Hi friends. Welcome back to Lux Unfiltered — where we talk about healing, but not the Instagram-healing aesthetic. The real stuff. The grief, the rage, the unbearable softness it takes to live through it and try again tomorrow.
This one’s for the over-explainers. The fixers. The ‘maybe if I understand why they hurt me, it’ll hurt less’ crowd. And yes — that includes me.
I want to start with a quote that gutted me the first time I heard it. I was in therapy, defending someone who had deeply hurt me, and I said:
“But they weren’t evil. They were just broken. They had their own trauma.”
And my therapist — bless her — said:
“That’s valid. But let me ask you something…
Did their trauma give them the right to create new trauma inside you?”
And I just sat there. Silent.
Because I had no answer.
But today, I do.
So let’s talk about it.
“I Grew Up Defending the Knife”
For most of my life, I defended the people who hurt me.
Because that’s what I was taught to do.
Put yourself in their shoes.
Be grateful for what you have.
Always understand their side of the story.
Don’t be dramatic. Don’t make it worse. Don’t overreact.
I learned very quickly that emotional survival required justification. If I could make sense of the chaos, I could feel safer inside it. If I could explain away the shouting, the silence, the absence, the coldness — maybe it wouldn’t break me.
I was told I was too sensitive. Too much. That I misread things. That I imagined tone, meaning, harm. But I wasn’t wrong. I was overstimulated. Undiagnosed. Mirroring the energy that was handed to me and being punished for it.
Let’s be clear: my father had trauma.
But what did he do with it?
Did he work through it? Heal it? Choose differently?
No. He gave up on me because I was hard to love.
Or at least, that’s the story I was told (by my ego).
And I’ve spent the better part of a decade unlearning the belief that if someone struggles to love you, it must be your fault.
Trauma Doesn’t Cancel Accountability
Let me be clear before the overthinkers in the back spiral:
You can understand someone’s trauma.
You can even empathise with it deeply.
But that doesn’t mean they get a free pass to hurt you.
Trauma is an explanation.
It is not an excuse.
And it is definitely not a hall pass to recreate the pain someone else gave them — especially not inside you.
There’s something quietly soul-destroying about knowing someone’s past — seeing how their parents failed them, how their lives shaped them — and still realising that none of that stopped them from harming you. Knowing they could’ve chosen better and didn’t.
That’s what makes this kind of harm so sneaky. Because it comes wrapped in a tragic little bow. It convinces you that they didn’t mean to hurt you, which somehow becomes, so the pain shouldn’t count.
But it does count.
It changed you.
It broke something in you.
And I’m so sorry that you were left alone to deal with it.
Let’s talk about my parents.
Yes, my father had trauma.
Yes, he was raised without love.
And sure — parenting me, undiagnosed, sensitive, deeply intuitive — wasn’t easy.
But what did he do with that?
He gave up.
He vanished.
And I say that with all the sarcasm I can muster because I’ve spent ten years no contact, and I’ve had to listen to people tell me, “I’m sure it hurts him too,” or “He probably loves you in his own way,” or “You should reach out. Be the bigger person.”
Why?
Why the fuck should I shrink myself into the ‘bigger person’?
Why should I chase someone who never even wanted to be caught?
The truth is: if it hurt him, he would’ve tried.
He would’ve picked up the phone.
He wouldn’t have let his eldest child disappear into the ether.
That’s not trauma.
That’s choice.
Shadow Work Prompt:
What hurt have I been excusing in others that I would never justify for myself?
What would I say if a friend came to me with this story?
Write it down. Let it get messy. The truth doesn’t have to be poetic to be real.
They Didn’t Leave Me. They Left Themselves First.
There’s something I need to say here — for me, for you, for the part of us that still needs to understand the ‘why.’
My parents were deeply traumatised people.
He weren’t just emotionally unavailable — he was emotionally exiled.
They didn’t just fail to love me the way I needed — they didn’t know how to love themselves.
And I don’t mean that in a romanticised, pitying way.
I mean it in the observant, painful way that makes everything click.
They were disconnected from themselves.
They abandoned their own inner child long before they ever became parents.
And so when I came into the world — loud, intuitive, needing, feeling, mirroring them — it was too much.
Too confronting.
Too real.
Too raw.
My father didn’t know what to do with someone like me.
Because someone like me — sensitive, smart, reactive, complex — reminded him of what he hated in himself.
So he opted out.
And my ego tells me that he didn’t love me.
That I wasn’t worth fighting for.
But the deeper truth?
He couldn’t love me because he didn’t love himself.
And I triggered every inch of that self-rejection just by existing.
It’s taken years of therapy, reflection, and shadow work to accept this:
His abandonment of me started long after his abandonment of himself.
And that doesn’t make the pain go away.
But it makes it mine to release, not mine to carry.
🧠 Shadow Work Prompt:
Where have I mistaken someone’s self-hatred as rejection of me?
What parts of myself did I start to hate because they did?
When Forgiveness Turns into Self-Abandonment
I used to say things like:
“They didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“They were just struggling.”
“They had a lot on their plate.”
As if that somehow made the wound cleaner.
As if understanding the knife made it stop cutting.
But here’s the truth: I was bleeding and still defending the blade.
That’s not forgiveness.
That’s self-abandonment dressed up as empathy.
I stayed in relationships — romantic, platonic, familial — way longer than I should have. Not because they were good for me. Not because they were safe. But because I was desperate to feel loved. To feel seen. To feel anything close to the acceptance I had been chasing since childhood.
I put myself in dangerous situations just for a crumb of connection.
And that’s not dramatic — that’s survival.
I was raised to believe that love came with caveats.
That I had to earn it. Prove myself. Make myself smaller, easier, quieter.
That if I could just be palatable enough, I’d finally get a taste of safety.
But what actually happened is I became really good at betraying myself.
You know how people say “they did the best they could”?
Yeah. Maybe.
But “their best” harmed me.
And that matters.
My mother tried.
My father didn’t.
One defended the other at my expense. Constantly.
I was forced to reach out, to be the one to fix things, to “be the bigger person” again and again — all while being told that he loved me. That he just didn’t know how to show it. That surely it hurt him too.
But you know what hurts more?
Having to chase down love from someone who has already decided they won’t give it to you.
That level of invalidation? That gaslighting?
It doesn’t just distort your sense of others. It distorts your sense of self.
You start thinking maybe you are too sensitive.
Maybe your needs are too much.
Maybe you’re not trying hard enough to be lovable.
But here’s what shifted for me:
I realised that I don’t need that kind of love.
I don’t need to prove my worth to someone who chose not to see it.
I am the person I am in spite of them — not because of them.
And that realisation? It saved me.
🧠 Shadow Work Prompt:
What version of yourself did you become just to feel loved by someone who was hurting you?
And who might you become if you put that version down?
Boundaries Aren’t Mean — They’re Clarity
For the longest time, boundaries felt mean to me.
Selfish. Cold. Like I was rejecting people I should be bending over backwards to keep.
I now know:
That wasn’t me being cruel.
That was my trauma lying to me. Again.
When you’re neurodivergent and raised in a home where your needs were always “too much,” boundaries feel dangerous.
They feel like you’re slamming a door.
When really? You’re finally locking one that’s been wide open in a hurricane.
Let me be clear:
You are not a bad person for walking away.
You are not cruel for protecting your peace.
You are not dramatic for saying: this hurts, and I’m not okay with it anymore.
Boundaries are not punishments.
They’re just clarity — about what you will and won’t allow in your life anymore.
And yeah, sometimes that clarity means going no contact.
The Big Cut
People act like going no contact is impulsive. Like it’s some petty, explosive, reactionary move.
But my no contact with my father?
That wasn’t a tantrum.
That was a decision made from years of silence, years of being told to try harder, years of reaching out and being met with nothing.
Why am I supposed to maintain contact with someone who gives me nothing good?
What’s the point of keeping a line open when they’re never going to call?
My cutoff was radical because it had to be.
Not because I hate him. But because I finally love me.
The Modified Relationship
With my mother, it’s different. It’s not no contact. It’s curated contact.
I recently had to say to her:
“I’d love to talk to you more. But right now, the only time you message is after midnight in my timezone. I’m your firstborn. If you really wanted to speak to me — wouldn’t we make time?”
And look — that conversation didn’t blow anything up.
But it also didn’t change anything.
Because she is who she is.
So now I’ve stopped expecting more than she can give.
I accept that she loves me in her way.
And I decide where and how I let her in.
That’s not cruelty. That’s peace.
Grieving Who They’ll Never Be
Here’s the part no one warns you about:
You don’t just grieve the person you let go of.
You grieve the version of them that never existed.
The fantasy. The parent or partner or friend you hoped they’d be.
Letting go doesn’t mean you stop loving them.
It just means you start loving yourself more.
Shadow Work Prompt:
Who am I trying to turn someone into — and what am I avoiding by letting them be who they really are?
I still crave external validation.
I still scroll dating apps when I’m sad or lonely.
I still want to send that text just to feel seen.
I know what I’m doing.
And I also know it’s not going to give me what I really want.
Because what I really want…
Is to be held.
Is to be chosen.
Is to be understood without needing to perform for it.
And when that doesn’t come? I’m learning not to chase it — but to ask myself:
What part of me is aching right now?
And how can I tend to it myself, without demanding someone else fix it?
Yes, external validation feels good.
Being seen, loved, worshipped — it’s meant to feel good.
It’s supposed to be part of our lives.
But when you’ve been left, dismissed, or emotionally abandoned over and over again?
That desire becomes a compulsion.
And you start mistaking scraps for meals.
The Grief Is Real
I have had to grieve the fact that I did not get the parents I needed.
I got one person who tried in their own flawed way,
and one who couldn’t be arsed to show up.
And instead of chasing fantasy versions of them,
I’ve decided to curate the way I allow them in — or not at all.
That grief? That grief burns.
It’ll knock the wind out of you.
You’ll cry. You’ll sleep for days.
You’ll spiral.
But you’ll survive it.
And what comes next is lighter. Softer. Cleaner.
Trauma Lives in the Body
I need to say this especially to those of us with chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, fibromyalgia, CPTSD:
If you don’t let this grief move through you,
it will live inside you.
It’ll root itself in your joints. Your gut. Your nervous system.
Because your body remembers what your brain tries to compartmentalise.
We are not meant to logic our way out of trauma.
We’re meant to feel it.
And for autistic folks especially — that phrase can feel maddening.
Feel your feelings.
What the hell does that mean?
Feelings are physical.
Not abstract. Not just ideas.
They’re sensations in your body.
Tight chest. Nausea. The urge to scream. The weight behind your eyes.
And if you run from those signals — they’ll store themselves.
In your shoulders. Your stomach. Your jaw.
Years later, you won’t remember what the argument was.
But your body will.
So please — give yourself space to scream. To shake. To cry.
Let the big scary bad leave your body.
You will feel lighter.
You will feel clearer.
You will come home to yourself.
You are not broken for wanting love.
You are not bitter for walking away.
You are not cruel for deciding that their story no longer gets to write yours.
The moment you stop defending harm and start honouring your own pain?
That’s the moment you begin again.
And you deserve to begin again.
As often as you need.
✨ Closing Shadow Work Prompt:
Where in your body does this grief live?
What happens if you ask it what it needs?
If you made it this far — I’m proud of you.
This is the kind of healing that’s messy and nonlinear.
The kind that breaks you down and rebuilds you.
The kind that makes you scream into pillows one day and laugh over tea the next.
If you’re in that space right now — come back to your body.
Run a warm bath. Sit by the window. Or grab one of our balms or infused teas and let yourself rest.
Your nervous system deserves softness, too.
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Final Quotes
“Love is not a reward for suffering. It’s not a prize for endurance. It’s a meeting of two whole people — not a rescue mission.”
— Esther Perel
“Being alone and at peace is better than being surrounded and poorly treated.”
— Chidera Eggerue
Okay. Love you.
Take care of you.
Bye.
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