WHAT I LEARNED WHILE BREAKING MY OWN HEART: BECOMING THE WOMAN I REFUSE TO APOLOGISE FOR.

INTRODUCTION: From Ashes & Honey, The lessons I carried through fire

I didn’t decide to write this book because I had life figured out, I don’t think anyone really can. I decided to write because life kept happening; loudly, painfully, beautifully and I needed a space to put it all. For years, I learned my lessons the hard way: through heartbreaks undeserved, outgrown friendships, deafening silence and love that taught me more about myself than the persons I was loving.

My stories aren’t polished pages from a healed space. They are the footprints of a girl who walked through confusion, anger, disappointments and small victories and has refused to stop walking. Every chapter holds a lesson, not because I chased wisdom but because it found me amid all the chaos.

Some lessons came as whispers.

Some came as slaps.

Some were heartbreaks disguised as miracles.

And some when I thought I had nothing left to learn.

This book is not about being strong all the time but about being real. It’s about admitting the moments where I lost myself and those when I found pieces I didn’t know I needed. It’s the journey of a woman who realized she can break and still grow, love and still leave, fall and still rise.

If you are reading this, then maybe you’ve felt the heaviness of your own stories too. Maybe you’ve swallowed words, ignored your intuition, forgiven too much, or loved too deeply. Maybe you’re still learning, still healing, still carrying your own ashes and honey.

I still am and that is why I can tell you; this is not a perfect story but it is an honest one. And I hope, somewhere in these pages, you see a little of yourself and find a piece of the courage you didn’t know you were looking for.

Welcome to the journey, lets walk through the fire together and refuse to apologize for it.

You used to wait for people who didn’t show up. You now understand presence is a choice, not a request, not something you beg for.

I didn’t realize how much of my life I spent waiting… waiting for calls that never came, messages that stayed on “delivered,” affection I had to earn, clarity nobody wanted to give, and love that only existed when it was convenient for the other person. I thought patience made me loyal. I thought silence made me understanding. I thought showing up for people who didn’t show up for me made me strong.

But really, it made me tired.

There’s a different kind of heartbreak that comes from someone’s absence not the dramatic kind with shouting or tears but the quiet kind where you find yourself checking your phone, revisiting older conversations, rehearsing conversations that never happen, and convincing yourself, “Maybe they’re just busy.”

You start shrinking the parts of yourself that feel needy. You apologize for wanting the bare minimum. You train yourself to be okay with less, just so you don’t lose them.

That’s the poison of absence:

It teaches you to negotiate your own worth.

THE TRUTH

I used to wait for people who didn’t show up.

And the saddest part is—I didn’t even realize how deeply it affected me. I thought it was normal to be the one who loved louder, cared more, initiated everything, held conversations together, or tried to fix what I never broke.

I swallowed excuses like medicine: “He’s stressed.” “He’s busy.” “He didn’t mean it that way.” “He’ll be different tomorrow.”

Guess what….? Tomorrow never came but something else came… my heartbreak did.

THE SHIFT

It didn’t happen overnight. Healing rarely does.

It began with small moments:

• When I stopped rereading messages, trying to decode tone.

• When I stopped blaming myself for someone else’s inconsistency.

• When I realized silence from someone who claims to care is a message.

• When I learned that if someone wanted to be there, they would be.

Presence isn’t complicated. You really don’t need to beg for it. You don’t need to earn it. And you definitely don’t need to suffer for it.

People show up when they want to. Those who don’t, don’t.

Simple. And painful. But freeing.

THE HEALING

My healing started the day I decided I would no longer sit in emotional waiting rooms.

I allowed myself to feel the sting of their absence, acknowledge that I deserved more, stop performing for attention and to walk away. Not because I didn’t care, but because I finally cared about myself too. I learned that love is not measured by how long you can wait, it’s measured by how someone chooses to be present.

And the moment I stopped tolerating absence… I realized I started demanding effort, attracting people who matched my energy, feeling lighter, choosing peace over possibility.

I started choosing me.

THE LESSON

Never hold space for someone who refuses to fill it. Never go empty trying to make someone feel full. Never confuse longing with love. Presence is a choice. Effort is a language. Consistency is a form of care.

And you, my love, deserve all three, without asking. You don’t owe anyone your suffering just because you care about them.

You chased reassurance because you feared being replaced. You learn that you are your reassurance.

There was a version of me who kept holding on to people the way someone holds their breath underwater: desperate, tense, hoping it would somehow turn into air. I kept giving chances like they were sweets I picked off a shelf. I kept showing up for people who couldn’t even bother to check if I made it home safely. And every time I felt them drifting, I panicked because in my mind, distance meant danger, absence meant I wasn’t enough, silence felt like rejection.

I used to lie awake, overthinking one text, replaying one conversation, wondering what I said wrong, what I did wrong, what I should’ve done differently to feel needed. I kept imagining myself being replaced… easily, quietly, without warning because deep down, I believed I was replaceable.

So, I tried harder. I softened myself, swallowed my boundaries, stretched my capacity to hold people who didn’t know how to hold me.

And the sad part?

I kept clinging to people who didn’t even value the parts of me I was breaking to offer.

There was this constant fear that someone else would come along and do it “better” than me… be less emotional, less demanding, less passionate, less sensitive. So, I kept dimming the brightest parts of myself to match people who were already standing in the dark.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was chasing reassurance like oxygen and every time someone pulled away, I blamed myself for “not being enough.”

But I was never the problem. I was just giving my heart to people who didn’t know what to do with it.

The Truth

I wasn’t afraid of losing them rather, I was afraid that losing them would prove my biggest fear:

That I was easy to walk away from.

I kept thinking love was something you earned with loyalty, patience, forgiveness, effort.

But the truth hit hard: People who want you don’t put you on trial, they don’t make you compete with their silence and they don’t hold your emotions hostage.

The truth was that I kept chasing the version of me I wanted them to see, instead of the version of them they were actually giving me.

The Shift

The shift happened slowly — then all at once.

It was the moment I realized: If someone truly needs me, I won’t have to beg for space in their life. It was the morning I woke up and felt the exhaustion in my soul from trying to prove I mattered. The day I realized my worth wasn’t supposed to be a debate.

It was when I asked myself a simple question:

“If he didn’t need me, why was I killing myself to be needed?”

That’s when something in me snapped back into place. I stopped romanticizing mixed signals. I stopped trying to interpret silence as something deeper. I stopped forcing myself into conversations that drained me. I stopped overextending to people who couldn’t even meet me halfway.

I finally saw that needing someone who doesn’t need you is spiritual self-harm.

And I refused to keep hurting myself.

The Healing

Healing wasn’t soft, it was sharp.

It felt like waking up from a long dream where I had been shrinking for so long, I forgot my real size. I started giving myself the reassurance I had been begging others for. I became the person who checks on me. The person who comforts me and chooses me consistently, not conditionally. I stopped waiting to be chosen like a student waiting for attendance to be called.

And the more I reassured myself, the more I realized: People don’t replace you. They replace the version of themselves they projected onto you.

I learned to sit with my own presence. I learned that I don’t need someone to want me for me to be worth wanting. I learned that my worth is not a group decision.

That’s when I finally understood: I had been holding on to people because I didn’t know I could hold myself.

The Lesson

I don’t need anyone who doesn’t need me. Not out of pride. Not out of spite. But because being wanted is not the same as being valued. Love should feel like consistency, not confusion. It should feel like certainty, not survival.

And in choosing myself, I didn’t lose anything —I just stopped losing me.

The day I realized I was enough, I stopped chasing anyone who made me feel like I wasn’t.

It happened on a random afternoon, one of those days when the conversation switched from sweet to sharp without warning.

I told him something he did hurt me, and instead of listening, he brushed it off with:

“Ahh, you’re overthinking again.”

And just like that, I found myself shrinking. Second-guessing. Explaining my emotions like I was defending a thesis. Trying so hard to prove that what I felt was real.

I remember sitting on my bed, phone in hand, heart in my throat, thinking: Why do I need him to agree before I allow myself to feel what I feel?

It wasn’t the first time. With A, with B, the pattern was the same.

I kept handing people my emotional compass and letting them decide whether my feelings were “valid enough.” And every time they dismissed me, I dismissed myself too.

I didn’t realize I was abandoning me — quietly, slowly, one invalidated emotion at a time.

The Truth

I wasn’t running after “validation.” I was running after permission —permission to feel, react and to stand firm in what my heart already knew. I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy. That I wasn’t imagining the disrespect. That the shift in energy was real. That the silence was intentional. That the way I was treated wasn’t okay. I wanted someone to witness my pain because I didn’t trust myself enough to say, “I saw it. That’s enough.”

But here’s the truth that slapped me awake:

People who benefit from your silence will never validate your voice. I was asking the wrong people to explain the very hurt they caused.

The Shift

The shift began quietly, not with a dramatic epiphany, but with a private decision: If I felt it, it matters.

If it matters, I honor it. Even if no one agrees.

1. I stopped explaining my intuition like it needed a PowerPoint.
2. I stopped letting people talk me out of what my soul already understood.
3. I stopped handing out access to the parts of me that were still healing. I began choosing myself emotionally — even when I was scared.

Especially when I was scared. And little by little, validation shifted from something I chased to something I gave myself without hesitation.

The Healing

Healing looked like talking to myself differently; softer, firmer, kinder.

I told myself:

“You’re not imagining things.” “You’re not dramatic.” “You’re not asking for too much.” “You’re not the problem.” “You’re allowed to feel what you feel.”

I became the voice I used to wait for. The comfort I used to beg for. The witness I used to crave. And once I validated myself, everything around me made more sense; who deserved me, who didn’t, who respected my heart and who didn’t know what to do with it.

Healing wasn’t loud; it was steady. And it taught me that emotional safety is a gift I can always give myself, even when no one else does.

The Lesson

Self-validation isn’t arrogance — it’s alignment.

It’s saying:

“My emotions don’t need external approval to exist.”

It’s trusting that when something feels off, it is off. It’s protecting the version of myself that keeps whispering the truth. It’s raising my own voice high enough to drown out anyone trying to silence me. Validation now lives inside me — not in the hands of people who mishandled my heart.

I no longer wait for anyone to confirm what my soul already knows. And you shouldn’t either.