Learning to Grow

I grew up in a home that, from the outside, looked like everything people strive for. We had stability, structure, and the kind of life that many would call privileged. But what people don’t always see is that nothing was handed to us. We worked for what we had. Responsibility wasn’t something we learned later in life, it was something woven into us from the beginning. There was an expectation to show up, to contribute, to be accountable, and in many ways, I’m grateful for that because it shaped who I am today.

My father gave me something different. He was soft in the ways that mattered. He showed affection, he nurtured, he made me feel seen in moments that felt quiet but important. He taught me that love could be gentle, that it could be expressed, that it could exist without conditions constantly looming over it. And I held onto that version of love like it was truth.

But my mother… she was something else entirely.

The kind of person people now label as a narcissist, but at the time, I didn’t have language for it. I just knew how it felt. It felt like never quite measuring up, like being constantly evaluated and somehow always falling short. Her expectations were impossible, and not in a way that pushed me to grow, but in a way that made me feel like I was never enough to begin with. There was no safe place to land. No version of me that was fully accepted.

And when you grow up like that, it does something to you. It plants a quiet belief that love is something you have to earn, something fragile, something that can be taken away the moment you don’t perform correctly. It teaches you to overextend, to give more than you should, to chase validation in places that were never meant to give it.

I think that’s why I love the way I do.

I am a giver by nature, but not just because I’m generous. It’s because I know what it feels like to be deprived of the kind of love that feels safe. So when I love, I pour into people. I show up fully. I care deeply. And when that care is returned, when I feel genuinely seen and valued, it’s like something in me comes alive. I shine in those moments. Not because I need someone else to complete me, but because I finally feel like I’m standing in the kind of love I always deserved.

But I’m also learning something new now.

That just because I am capable of giving that kind of love doesn’t mean I should accept anything less in return. That my worth isn’t defined by how much I can endure, or how much I can prove. And that the version of love I’ve been searching for isn’t something I have to chase endlessly, it’s something that should meet me just as fully as I show up.

Maybe the truth is, I didn’t just learn what love was growing up.

I also learned what it wasn’t.

And now, for the first time, I get to choose the difference.