Safe > Love

​For almost all my life, I have been searching for something I didn’t know the name for.

I used to call it love.

And maybe part of it was.

But love without safety becomes survival.  

Love without safety becomes proving.  

Performing. Shrinking. Waiting. Hoping. Walking on eggshells while calling it commitment.

I honestly realized recently, at almost 38 years old, that I don’t know if I have ever truly felt safe.

Tears rolled down my face when I admitted that to myself because saying it out loud means I also have to admit something else:

The things I went through really did happen.

Not just the big moments. The quiet ones too.  

The moments where I learned to stay silent.  

The moments where my nervous system learned tension before tenderness.  

Where love felt unpredictable.  

Where being “too much” was used against me.  

Where I was made to question myself instead of feeling held by someone.

I have spent so much of my life in survival mode that I forgot what I was even searching for.

Safety.

Such a simple word.  

Yet somehow it holds everything.

And maybe that’s because safety does not always look the same.

Sometimes safety is a person.  

Sometimes it is a place.  

Sometimes it is a memory.  

Sometimes it is simply a feeling your soul recognizes before your mind does.

When I was little, safety looked like sitting with my sister watching Beauty and the Beast.

Us against the world.

Blankets. A movie playing in the background. Two girls trying to make sense of a world that did not always feel gentle.

There were moments we questioned each other. Moments life pulled us in different directions. Moments where pain, growth, and survival changed us both in different ways.

But somehow we always come back.

Because safety is not perfection.  

It is not never hurting one another.  

It is not always agreeing.

Safety is the feeling underneath it all.

The knowing.  

The familiarity.  

The quiet understanding that even after storms, love still exists here.

I think that’s why that movie stayed with me for so long too.

Because even as a child, I understood something about the Beast.

Not the anger. Not the chaos.

The loneliness.

The desperate desire to be loved gently despite the pain that shaped him.

And maybe little me related to Belle too.  

The part of her that saw softness hiding underneath survival.

Safety is being able to exhale fully around someone.  

It is honesty without fear.  

It is not having to earn softness.  

It is not bracing for abandonment, criticism, betrayal, or emotional inconsistency.  

It is knowing your heart is safe in the hands holding it.

And if I’m being truthful, I learned the safest place was alone.

No one to cross my boundaries.  

No one to disappoint me.  

No one to shatter my heart and ask me to rebuild it while they watched.

Just me.

And that realization is lonely in a way I cannot fully explain.

Especially when you are surrounded by people who love you.  

Especially when you know people care.  

Especially when you keep showing up for everyone else while secretly wondering what it must feel like to finally unclench inside your own life.

But there is one place where I do understand safety.

My kids.

Ironically, my life with them is loud. Chaotic. Messy. Busy. Sports schedules, laundry piles, forgotten water bottles, late nights, early mornings, fast food in parking lots, homework at the kitchen table, exhausted hugs, and constant movement.

But I feel safe there.

Because it’s ours.

That chaos does not ask me to shrink.  

It does not make me question my worth.  

It does not punish me for being human.

In the middle of all the noise, I know exactly who I am.

Their mom.

Their safe place.

And maybe that’s why I fight so hard to heal.

Because all I truly want in this life is for my children to never feel what I have felt.

I never want them to question whether they are lovable.  

I never want them to confuse pain with connection.  

I never want them to earn crumbs and call it love.  

I never want them to feel unsafe inside relationships that are supposed to hold them gently.

I want them to know what safety feels like long before adulthood.

I want home to feel like peace.  

I want honesty to feel normal.  

I want emotional safety to feel familiar.  

I want them to know they can fall apart without losing love.

I have been beaten down in ways that taught me to distrust my own needs.

Made to feel like I was the issue.  

Too emotional. Too caring. Too sensitive. Too much.  

Yet somehow never enough at the same time.

But maybe none of those things were ever the real problem.

Maybe the truth is simply this:

All I have ever wanted…  

was to feel safe.

And the thing I am learning now is that safety cannot be forced onto someone.

You cannot beg for it.  

You cannot convince someone to give it.  

You cannot build it alone while someone else keeps tearing holes in the foundation.

Safety is earned.

Earned through consistency.  

Through honesty.  

Through accountability.  

Through gentleness.  

Through actions that match words over and over again.

And the man who earns mine one day will not be the loudest person in the room or the most charming.

He will be the one who makes my nervous system feel calm instead of confused.

The one who does not punish vulnerability.  

The one who communicates instead of disappears.  

The one who respects my boundaries instead of testing them.  

The one who understands that love is not possession, control, or intensity.

It is safety.

He will understand that after a lifetime of surviving, trust for me is sacred.

Not because I am difficult to love.  

But because I finally understand my heart deserves to feel protected too.

Safe to love.  

Safe to rest.  

Safe to speak.  

Safe to be fully seen without punishment.  

Safe enough to stop surviving.

And maybe healing is not becoming a completely different person.

Maybe healing is finally realizing your nervous system was never asking for perfection.

It was asking for safety all along.

I still dream about the day I experience it fully.  

Without doubt. Without fear. Without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I don’t know exactly what that day looks like yet.

But I know this now:

I will no longer call chaos chemistry.  

I will no longer call inconsistency passion.  

I will no longer abandon myself trying to earn what should be given freely.

Because the version of me I am becoming?

She is no longer searching for love that hurts.

She is searching for safety.  

And this time, she will not settle for anything less.