Returning to Safety

Not all of us were raised with safety.

Some of us were raised in homes where love came with conditions.
Where affection was unpredictable.
Where silence meant tension.
Where we learned to read the room before we even knew how to read words.

We became alert.
Adaptable.
Good at surviving.

And when you've lived like that, peace can feel unfamiliar.
Love that doesn’t hurt can feel… suspicious.

But that reaction isn’t truth.
It’s memory.
It’s thought.
It’s old stories playing in a new moment.

That’s something I’m really seeing now.

Sometimes I feel it rise — the tightening in my chest, the overthinking, the urge to protect.
But more and more, I can notice it without living in it.
I can remember: I’m here now. This is new. This is not back then.

And that’s where safety starts.
Not in someone else proving they won’t hurt me —
but in me remembering that my experience comes from inside.

That even when fear shows up, it doesn’t mean I’m not safe.
It just means I’m feeling a thought.
And thoughts pass.

This is what reclaiming safety looks like.

Not perfection.
Not control.
But presence.
Compassion.
A softening back into my own knowing.

I didn’t grow up with safety.
But I’m learning to give it to myself now —
in how I speak to myself,
in how I choose,
in how I see what’s real beneath the noise.

Because safety doesn’t come from the outside.
It comes from the clarity within.

And the more I remember that,
the more I come home to myself.