For a long time, I believed I had moved on from my past. I told myself I had grown, evolved, and become someone different from where I came from. But recently, something shifted. Or maybe… something finally surfaced.
It happened quietly—during a conversation with my partner. We’ve been together for four years, and in those years, he’s been patient, loving, and incredibly present. But he asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Why can’t you open up emotionally? Why don’t you reach out when I’m hurting?”
And I didn’t have an answer. Not right away.
But in the silence that followed, I began to uncover a truth that had been buried deep within me. A truth that was shaped long before I ever knew what emotional intimacy was supposed to look like. A truth rooted in childhood trauma I thought I had escaped simply by surviving.
Growing up, love was not something we expressed—it was something we assumed. We were never told, “I love you.” We weren’t held when we cried. We were often told how to feel, when to feel, or worse—not to feel at all.
So I learned to shut down. To move through life without the warmth of emotional expression. And I carried that silence into adulthood, into motherhood, into my relationship.
I never realized how deeply it shaped me until someone I love pointed it out—not to shame me, but to help me see myself.
And now, at 49 years old, I’m facing something I thought I had already moved beyond: the unhealed wounds of my past.
The Emotional Legacy We Don’t Talk About
This isn’t about blame. It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about finally seeing that the patterns we learned as children don’t disappear with age—they adapt, they hide, and they show up in the quiet moments of our relationships, our parenting, and our inner dialogue.
I never meant to carry emotional distance into my adult life, and I certainly never meant to pass it on to my children. But the truth is, what we don’t heal, we often repeat.
We don’t say “I love you” often—not because we don’t feel it, but because it was never modeled for us. We don’t talk about our feelings—not because we don’t care, but because we were never taught how.
And that silence… becomes generational.
What I’m Learning
I’m learning that love requires more than just presence—it requires vulnerability.
I’m learning that healing doesn’t mean pretending the past didn’t hurt—it means gently unlearning the parts of yourself that were formed in pain.
I’m learning that fear of rejection is not weakness—it’s a wound, and wounds can be tended to. With patience. With care. With the kind of love that stays even when you shut down—like my partner has.
And I’m learning that it’s not too late. Not too late to say “I love you” more often. Not too late to show up emotionally for the people I care about. Not too late to say to my children, “I wish I had done it differently, and I’m willing to start now.”
If You’ve Felt This Too…
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why it’s hard to express your feelings…
If you’ve struggled to say “I love you” out loud…
If you’ve pulled away instead of leaning in…
You’re not alone.
We don’t heal by pretending we’re okay. We heal by being honest about what still hurts—and giving ourselves the grace to grow from it.
A Reflection to End With:
What emotional patterns from your childhood are still living inside your present?
And what would it look like to gently begin unlearning them?
This is my journey—and I’m just getting started. If you’re walking this path too, I hope you’ll keep going. Healing doesn’t happen in one grand breakthrough. It happens in moments like this… when we finally name what we’ve carried for too long.
With love and reflection,
Rose Alicia
Awakened Living 