen?

Then comes recognition. Simply being seen isn’t enough. You want to be recognised, remembered.

When someone thinks about football, they think of Messi.
When someone sees your name, what comes to mind?

How do I want to be remembered?

This is also where the famous advice about finding a niche comes in.

Stick to one topic at first. Don’t write about too many things. Become known for something.

I don’t think the goal is to find a niche. I think it’s to give people something unmistakably yours to remember. To me, that can come from a topic. From a voice. Or it can come from a unique combination that nobody else has. Imagine being known as, for example, the tech-savvy mom who cooks vegan food. The point is no one else but you can consistently thread these three seemingly unrelated pieces into one unique story. And that’s how you’re recognised.

People also say “just be consistent”. I used to think consistency was another trick to please the algorithm. Then I noticed that consistency alone isn’t the whole point. You can publish every Saturday for three years. But if every week sounds like a different person, readers don’t have anything to remember.

When you explore something, anything, with your unmistakably-you voice, again and again, over time people begin recognising you, and eventually remembering you. Consistency gives recognition the necessary time to take root.

Every Saturday, your words arrive in my inbox. After enough Saturdays, you’ve become part of my rhythm. At some point, I don’t even need to see your name anymore. I recognise your voice.

Yes, one viral note, one comment, might make people notice you. But it’s the familiar fragrance of your voice that makes them remember you.

Finally, connection. Being remembered isn’t the end goal, though. It’s only the beginning of a relationship.

More recently, I have been noticing many people start saying that the real secret to Substack growth isn’t posting more notes or finding the perfect niche. It’s connection.

Read other people’s work. Treat every username like a real person with respect.

I think this goes without saying. After all, human relationships don’t suddenly become different because we’re online.

Yet, when I started about six months ago, I still believed Substack worked like magic. I thought I would publish an essay, and somehow the platform would carry it to all the people who would instantly fall in love with my words.

It didn’t.

A veteran book publisher once said the most important factor for books to reach a broad audience isn’t marketing but a solid writer-reader connection.

That was when I realized connection is the engine of growth. Growing on Substack isn’t collecting subscribers. It’s building a community. Here I noticed a beautiful kind of symbiosis. It feels less like competition and more like growth together.

Yet, connections take time.

Even writers with thousands of subscribers were unknown once. Some started on Substack with an existing audience from Instagram, Facebook or other platforms. Others built everything here from scratch years ago. Either way, nothing was built overnight.

When my goal becomes building a community with the right people, I stop commenting to be seen. I start commenting because I genuinely care. One real relationship at a time.

Who are my people?

Every username belongs to a person who’s hoping to be seen, just like we are. When you find and nurture a community where both writers and readers feel they belong, your audience naturally grows. People don’t keep choosing someone because they noticed each other. They do because they share similar values and longings. They recognize themselves in each other.

Connection waters the growth. I grow your flowers, and you grow mine. Not out of obligation, but real writer-to-writer, reader-to-reader mutual appreciation, understanding and respect.

Still, some notes that went viral didn’t make much sense. Is that pure luck?

I don’t know exactly why some notes explode while others don’t. But I don’t think it’s random either. Something in them touches a shared human feeling.

To me, the water video saying “let me be water” was not about the water, but about longing, surrender, peace. Different people project different meanings to it.

I noticed something similar in my own essay. One of them unexpectedly travelled far beyond my usual readership. Looking back, I don’t think people were responding to my writing technique. They were responding to 24 years of lived experience distilled into one piece. It named what many people have been quietly carrying within.

I realised that visibility, recognition and connection are only the surface branches. The roots grow somewhere much deeper. Of course, timing and luck play a role too. But in the end I think people are attracted to the writing that evokes something they already feel inside.

When they scream inside: “yes! same!”, or “finally!”

That explains why a short, messy note written in one minute sometimes gains more responses than the beautifully polished lines we spent twenty minutes crafting.

Which picture from these two would make you stop:

A plate of pasta with words “this is my lunch”.
Or that same plate with the words:
“This was my first meal after 20 hours of caring for my dying dog.”

Your lunch is not my business. But caring for a dying dog might remind me of the time I had to say goodbye to someone I loved.

Every piece of writing leaves the reader with a feeling. Even the most practical guide. Perhaps relief. Hope. The excitement of finally understanding something or finding a solution.

What do I want people to feel when they leave this piece?

If growing on Substack doesn’t have simple shortcuts, is the time and effort worth it?

And here comes the one and only most important question I think everyone should answer first.

Why am I here?

Do I want subscribers? Full-time income? A place to vent? Or a playground for my future books?

Only you know why you are here.

I’ll admit something I’m not proud of… I often got annoyed seeing someone writing like me have thousands more subscribers and hundreds more “likes” than my posts. Then I reminded myself why I was here, and almost instantly, I was motivated to write gain:

I am writing for reclaiming myself.

In writing my thoughts into readable content, I let go of the old me and come back to love, to me, one feeling at a time.

In putting my words out there, I hope someone in similar shoes can find their way back to love faster.

That reminder changed the way I looked at numbers. Because there will always be people who are ahead of you.

It changed the way I prioritized things too. As I’ve reclaimed more of myself, my life has become more colorful. I no longer have that much time to sit in front of a computer screen and make words my only friends. When I stopped structuring my life around a publishing schedule and started living more than I was publishing, my views dropped. But remembering why I write, the dip is a toll I am willing to pay.

My why reminds me to stop comparing my garden with everyone else’s, and simply keep tending my own.

If I could go back and whisper some secrets to that me who joined Substack six months ago, it would be these.

Don’t write for “the crowd.” Write for someone. Maybe the person you used to be.

Don’t let numbers define you.

Because no one else in the world can write from your life, with your voice, and your way of seeing.

The deeper I searched for the secret, the more I found myself.

Thank you for spending a little piece of your day here. Your time, your words, and your support are the most beautiful raindrops that help my little garden grow.

In June, this publication earned US$86 (about €73.61 = CHF 68). Keeping the promise I made in this earlier essay, I donated CHF 14 — a part of June’s earnings—to Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation.

Thank you for supporting not only my writing, but our planet too. 🌱

P.S. I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I'd love to welcome you into the inner circle.

Join the inner circle

I spent years trying to make people around me happy. Yet, no matter how much I gave, I kept waiting for the appreciation that never seemed to come.
I wondered: Am I asking too much? Or am I not doing enough?

I remember when I was twelve years old, I performed a piano piece, which I practiced a long time, on stage. I was so nervous when I sat down at the piano in front of a big group of people that I blacked out for a moment before starting to play anything.

When I was finished, my mother’s first comment was: “The pause was really not necessary.”

Until this day, I still remember vividly what it felt like to hear such criticism from someone I trusted the most. It felt like a punch in my gut. That pause became bigger than everything I had done right.

Moments like that left the same imprint every time:

I wasn’t enough.

And that belief often made decisions for me.

Once in college, I had to practice a special dance that required the female dancers to keep turning in circles for minutes. It was something friends chose for me without even asking. I would’ve never chosen on my own. I actually wanted to switch to other styles that were the reasons I joined the dance club in the first place. But seeing that everyone was excited about the decided assignment I couldn’t bring myself up to ruin the high spirit. I didn’t want to cause disappointment or inconvenience. So I swallowed my no and said yes.

Every practice made me nauseate already after 5 minutes, not to mention for an hour. I never enjoyed it but I convinced myself to try to like it.

It never occurred to me that disliking something was information that I should pay attention to.

I was spending my free time of my own free will doing something whose sole purpose was supposed to be fun. Yet I had to endure every practice session. One time I mentioned briefly that I would like to change to something else. Right away I was met with people’s drastic opposition because it would be a huge inconvenience to reorganise. So I convinced myself that it was fine.

Finally it was the performance day. We danced in front of hundreds of people on stage, and the entire show was quite successful. Secretly though, I was jealous of those who could do the kind of dance I’d like to do. Yet again, I forced myself to feel grateful for what I had.

When I came down from the stage, the only comment I received from someone was from my mom. And she said:

“Your part had nothing but turning around. It was kind of boring. Why didn’t you choose something else?”

That one sentence brushed away six months of nausea as lightly as a summer breeze moving through leaves. So lightly. So indifferently. It made the heaviness of me biting through to make everyone happy seem ridiculously unimportant.

I looked around. Everyone was happy after the performance. I found myself wearing the best smiles on my face too. But deep down I was very confused.

Something felt really off. I had done everything right. Being flexible. Grateful. Accommodating.

So why was I the only one carrying the disappointment?

The same story followed into my marriage and motherhood.

It started with a task during my free time. My body wanted rest but my mind said I shouldn’t be selfish. Then another task. And another. I put aside my own interests and immersed myself in my husband’s hobby projects. After all, his happiness was what I wanted anyway.

But at times I felt strangely absent from my own life. I kept spinning around everyone else's priorities, doing things I didn't even enjoy. Sometimes I wondered what would make me happy.

Four months postpartum I returned to finish my PhD. Keeping a sharp mind for discussions with doctors during the day. Nursing a baby through the night. My eyelids were so heavy sometimes I had to force them open with pure will.

Despite that my body screamed no to more grocery shopping, to cooking every evening and weekend, I shoved the no aside and did it anyway. What else would we eat?

When our second son was born, I thought I had to choose career or home. I chose home because the workload was too much—the children, the cooking, the invisible labor. It never occurred to me that some of the work wasn’t mine alone. It never occurred to him, either.

For a very long time, I lived with a strange contradiction: feeling under-appreciated while still believing I wasn’t doing enough… Until one day I suddenly realized, I thought the lack of appreciation from others was the problem. I tried to fix it by doing more, becoming more “enough”. In fact the real problem had always been my own self-abandonment.

I learned to abandon myself in childhood, and I had been doing it ever since.

I was people-pleasing—saying yes to something when every cell in my body screamed no, just to avoid disappointing or inconveniencing others.

I was suppressing emotions—burying the unhappiness, the jealousy, the longing to stop. Telling myself my needs were “too much” and my longings were “ungrateful.”

I was overriding boundaries—reorganizing my own choices to fit others’ convenience.

I was abandoning myself and I called it being a good friend. Being helpful. Being kind. I was abandoning myself in exchange for the hope that someone would finally tell me I was enough.

For years, before I made time for myself, I had always checked the kids’ schedules, waited for my husband’s confirmation, organized an easy plan for him. Only then could I collect the leftover crumbs of time and plan a dinner or quick outings.

It had worked out fine for many years. Until we were processing divorce and he wanted to go out with his new girlfriend on yet another weekend, even on the agreed ones when kids were supposed to stay at his place.

I refused.

I refused to make my time around his schedules.

And he was furious: “why can’t you just be kind and help me out?”

For a moment, I thought he was right. Maybe my plans of doing nothing weren’t that legitimate anyway.

Then I caught myself. Since when was taking the designated weekend off for myself really a moral crisis?

That’s when I finally saw it—the entire architecture of self-abandonment I’d built. In his mind I was making it difficult on purpose. He didn’t see that I was simply no longer making it easy for him.

I trained people to overlook needs I never defended.

Boundaries looked to me like a line drawn on grass. Every time I pushed through my own boundary, that line became the new standard. If you always say yes and never ask for what you need, your extraordinary efforts become the baseline expectation rather than a favor. I knew then that it would never be enough.

I thought I needed appreciation.

What I really needed was to stop abandoning myself.

….. ….. ….. …

P.S. I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I'd love to welcome you into the inner circle.

Join the inner circle

I had a different Sunday planned.

A slow one. Writing in the morning. My favorite matcha in a cup, and favorite coffee in another. A book waiting for me on the couch. No fixed timing. Just space.

But the evening before, I met friends for dinner. Somewhere in the conversation they mentioned that they were going on a full-day hike the next morning.

“Want to come?” they asked casually.

My mind started arguing against it.

You already have plans; you have writing to do.

You’ll miss the only day you can catch up on sleep and you’re already in so much deficit.

Since when do you like hiking the entire day? Be sensible.

Going—wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

Yet my body had a different response.

Like a gentle tug.

That feeling didn’t always make sense. Sometimes it didn’t even feel like the most comfortable choice during or afterwards. But whenever I ignored it, I usually ended up wishing I hadn’t.

So I said yes.

Still, part of me was holding the door open: If I couldn‘t get up that early, I‘d simply cancel.

The next morning, even before my set alarm went off, a crow outside my window called three times and woke me.

I turned over and murmured “let me sleep“. It called again. 5 minutes before the alarm, I was wide awake. Coincidence? I’ve stopped calling anything coincidence. Something in me had already decided.

It was neither a short or an easy hike. More like an adventure moving through thresholds between different worlds.

Paradise. Another planet. A different season entirely.

One moment we were smelling the spring grass and wildflowers. Some time later, sliding down snow.

At one of the lakes, we were so close to the shore. The blue water felt like liquid crystal and it was calling me. Every cell in my body wanted to merge with the water. I took off my shoes and put my feet in. With snow nearby I guessed the water was below 10 degrees.

The first second, the cold rushed from my feet straight to the heart. Quickly it turned into numbing pain. I took my feet out again. But something in me kept wanting to go back to the water. At some point I even had to fight the instinct to jump in completely.

After we left the lake and continued walking, I realised that the soreness from hours of walking had dissolved completely just like that.

Halfway up, we discovered we’d missed the crossroads. Instead of the path leading to the most beautiful views, we’d walked all the way to the cable car station.

A friend groaned: “We took the wrong way.”
Another looked around and said: “It’s a beautiful way.”

I smiled when I heard it.

After a long debate we took the cable car up instead of turning around.

Looking back, we might have missed some views from the climbing path. But if we hadn’t taken that “wrong” turn, we would have run out of time entirely. We would’ve missed the last cable car down, and been left with no choice but to spend the night on the mountain.

It turned out the detour wasn’t a mistake.

It was the only way we actually made it.

I had a slow Sunday planned.

My mind wanted the matcha, the book, the certainty of a day already known.
My body wanted to follow something I couldn’t understand, like having a conversation with something grander.

I spent years believing safety came from being in control, rigidly, and from knowing exactly where I was going. If I can predict what might go wrong, I can protect myself from it. But this Sunday showed me that the line between right and wrong was so blurry.

Maybe the way doesn’t always look right when you first step onto it.

Maybe safety was never about knowing the way, but trusting yourself enough to take the next step anyway.

My body knows the way long before my mind catches up.

A few extra moments from the adventure:

P.S. I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, I'd love to welcome you into the inner circle.

Join the inner circle

I’m sharing a guest post I did last week. This one is different. In the best way, I hope.

In this one, I revealed the voice within that’s always been there.
So easy to miss.
Often drowned out by the self-doubt and inner criticism we become so used to.

I imagined myself as Cinderella.
Confused and a little beaten up, but still holding onto the dreams in her heart.
Then a warm message arrived from the fairy godmother who had been there all along—watching, guiding, and cheering her on in subtle ways.

“You have felt like a tiny rock on the side of the street. Overlooked and passed by. Never important enough to be chosen. You’ve wanted to be the jade. The pearl.”

“And the loneliest part was, you hid your emotions so well, even you forgot they were there.”

“Every flower blossoms from the inside out. So do you.”

If you’ve ever felt like a tiny rock, under-appreciated, while secretly hoping you are the pearl—this one is for you.

‘s space beautifully embodies the symbolism of the lotus: the idea that growth begins in the mud. Her gentle presence often reminds me of Kuan Yin. Fittingly, this piece moves through the mud, the rising, and the bloom.

You’ll see my words in italics, accompanied by Martine’s reflections before and after.

Rooted & Unfolding

Lotus Heart - With Special Guest Lin Wells

Dear Lotus Hearts…

Read more

3 months ago · 12 likes · 11 comments · Martine 💛 and Lin Wells

Sometimes I think that if not for my children, literally no one would notice if I disappeared tomorrow.

I’ve been divorced for almost a year now. I still haven’t told even my mother or my brother. Because I already know I’ll end up managing their emotions instead of receiving support for mine. So I decided: why bother?

I remembered when I was 19, I once told a friend on the phone at midnight:

“I feel no one would notice if I disappeared tomorrow.”

Almost thirty years later, after building a life, moving across countries, endlessly outrunning the feeling of abandonment…

I somehow arrived back at square one.

Why do I still feel so alone?

I started thinking about my childhood. On paper, I had a good one.

We had family trips. Weekend activities. Food on the table… We were not rich, but we lived decently. Nothing looked obviously broken. So for a very long time, I could not understand why I moved through life as if I had to survive it alone.

Sometimes I imagined having a magic wand that allowed me to rewrite the past. I would choose this:

I am the irreplaceable daughter to my parents. They never tell me to quiet down, to behave like a girl. Never send me to do the dishes because I am one.

They let me be fully myself and watch me in awe.

When I can’t sleep at night, overwhelmed by too much noise, they know that I am not trying to be difficult but I’m simply more sensitive.

They speak up for me when other adults make fun of me. Even when it is just a joke. They encourage me whenever I compare myself with others, forgetting my own value. Because they know children build mirrors out of their parents’ faces.

When I fall, I am allowed to cry. When I am sick, my favorite chicken soup is ready.

I grow up knowing I am always held. I see their delight in me, not in my usefulness.

There is always a safe home waiting for me when I get tired from my adventures. I know I am always welcome, loved, and accepted. Safe. Even when I fail.

My memory told a different story.

My parents worked very hard to build a stable life for us. Money was never abundant, but enough to get by. We studied during the week. Spent weekends hiking and playing sports. It looked healthy and structured from the outside.

Yet, I remember crying, whining, expressing discomfort, and being met with impatience, as if I were difficult on purpose.

I remember my mother telling me, dozens of times, that she wished I were prettier. More like the girls on TV, delicate, elegant, perfect posture. She thought family was about being honest.

Before I was ten, I was a little chubby. Family friends loved joking about my belly. My parents never disagreed. Maybe they felt the same. Maybe they thought it was harmless.

When I was seven, I fell on the steps and cut my calf. I cried out loud. My father stood beside me and said,
“Just stop crying already. It didn’t hurt that much.”

So I learned to disconnect from my body and its signals.
To ignore pain.
To suppress fear.

I grew up believing I had to earn love instead of naturally receiving it. For years, I thought this was just how life worked.

Then something cracked me wide open.

Recently I was binge-watching a show. There was a woman carrying life almost entirely by herself. Working hard. Holding everything together without much help.

And then there was a man who saw her needs without needing her to explain it.

He protected what mattered to her as if it mattered to him too.

He accepted who she was, even when she didn’t fit the norm. He loved her for her weirdness.

He showed up. Again and again. Especially in the moments where she had learned to silently bite down and endure life alone.

I sat there crying. Because this was all I had ever wanted.

Emotional safety.

I had spent my entire life denying my longing for this kind of love. Because I learned that wanting it would only lead to disappointment. In real life, I had to hide the ugly parts to remain lovable.

And then I suddenly saw the deeper pattern underneath everything:

Emotional abandonment.

There was no obvious abuse or dramatic violence. But the loneliness of never feeling emotionally held was real. Even inside a well-functioning family.

The feeling of emotional unsafety showed up in so many faces throughout my life:

The chronic loneliness.
The hyper-independence that slowly became self-abandonment.

The obsession with becoming prettier, thinner, easier to love.
The polished, high-functioning version of me.
The chameleon self that let other people define me just to preserve connection.

I felt guilty for attending to my own needs.
Distrusting those needs.
Doubting and blaming myself for wanting emotional support at all.

Why do I still feel so alone?

Because I never truly allowed myself to be seen, not even by myself. If I hide my vulnerability, how can anyone see what I need and support me?

So now I am slowly giving myself the childhood I never had.

People talk about reparenting all the time now. It sounds poetic. But parenting a child is already hard. Reparenting a nervous system that has believed the opposite for decades? That is real work.

I’m learning to give my body permission to feel, instead of overriding it.

Yesterday I had terrible cramps and an awful headache. The version of me from the last three decades would have ignored the pain, pushed through, continued working, while secretly resenting the world.

Instead, I stayed in bed the entire day.

I asked for help with the dog and chores.

—It was a tiny, ordinary step, but for my nervous system, it felt revolutionary.

Because I admitted:
I was in pain.
And it was allowed to matter.
It was allowed to need support.
I could rest without earning it first.

Even though part of me still believed I was weak and inconvenient.

This, I think, is what reparenting truly is. Letting the body experience something different often enough that it slowly stops expecting abandonment.

The magic wand was never about changing the past or bypassing reality.

It’s about the courage to admit how I want to be held.

And learning to be home safely.

….. ….. ….. ..

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to join the more intimate side of this conversation, you’re warmly welcome.

Join the inner circle

I am a stay-at-home mom. 11 years of unpaid labor around the clock. Somewhere along the way I convinced myself I had nothing valuable to offer.

Maybe the belief was already there long before motherhood.

If I’m naturally good at something, I assume everyone else can do it too. But if I’m bad at something, I beat myself up for it immediately.

Holding emotional space for people around the clock? Normal.
Sensing what someone needs before they even say it? Normal.
Rewiring the unhealthy patterns I grew up with? Normal.

I kept treating the things that came naturally to me as if they were worth nothing.

There have been random moments after my divorce where panic would suddenly grip my body so hard I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

How am I going to survive financially on my own?

Because my relationship with money has always been deeply insecure. Somewhere inside me, money became tied to self-sacrifice.

Time.
Health.
Joy.
Freedom.

Growing up, I watched my parents work themselves into exhaustion for money, sacrificing everything. So I learned that money had to be earned through suffering. Nothing was allowed to move easily. You have to hand pieces of yourself over to deserve it.

I loved money.

But I loved it like something scarce and difficult. Like something that only flowed toward certain people, never me. Like I had to earn the right to touch it.

And at the same time, I was afraid of money.

Afraid that if I ever became rich, people would suddenly want something from me. That they would love my money more than they loved me.

And I was afraid of having too much of it too.

Too much money felt dangerous somehow. Like people would envy me. Punish me. Like life would eventually take it all away anyway.

Underneath all those fears was one belief: I am not worth it.

I knew this belief was there for a long time. And if I’m honest, some mornings I still wake up and hear its echo.

After making so much of my inner world public on Substack, I started noticing how often I abandoned myself to appear easier to love.

How I believed my emotions were not valid. How I erased my edges to become more lovable. How I gave everything, thinking it was still not enough…. Then a voice grew louder in my head: I should ask for money.

I almost threw up when I decided to really ask for money. It felt so deeply wrong inside my body.

Who are you, excuse me?
Why would anyone pay you even a dime for your lousy writing?

I have always judged myself the hardest.

But I also knew I didn’t want to keep living inside the same old manuscript anymore. At some point, your comfort zone starts feeling less like comfort and more like a tiny prison.

And if I asked myself honestly,
“Do I want to keep feeling this exact way until the end of my life?”, the answer was no.
So I swallowed the vomit and did it anyway.

I opened a Buy Me a Coffee page. Honestly, it felt like I had tripped on stage in front of thousands of people, skirt flying over my head, panties fully exposed to the audience. I wanted to disappear immediately afterward.

Then someone sent me $5.

I remember feeling both happy and embarrassed at the same time. Like I had accidentally stolen something that didn’t belong to me.

Then $10 and $50 came in.

I didn’t even celebrate publicly because receiving felt almost shameful. I heard a voice inside me immediately saying this:
this is just a one time thing. Don’t start believing you’re suddenly good.

I didn’t know how to let something good land inside me without immediately wanting to push it away again.

But I recognized the feeling.

It was the exact same feeling I used to have receiving birthday gifts years ago from friends and coworkers. I grew up without birthday parties. A simple “happy birthday” was usually the most I got. When I was little, I wanted the balloons, the crown, the feeling of being celebrated for one day. Eventually I learned that wanting it made me “too much.”

I felt that same discomfort of:
I don’t deserve asking for anything.

But this time, instead of escaping the feeling, I decided to sit down with it properly.

Like inviting shame itself to tea.

Maybe this was the first time I allowed something to move toward me without immediately deflecting it.

So after many internal spirals and negotiations with my nervous system, after hours trying to find the right words to somehow justify my worthiness to ask for money, and the right offers to attract people, I finally turned on paid membership. Without having anything figured out. I simply went with my first gut feeling and tossed away the panicky overthinking that followed.

My hands literally froze before toggling the “enable” button for paid membership,
for a full minute
—maybe longer.

I turned it on.
Then immediately turned it off again.

Eventually, after many deep breaths and many conversations with myself, I turned it back on again. The shame of unworthiness still gets loud. But I’ve decided I’m no longer building my life around that voice.

Because honestly? The world is already full of people receiving enormous amounts of money while offering far less heart, care, depth, or integrity than many ordinary people quietly give every single day. I am done believing money only belongs to the exceptional.

Because too many people spend their lives giving endlessly while struggling to believe they are allowed to receive anything back.

Will money suddenly rain from the sky while I sip champagne in first class? Probably not. But this isn’t about pretending effort doesn’t exist. It’s about no longer treating myself like someone whose existence has no value unless she is suffering.

And maybe that is already a radical thing.

So yes, I turned on paid membership. And I also made a small promise to myself:

20% of what I receive will go back out into the world to contribute to a good cause.

Because I still believe good things are meant to circulate.

Last month I received $169.67.
That became 128.45 CHF here in Switzerland.
So 25 CHF went back out to the foundation I chose carefully—Plant for the Planet—a nonprofit focused on global reforestation and empowering young people.

I donate because I love plants. I love this earth. I want all children to grow up in a world that still feels alive and beautiful. I cannot stop every terrible thing happening on this planet. But I can let some of what I receive keep moving.

Right now, I honestly don’t know where this path leads.

Maybe nowhere.
Maybe somewhere far more beautiful than I can currently imagine.

And I am aware. Asking is one thing. Receiving is another. Whether I will really receive anything is something that still wakes me up at night.

But for the first time in a very long time, I am no longer abandoning myself around money. I am choosing myself before guaranteed validation.

And strangely enough, that already feels richer than before.

**

I want my paid membership to feel less like a transaction and more like a quieter room we step into together. It’s an invitation to the intimate little ecosystem slowly growing around it—deeper conversations, monthly Q&As, subscriber chats, and contributions toward causes I care deeply about.

….. ….. ….. .

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support💧

I have always wanted to be that one.

The one everyone loves.
The one who doesn’t get left.

Growing up, I believed there was a formula for that. It always started the same way: a prince, and a girl whose beauty takes his breath away.

The girl who gets chosen is never just smart, or kind, or funny—unless she is also beautiful. Beauty earns love. That’s the law. At least that’s what I believed. And people around me seemed to agree to it. I learned early. Your look is your ticket. Everything else about you is secondary.

And from what I had seen, beauty meant a good-looking face and a thin body, like all the supermodels on magazines.

So when my relationships didn’t work out after the honeymoon phase, I didn’t question compatibility or timing. I thought, if only I were more beautiful. If only I were thinner.

There was always a version of me I believed I had to become before I could relax and be loved.

I reached a conclusion:

I was too fat.

So I started fixing myself.

Someone sold me pills from Thailand. “Miracle in one month,” they said. I didn’t ask what was inside because I didn’t care what it would do to me. I just wanted the result—the right body that would make it impossible not to choose me. I paid more than I should have.

After two months, I lost weight, exactly what they promised. But no one fell in love with me. No one looked at me differently. So I decided this wasn’t enough.

***

Then came the next promise— shapewear. She promised me my dream body. A body that would finally open the door to everything I wanted. It cost far more than I could afford, but she convinced me to borrow from two credit cards. I thought, once I had that body, I would have everything.

Love.
Connection.
Belonging.

It had to be worth it.

I wore it every day. Tight around my ribs, my stomach. So tight I could barely inhale fully. 24 hours. No break. My body felt trapped. Hot. Compressed. After three months, nothing had changed. She told me I was the first one it didn’t work on, and then tried to sell me the upgraded version.

That was the first time something in me said no.

***

Later, I went to a famous chiropractor someone recommended, convinced my bones were wrong. I did one session. Pain shooting through my body while I lay there, agreeing to it. I walked out poorer, and further away from myself. And somehow, this body felt even more wrong.

***

After trying far too many “shortcuts”, I lost all my savings, and even went into debt. So I turned to the most classic method— eating less. For two weeks I ate vegetables only, or one apple a day, one egg a week. Nothing else. I felt dizzy in the sun. My legs weak, my chest hollow. And still, it was not enough.

Then came the hunger I couldn’t outrun. To avoid taking in more calories, I started to chew food without swallowing, trying to outsmart my body, myself.

I also tried to induce throwing up—fortunately never succeeded. But at the time I hated myself for failing at that too.

Until one day, something snapped. Not a breakthrough. More like an inward collapse. I thought:
I will never be loved the way I want. So I gave up. I stopped fighting for the image and started eating. Everything I had denied. Everything I had labeled wrong. Within weeks, I gained almost triple what I had worked so hard to lose.

I looked like someone else in the mirror. I couldn’t recognize the person looking back—and I didn’t want to.

And here’s the part I couldn’t see then: Even at my heaviest, I was still considered slim: balanced, proportioned, the kind of body many would call “good”.

People had been telling me that. I just refused to hear it then.

One summer, I went abroad to a language school to improve my English. For the first time, I met people from all over the world. They had different languages, cultures, and most important of all, different tastes.

I remembered my roommate’s reaction, a girl from France, when I told her I wanted to skip dinner because I thought I was too fat. She couldn’t believe it because she thought I looked perfect. I thought she was just being polite.

She had a fuller body than what I had been taught was desirable, but her confidence around everyone gave me a different lens: she wasn’t waiting for a certain body to feel at home in herself. By my old standards, she wouldn’t have been “the one.” Still, the magnetism she carried was undeniable.

The definition of beauty I grew up with, once an unquestionable law, suddenly felt… negotiable. Where I grew up, slim bodies and pale skin were the standard. Then I met people who appreciated all kinds of shapes and tanned skin.

I felt like the world I’d lived in was turned upside down.

That summer, people came up to me, talked to me and flirted with me. I felt chosen, even in a body I hadn’t fixed yet. To be honest, I didn’t know what had changed. I just knew no one was waiting for me to become someone else. I was too busy living to figure it out. I laughed easily. I spoke imperfect English and didn’t care. I wanted to connect with as many people as I could.

I ate what I wanted, no more rules. I stopped when I wasn’t hungry. I moved when I felt like it. And something unexpected happened. When I stopped controlling my weight, my body settled back into itself. The weight I had gained during all the fighting slowly disappeared on its own.

I felt lighter! I felt alive again!

Looking back, I see it clearly.

I had been living outside my body. The number on a scale, the size of clothes I could wear—these defined my worth. I treated my body like a costume I was ready to replace any minute.

Ironically, the time I felt most attractive, seen and chosen was when I stopped trying to be “that one”.

Then I thought about my French roommate. Her ease in her own skin. The magnetism she radiated. I wondered: Could she be loved and chosen by everyone, always?

Of course not.

But she wasn’t trying to be. She was just... present. And people were naturally drawn to her.

All those years, I had chained myself to an equation I mistook for truth:

The right body = beauty.
Beauty = magnetism.
Magnetism = guaranteed love.

But I didn’t realise the chain was never locked. I could’ve walked away any time.
I spent years trying to become someone worthy of staying without realizing I was the one not choosing myself all along.

Real magnetism isn’t becoming the girl in the story. It’s being fully here.

Inside your laughter.
Inside your body.
Inside your life.

So if you’re still trying to earn love through your body image—I understand. I spent years chasing that formula too. This is what I finally found out:

The women who stay in people’s minds aren’t all the same size, or the same shape. But they all have one thing in common:

They are there.
Fully present in who they are.

And no, it still doesn’t guarantee love from everyone. Yet strangely, I don’t need that guarantee anymore. Because I am home in myself. The right people can find me here.

….. ….. …..

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.

If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support💧

It’s a Saturday morning. I sit down for my coffee.

My son calls from the bathroom: the toilet paper is out. I go fetch it. His father is on the computer.

Another son asks: “what’s for lunch?” when I gulp down the coffee—almost cold. I’m getting the dog ready for a walk and I’m already thinking about lunch. Their father is still on the computer.

I come back from the store with my dog. The dog settles. I’m ready to cook. I reach for salt—but the bottle is empty. Their father leaves the computer just now, goes to the kids, and asks: “who wants to play chess with me?”

Suddenly I am filled with rage, far bigger than the moment.

I regret it every time. But I can’t stop it.

I thought divorce would end the problem. It didn’t. Recently, it happened again on my off-duty weekend meant for rest, when children stayed at their father’s place.

When my younger son called me, I heard a movie playing loudly in the background. His brother and father were watching something he wasn’t interested in—I knew he felt left out. Right away the familiar rage rose. I almost took it out on him, though it had nothing to do with him.

Why did his father get to sit there watching a movie while I tended our son? Even on my weekend for rest?

Something had been building in me for years.
It wasn’t random anger, though. It kept rising until it took over.

Like during the night.

Whenever a child woke up in the middle of the night, I was always up. I used to ask him for help. But it was a whole other hassle to wake him up, to explain what happened and what to do. Finishing the task by myself efficiently slowly became my go-to choice.

Still, when I finally was able to drop into bed and saw that he had slept soundly the entire time when I was up tending our children, I flared in the middle of the night.

Like on a Sunday morning.

Someone asked, “What’s for lunch?”—the third time that morning. From the outside, I was just doing laundry, as relaxed as everyone else. But my mind was elsewhere—watching the clock, planning the next appointment, the birthday party in a month. The interruptions broke the thread constantly. You start. You stop. You start again…And then— where was I before?

Then he said with an innocent tone: “I’m just asking. You don’t need to get mad over something so small”— Like I was apparently available because I was “just” doing laundry.

And it didn’t stop there.

The guilt when my baby cried but I had to go to work. My kids’ stress after fights with friends. Their embarrassment at school. Or their frustration when they lashed out at each other.

I felt all of them, deeply. I would’ve loved to talk about them with their father, but his answer was usually “it’s not so bad”. After that he would leave it there and never bring it up again. I felt like one task he checked off among many items on his to-do list. Over time I learned to deal with it on my own. But the more I was alone in it, the less it took for me to snap.

For years I felt so bad about losing my temper. Shame. Regret. Promise I’d do it better next time.

I tried the gratitude method. Counting the things I was grateful for when anger rose inside me. Grateful for an amazing and safe house to live in. Grateful for a loyal husband and healthy children.

But distraction couldn’t extinguish what was burning inside me.

When I found myself snapped even at my children, I came up with a method to discipline myself: I wore 9 bracelets on my left wrist as a reminder. Each time when I snapped I moved one to my other wrist.

At first, discipline helped me to contain. After a while, it added more pressure.

Last year I became very sleepy. I could sleep almost 20 hours every day and I still felt endlessly tired. My body shut me down before I could admit I was done. Like my liveness was completely drained out of me. I stopped caring during the nights when I heard kids calling. I just turned around and kept sleeping anyway. So their father had to get up eventually.

One day, my younger one made a casual comment that was obviously coming from a little child making an observation statement: “mommy doesn’t wake up in the night. I usually have to call so many times until daddy comes to me.”

It got me at “mommy doesn’t wake up in the night”. As if, I never get up in the night.

Hearing it, I exploded! Something broke through the seal. I watched myself lose control and couldn’t make myself stop.

It felt like a fire had taken over. Burning down everything.

Afterward, I sat in the bathroom, shaking, thinking: What kind of mother am I?

But I finally saw it clearly. Something had been building, burning, inside for years.

Resentment.

And the exploding rage was only what came out when I couldn’t hold it anymore.

I knew then it had gotten too far. I finally admitted to myself that I felt resentful of my life—even of my children sometimes. This is the part we’re not supposed to say out loud.

I thought divorce would fix it, but the flame came roaring back, on a weekend that was supposed to be mine.

Then it hit me: What is this fire? Is it resentment or something else? What if it’s not something to suppress, but to accept?

When I listened to it carefully, the explosion sounded like a cry—from the part of me that I deemed as unacceptable and tried very hard to erase.

The part that didn’t care if I was a good mother or a good person, but just wanted to be—imperfect, free and all.

I had been obsessed with meeting impossible standards:

Being a good mother means never losing my temper and always making sure my children are happy. Being a good wife means whipping up elaborate meals every single day and keeping the house immaculately clean. Being a good person means selfless devotion to the needs of everyone else but myself.

So, I abandoned my body’s need for rest and support—carrying the night shifts on my own.

I abandoned my mind’s need for stillness—keeping endless tasks and invisible lists running in my head every single day.

I abandoned my heart’s need for connections—when I couldn’t get them from my partner.

I had been leaving myself out of my own life—accepting what was handed to me, instead of standing up for my own needs.

But those parts would never disappear just because I abandoned them. They were part of me. What they carried still needed somewhere to go. And the more I ignored them, the more they twisted, into resentment.

My son was still on the video call with me while the movie was playing.

This time, I realized I had a choice.

I could abandon my rest to fix his boredom—step in for his father, carry the weight even on my off-duty weekend. Feeling the resentment burn, as if it could change anything.

Or I could stay with myself, allowing the fire to burn for me this time, instead of consume me.

Choosing myself felt unacceptably selfish, like I was abandoning my child. But maybe what he needed was not for me to take it all on, but just to let him feel what he felt—yes, I still needed to believe this wasn’t selfish. In the end I told him I loved him. I believed he’d find something to do. Then I said goodbye.

The fire didn’t change—how it moved did.

This time, it didn’t turn into resentment.

I stayed with it.
And it moved with me.

When I stop abandoning myself, the fire doesn’t burn everything down. It burns for me.

….. ….. ….

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support💧

I used to believe that the most meaningful success for a woman in life was to be a good mother and a good wife. That once love was secured, I would live happily ever after.

But sitting at home with the father of my children I’d spent 24 years with, I couldn’t stop wondering:

Is this the life I want to live until the end?

Once upon a time, there was a dreamy, daring, and wild girl living inside me. She wanted everything. Adventures. Traveling. Nights that stretched till dawn. Her world was full of playful things: what to wear, what to say, who said what—even her biggest worry was just a presentation due tomorrow.

She did everything right—a long-term relationship that turned into marriage at the right time. She chose the steady route, setting aside her dreams of adventure and spontaneity. The time before children was mostly as she wanted: steady and easy. He was a good friend when life was light. And the fun they had together made it easy to look past small things that made her pause. “No one is perfect”, she defended him without knowing what would happen when life got hard. She believed he would save her from everything difficult and they’d live happily ever after.

But when the pregnancy came, it didn’t look like Pinterest.
She was exhausted, overwhelmed. She hoped he would notice it without her needing to explain. But he asked what was for dinner.
When she couldn’t keep up, she hoped he’d tell her it was okay to slow down. He kept going.

She told herself, just focus on the bright side.

She learned to be strong, to endure, on her own. She learned to keep going as if nothing had changed. Slowly, without anyone noticing, she stopped asking to be carried and held.

With her gone, I became a little quieter. And that question came,

Is this the life I want to live until the end?

Something in me started doubting that this life was the answer.

But hey, I’m going to be a mother, building a family with a man I love. What’s not to like?

When my first born arrived, another version of me stepped forward. She was hopeful, curious, ready to do it right. She had it all planned out in her head: to live a life like the ones on Instagram, with baby-mommy matching shirts, radiant hair that even smelled divine through the pictures. Under the golden sunshine, outshined by the smiles on her and her baby’s face.
When he’d come home, he’d ask about her day like it mattered. It’d feel like they were in this together.

But reality didn’t follow that script.

It asked for nights without sleep, for patience that kept running out.

On the worst nights, when sickness came, and the bedsheets had already been changed more times than she could count, she just covered the stain with a towel and lay down anyway.

Her hair looked unstyled, sometimes simply unwashed.

Instead of being graceful, she was gross.

And the hardest part wasn’t the exhaustion, but feeling lonely inside. When she doubted whether she was good enough, instead of reassurance, something warm and connecting, she got his halfhearted response: “it’ll be alright”. It only felt cold and empty.

Still she kept going, because it was demanded of her… until she was completely used up. No drama. Not even time for a small funeral.

I learned to become faster, sharper, more efficient. Functional. But also, I became more irritated. More resentful.

That question grew louder,

Is this the life I want to live until the end?

And something in me started to ask why I was trading myself for this life.

But hey, my boy’s laugh is worth the entire world. I am the only woman in the world privileged to hold his hands. What’s not to like?

And then came those moments that cracked everything open.

“You used to be kinder”, he said in a tone that was half complaint, half confusion.

To be honest, I didn’t like the version of me I became, either. But I didn’t know how to find my way back.

“Why do I always have to give in?”, once he grumbled. I was stunned. Hearing it was like seeing an arrow shot through my heart. I couldn’t feel pain or anything, because I was completely in shock. I thought he would appreciate it, everything I had adjusted, everything I had carried to keep this family working.

But somehow, I had become the problem.

That girl once believed that a steady marriage and family would complete her. But she felt lonelier even when she was never alone. She withered, lost her colors, and eventually dissolved. She died still wondering how long he had secretly felt caged, disconnected, and unhappy.

And in that dying, something became clear:

She’d ignored her gut instincts, convincing herself her pauses and questions didn’t matter.
Pushing herself to the brink trying to be the perfect mother, she neglected her own needs until burnout and resentment were all that remained.
When his dissatisfaction revealed the rupture, his criticism became her own.

It was her own self-abandonment.

If she’d set boundaries and asked for what she needed, maybe it would’ve turned out differently.

Maybe not.

But she would never know, because she’d been too busy being who everyone else needed her to be.

Is this the life I want to live until the end?

I heard it this time, loud and clear, No!

I understood it then: no one is saving me. I need to be my own saviour.

And when I finally stopped abandoning myself, something in me returned: the ability to feel what I wanted—and trust it, without asking permission first.

On a Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in an industrial-style café.

The man I had a girly crush on was working there—moving in the background like the steady hum from the sea. For once, I wasn’t searching for signs or validation. I wasn’t relying on any external source to make me feel good about myself.

I was just… being me.

Sitting, sipping the exact coffee I wanted.
Feeling the space, the light, the breeze on my skin.

Fully.

And at that moment, I wanted to tell her, the one who got lost in who she thought she was supposed to be:

My darling, you don’t need to know where this is going. You already have a compass inside you. It knows the way home.

This is the life I want to keep living.

….. ….. …

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it's already someone else's story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support💧

I finally got a taste of going viral on Substack. The happy dopamine high lasted a day.

I sat in front of the keyboard, wondering what to write next. Something impressive. Something worthy of the 700+ people who just liked my work.

Maybe I should figure out the next hot take.
How about increasing the value of my work by adding free downloads?

But I couldn’t shake this voice:
You know how the good movies always have a much worse sequel?

So every letter I typed felt harder than it needed to be. At some point I asked myself: why is it so important?

I think it’s not about keeping the dopamine high, but it’s about my fear of letting people down. I’m afraid people would be disappointed in me once I can’t meet that high expectation bar.

I feel emotions—mine and others’—far too deeply.

I remember when my dad lost his lifelong, secure job. He sat in front of the computer, searching for work. Each rejection landed in his body before he said a word.

The silence in the room wasn’t the hardest part. It was the numb look on his face—the one he tried to hide but I could still sense. That quiet, exhausted “beaten by life” feeling, that stayed with him until the day he passed away.

I could feel it so clearly that I couldn’t bear it.

I would have given anything to save him from feeling disappointed.

Disappointment had always been the silent presence in my home. Like heavy dark clouds hanging low over your heart. You could feel the low pressure in the air. You wished it’d turn into a shower finally to get it over with, but it just hung there, pressing. It was constantly there and I dreaded feeling it.

And I still do. I feel like I have no right to celebrate my achievement in life if someone out there is disappointed. Even more devastating, when I become the one who let people down.

Maybe that’s why I kept disciplining myself to meet the expectation bars that kept rising.

When I hear “you are great”,
I hear “can you keep being that great?”.

For sure they’ll leave when they find out I’m not so great after all.

That viral pill gave me the x-ray vision into how I was constantly moulding myself, calculating how I should behave, to avoid disappointment. I drafted 6 different pieces in total, and I deleted all of them. Because nothing sounded like me when I tried to speak like someone receiving 700+ likes.

So I turned to the messages I received.

My heart was filled when they told me I’d written their relationship. People shared their stories. The identical details were uncanny:
staying in a relationship that made them shrink and disappear for far too long.

The glimpse of light was that most had come out on the other side stronger, happier, and more in love. Either ending what should’ve not lingered, or moving toward what should’ve long been improved. I saw so many people having the courage to turn to their inner voice that refused to be ignored any longer, and act on that voice, no matter how small the step.

I saw how everyone’s reclaiming themselves made them radiate.

“Thank you for saying something clearly what I’d felt but had no language for”, many said it.

Reading their words, I felt it in my body — the particular warmth of not being alone. Of knowing that what felt unspeakable had been spoken, and recognized, and held by others who had lived it too.

They reminded me, I didn’t try to hook anyone when I wrote that gaslighting piece. It simply had to come out of me—just like every other piece I wrote. Because writing is the whole point, and the numbers are just a bonus.

Like the magnolia blooming so unapologetically, without thinking twice about what color looks more impressive.

All the heartfelt and thoughtful voices, 100+ and counting, have been teaching me one single lesson: do not shrink yourself, no matter how logical it sounds.

Moulding myself into others’ liking is shrinking.

I am done shrinking.

At first when I laid my secret thoughts as public Substack essays, I was terrified that I would displease anyone. But I chose to listen to my inner voice anyway. And instead of anything negative, I’ve made incredible resonating connections every time.

That should be evidence enough to always take the focus from others back to myself.

After all, if you keep changing, how can the right people recognize you?

I feel a little like Cinderella, granted a once-in-a-lifetime night by a fairy godmother, walking into grandeur I never imagined.

And like her, even though it is new and uncertain, I want to be fully present for it all.

To take in every detail.
To let it imprint on me.

So that when the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, when the gown turns back into something ordinary, I remember what that night felt like in my body. And who knows. Maybe it’s just the start of another adventure.

So I returned to my keyboard, listening to what wanted to come out, and began typing.

In the end I’m grateful this moment came from something real—something I wrote in tears from my heart.

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support💧

My ex-husband was a good man. Everyone said so. Devoted father. Reliable. Brilliant. Our life looked perfect from the outside.

So why, during the 24 years together, did I feel lonelier with him than I was alone?

I had always been the one with a hot temper, loud passion and quick, quirky ideas. I could be brushing my teeth and suddenly decide I needed Ramen. And the next day off we went.

My ex was mellow. Genteel. From the outside, he looked like the one grounding me. In my friends’ eyes, I was the queen. He was never loud with me and he never shied away from telling everyone how incredible I was. When I met his colleagues or friends for the first time, they would say “it’s nice to finally meet you”, like meeting a celebrity who they’ve already heard so much about.

All my friends admired our fairytale-like story. He was a devoted father, a reliable husband, financially secure, brilliant, dependable in every visible way. The kind that was too good to be true.

It’s easier to blame the villain. The story becomes much more difficult when you look like the bad guy.

So I spent a long time secretly asking myself: why couldn’t I feel it?

I didn’t feel held, not in the way my body was waiting for. Not met.

When I tried to speak about it to a friend, or to him, I was always met with the same question:

So what do you want?

I couldn’t conjure up a to-do list for him to follow. It made me feel like an instructor handing in an action plan. Nor could I find the proper description for something I had never experienced before. I only knew it was a feeling. Something like:

I wanted to feel steadied, like I could trust to be held even in the moments I could barely hold myself together. Like nothing was too challenging to face with me.

And that answer never landed. From the outside, I already had everything. So every time a conversation turned into an interrogation, I became a little quieter.

People told me to look at the bright side. Sharing a life with someone takes sacrifices, effort and diligence. I felt like a diva who’s too demanding when I heard that. Though part of me agreed, another part of me still kept wondering: if it is that difficult for a relationship to work, why stay together?

Again, that question never landed well. Just another defiant rebellion that was actually unrealistic. So I stopped explaining. But slowly, the line between what was real and what wasn’t began to blur.

Maybe I was simply asking too much.

We used to talk a lot.

At the beginning, I asked gently with curiosity:
Why did you walk ahead of me, instead of beside me?

He explained. He was thinking, in a hurry, solving something. I listened carefully, trying to see the big picture from his eyes. Then I chose my words with precision in a language that was my third. I tried very hard to meet him where he was.

But the same conversation kept repeating like a broken tape. Each time it felt like throwing tiny pebbles into a deep ocean. Barely any ripple. Nothing returned. Just gone.

Slowly, my “why” began to carry a different tone. Less curious. More tired.

When I pointed out something we had already talked about, his answer was almost always the same: “No, I didn’t say that”. My instinctive memory of the conversation was often treated as wrong or skewed.

I was frustrated about constant misunderstandings. If it had been my language, I would have worked to improve it. But then he brushed off my despair as if it were only tiny grain of dust on the shoulder:

“It’s normal. You know this is nothing compared to what others go through?”

Then came the same explanations.

Carefully constructed. Technically flawless. Endless. In the end, I gave in out of exhaustion. But when I thought back, those arguments hardly made sense to me.

There was always a perfect reason ready to convince me that I was overreacting. And he was the one who was patient and kind enough, helping me see things more clearly. And then, minutes later, he would laugh again, talk about jokes, work, ordinary things, as if nothing had happened. My unhappiness felt brief, unimportant, like a scent passes through the room—gone in an instant.

For a very long time, his calm certainty and gentle demeanour made me doubt everything about myself. I thought I was too emotional. Difficult. I was thankful he tolerated me.

He liked to say “I am a peace-loving guy. I want everyone to be happy like I am.”

So I apologized for my sensitivity, for my language, for being too much.

Years passed like that, for me to struggle between his version of reality and mine. Until one day, I finally saw something clear:

what he was doing to me was gaslighting.

Not the intentional, malicious kind, though. The protective kind. The kind that happens when someone can’t stay with uncomfortable emotions, so they reshape reality to protect their self-image.

I started recognizing the patterns.

When I expressed struggles and he joked, minutes later, as if nothing had happened—that was toxic positivity, discrediting my reality.

When he said “you’re overreacting” or “it’s not a big deal”—that was invalidation, dismissing my feelings.

When he compared my distress to others—“misunderstanding happens all the time, this is nothing”—that was trivializing, making my experience small.

When he said ‘I never said that’ about conversations I remembered clearly—that was denial, making me question my ability in the language and my own memory.

Each phrase on its own seemed small. Together, over time, they slowly erased me.

He was a good man. He just wasn’t comfortable with anything beyond happiness. So he met me in the way that he could handle.

He rushed toward happiness hoping I would smile again. But that was exactly when I felt brushed off, instead of steadied. I had wanted to feel steadied, like I could trust being held even when I could barely hold myself together. Like nothing in me was too much to face. But the unhappy me was unfortunately too heavy for him to hold.

When we were preparing for divorce, we both said we wanted to stay close— as friends and family to each other. When he told me about his new girlfriend around that time, I told him, in tears, that I wasn’t ready for this. Can you go slowly? He agreed, promising that there would be only coffees and dinner dates with her.

Two weeks later, they spent nights behind my back. When I asked him about it, he replied with a very long explanation, and at the end he said “I never agreed to that.”

At that moment, the world stopped spinning for a second. Everything went completely still.

I knew. I was done.

Done trying to be understood.
Done searching for the most accurate words.
Done questioning myself.

I was done being invalidated.

For 24 years, I looked like a queen in a fairytale. Our life looked like a beautiful blood red apple, flawless from the outside, but something inside had already rotted. There was no evil villain in this story, and that was the hardest part—nothing was “wrong” enough to blame. When we had grown in different directions, needing different levels of depth, it became the survival of the self. And even though no prince was coming to wake me, I had to wake myself.

If it doesn’t feel right, then it is not right.

No matter what anyone tells me. I know. And it’s enough.

….. ….. ..

A note from Lin

Hi there. Did you know my name comes from Mandarin and means rain in the drought? It’s also at the heart of this publication.

For decades, I kept myself quiet to stay safe and to live a good-enough life. But every day felt like an audition for someone else’s.

Now I’m ready to be heard and seen as who I’ve always been beneath the masks: messy, still learning.

And to live a life that feels like mine.

Happy to meet you! ❤️💧

A little p.s.

I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story. 🙏
And a little drop of support 💧 helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support 💧

💧 If you step into the paid inner circle, you’ll find in today’s Secret Ingredients a self-assessment to help you notice whether a relationship is making you doubt your own reality.

It contains:

• A questionnaire to help you explore the degree to which this relationship may be affecting your sense of reality and self-trust

• Journaling prompts to help you reflect on your results and reconnect with your own perspective

Growing up, guilt followed me everywhere. Into comics I wasn’t supposed to read; cakes I wasn’t supposed to eat.

Whenever I sat a little too long in front of TV, guilt would rush in whispering I was wasting time. I should be doing something useful.

When I chose to become a stay-at-home mother, it told me I was “wasting” my PhD, comparing me with the modern woman who does it all—successful at work and radiant at home. And clearly, that wasn’t me.

When I gave my children frozen pizza instead of the braised chicken and steamed vegetables, guilt called me lazy. Just because I didn’t feel like cooking? Unacceptable.

Guilt’s message was clear: keep the performance high, or risk losing approval.

***

But guilt didn’t stop at policing my productivity. It taught me that wanting anything for myself was fundamentally selfish.

When I was away from my young kids, guilt told me they were crying because I wasn’t there for them. When I gave them all my time, it shadowed my desire for adult conversation and called me ungrateful.

When I felt drained and secretly wished for alone time, guilt made it feel like a scandal, as if silence itself needed permission.

When my husband came home grinning about his $10k bonus from work, guilt coached my response: “congratulations, I’m so happy for you,” and made me swallow the other sentence rising in me: “I wish someone appreciated my work at home too”.

***

And when my body tried to tell me something was wrong, guilt translated every signal into a flaw.

When I felt heavy, almost suffocated, inside my supposed perfect-sweet-family life, guilt told me to smile. It disapproved my unhappiness. As if discontent were going to destroy the good life we carefully built over years.

***

I chose to let guilt lead, thinking it knew how to keep me from making the wrong decisions.

One of my secret pleasures, before I spoke the wish to divorce out loud, was imagining a different life:

having conversations where I didn’t have to explain myself,
spending afternoons with people my body could relax around,
and nights stretching into music, next to someone whose presence steadied something in me.

In those few guilty minutes I was free.
Free from vows I intended to keep for life.
Free from the obligations of being a good mother, wife, and daughter.
And I could simply follow what my body wanted without asking for permission first from anyone or anything.

I pushed that wanting aside like someone knocking on the door I pretended not to hear. But it kept knocking.

Everyone said that my husband was such a catch. From how he looked to how good he was at his job, he was a husband I should be thankful for having. On top of that, he treated me like a queen. That should’ve been enough.

So I kept smiling. When my body couldn’t relax around him and my jaw clenched during dinner conversations, I thought something must be wrong with me.

I deliberately chose guilt’s advice over my body’s signals. I told myself I should stay for my children, my parents, and him.

But then I noticed that guilt showed up anyway, when I couldn’t smile anymore. So either way, staying or leaving, I felt awfully guilty. And that’s when the question came:

If both choices made me guilty, why not choose myself?

What if guilt is not as noble as we dress it up with names like conscience, maturity, or love?

But just fear of losing approval?

So I said it. I want a divorce.

Guilt came immediately, for hurting and disappointing him, but I insisted this time.
It told me I was destroying the best thing in my life. I almost believed it.
And when it said I would fail my children, that I was taking away their home, I hesitated.

I was pulled back and forth by voices that all sounded convincing.

Then I imagined what advice I would give my sons when they would be facing the same dilemma. Choosing between what looks right and what feels true.

When it comes to them, there is no confusion.

If something in you keeps breaking, holding everything together isn’t love; fixing isn’t the answer. It’s not about shrinking into virtues of gratitude and compassion. It’s about the basic needs your body is missing.

Choosing yourself might feel like destruction at first, but sometimes it’s the only honest response to what your body already knows.

9 months later, the catastrophe guilt promised didn’t come. My children didn’t suffer. My life didn’t collapse. I wasn’t abandoned. What came instead was something simpler: my breath slows. My body softens.

Guilt was never an intuitive guidance that’s protecting me from setting foot on the wrong ground.

Guilt was merely a response to stepping outside of what I believed was approved.

Now I know, when guilt arrives, I can ask:

is it actually harmful to somebody?
or is it just unfamiliar to what I’ve learned to accept at the cost of myself?

My body is never confused. I just wasn’t choosing it.

And now I’m learning to choose differently.

What are you afraid will happen if you choose yourself?

….. .

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.

If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support 💧

Right before the weekend began, the email from his teacher arrived. In it, I was informed that my son, together with four other boys, had attacked a girl verbally in their class WhatsApp group. I was lectured about the consequences of bullying and reminded of my parenting responsibility.

I was completely lost. How could my son appear in a chat when he didn’t have an account? From him I heard a very different story:

He had nothing to do with it.

The conflict was between this girl and three boys in his class. It had been going on for years and recently escalated into the group chat. The girl bombarded the chat with texts and pictures every day and those three boys had been telling her to stop—many spiteful words were used on both sides.

My son and one other boy had been watching from the sidelines. They had only joined the chat once, using another boy’s phone, and wrote two words:

“Shut up.”

That was it.

And another thing didn’t add up: in the chat history, all the messages from the girl had disappeared. So when the teachers reviewed the conversation, it looked like she had been silent while five boys attacked her.

I could see how quickly the story would tilt. One innocent girl against five boys. The verdict was already clear.

The consequence decided by the school was simple. All five boys were to apologize and read materials about online harassment. The teacher’s email had arrived before the weekend—case closed, time to move on.

But was it?

…

When I asked my son about it, I saw something that tightened my heart. He was uncomfortable, ashamed, because two teachers had judged him and wouldn’t believe the girl had deleted her messages. He didn’t think saying shut up was evil, but he was already criticising himself, accepting their version of events, even though he knew deep down he’d done nothing wrong.

And somewhere inside me, a thirteen-year-old girl was remembering. She knew what it felt like to be judged before being understood…and how heavy it was to accept being called something that didn’t feel like hers, just to keep the peace.

When I was about thirteen, we had a class project to build a miniature paper house, complete with tiny furniture made from cardboard.

Normally I barely paid attention in that class. I chatted, played, and handed in work that met the minimum requirement and nothing more.

But that time was different. I loved dollhouses. Decorating. Interior design.

So I took the project home and spent the entire weekend working on it. I colored the chairs light brown and carefully drew wood grain on each piece. I covered the walls with shimmering purple paper and laid coral-colored felt as the carpet. The result was beautiful. Unlike anything I had ever made before.

When I proudly showed it to my teacher, her first reaction was:

“Did someone make this for you?”

Even after I insisted that I had done it myself, she remained doubtful. In the end she gave me a mediocre mark. My excitement disappeared completely.

In that moment she had given me two labels: a cheater, and someone who wasn't capable of such beautiful handwork.

Later that day when I told my mom about my disappointment, she simply brushed it off . She said it wasn’t worth making a fuss about such a small thing. After all, that little remark from my teacher didn’t hurt anyone or anything—

Except for my dignity.

I remember standing there knowing two things at once: my work was genuine and it deserved the best mark in the class.

But staying agreeable, and keeping everyone comfortable, was more important rather than insisting on justice—even when it sat heavy in my body.

The world isn’t always fair.

So for years, I learned to protect the image of being pleasant. Very often I told the part of me that whispered “this isn’t fair” to simply adapt. I let small enough things pass, even when they stung. My son’s cyberbullying situation could’ve easily been another one of these moments.

I could have stayed silent.
Everything had been handled politely.

…

But I couldn’t live with my son being labeled a bully.

…

Loving my sons changed what I was willing to accept. When it came to them, justice suddenly mattered more than appearing agreeable. Even if it meant being called a difficult parent, it was worth it—to stand for his dignity.

It also felt easier to speak up for others than for myself.

So I put politeness aside, and chose not to let this go. Writing “shut up” was called bullying. Boys defending themselves were called villains. I couldn’t agree with that. I contacted another boy’s mother. Together, we stood up for our sons.

Although the teachers initially stood by the surface story, they agreed to look into the situation more closely. They reviewed the full chat history, including the deleted messages, and spoke with all the students involved.

In the end, they agreed. The girl was not nearly as innocent as it had first appeared. The “bullying” story was reframed as disagreements among kids.

Fairness was restored.

Yet still it didn’t feel like justice to me. The way a label can be given to children so quickly. The way most of us learn to accept a label that’s not ours.

I realized that the labels my teacher placed on me in a matter of seconds had stayed with me for years. I had learned to hide my real self; that I needed to compensate for and appear more than I believed I was.

The labels I once resisted had become my truth.

In that moment I saw that fairness and justice are not the same thing.

Fairness can be measured, but justice is something we feel.

We’re used to relying on an external scale. One that weighs opinions, expectations, and approval. And often, keeping the peace is what keeps that scale in balance.
So we carry the labels that were placed on us, when we were still learning who we were, sometimes directly, sometimes disguised as jokes: “bully”, “cheater”…

They may seem weightless at first, easy to brush off. But they settle on our inner scale, the one that holds what we know to be true.

Every time we accept a label that isn’t truly ours, we agree. Every time we return to the moment it was placed on us, we add another small weight to our inner scale.

Like sesame seeds, so light we barely notice. Until one day, the scale tilts.

And we start to believe this is who we are:
a loser,
smart but never pretty,
an introvert,
not enough.

Speaking up for my son made me see how unbalanced my inner scale had become. And for the first time, I began to question the labels I had been carrying.

I realize I am the one to trust, to know which labels belong and which do not.
The outside world doesn’t get to decide who I am.
Not unless I agree.

Speaking up doesn’t always restore justice. But sometimes it restores something even more important—our dignity.

Speaking up doesn't need to be loud or public. Sometimes it's simply refusing to carry a label that was never ours.

And in that moment, we restore the balance of our inner scale.

We choose ourselves anyway. We know who we are.

I wonder what labels you’ve been carrying that don’t quite feel like you.

….. ….. .

A little p.s. I’m glad you’re here.
If this touched something in you, share it. Maybe it’s already someone else’s story.

Each piece takes me 20-30 hours because I can’t leave it until it feels true. If something stayed with you, you can add a drop of support💧.

It helps rain in the drought grow slowly, in good company.

Add a drop of support 💧