the hardest part is, most of us were raised by parents who were just surviving, so survival is all they knew to hand down. no one ever showed us how debt traps you, how to comfort ourselves when we’re falling apart, how to say no without guilt, or how to leave love that only hurts.
we weren’t given a picture of emotional safety, just told to swallow our feelings, keep the peace, and push harder. and now here we are: paying bills on autopilot, stumbling through relationships, mistaking burnout for success, calling anxiety a personality trait.
we’re not really broken. we just grew up never learning what it means to feel whole.