When elephants are young, trainers tie them to a small wooden stake with a rope. The baby elephant pulls and struggles, tries to escape. But the rope holds, and eventually the elephant stops trying.
Years later that same elephant is enormous and powerful enough to rip the post out of the ground without effort. But it doesn’t.
Because somewhere along the way it learned a quiet conclusion: I can’t break this rope.
None of that was in the message. That was the story I was layering on top of it.
Underneath that story were old beliefs: being “good” meant being available. Being valuable meant being fast. Saying no meant risking rejection, and every request felt like a threat, which meant my nervous system reacted accordingly.
We don’t chase bad partners. We chase unfinished childhood patterns.
Chemistry is often just recognition. The body saying, I know this. I survived this before. But survival isn’t the same as safety.
Try This …
Think about your “type.” Not their personality — the emotional experience.
Do you feel Anxious? Chosen? Ignored? Like you’re earning something?
Now ask yourself: Where have I felt this before?
Positive vibes are powerful. But they don’t automatically dismantle survival patterns.
That’s grown-woman work.
Do I sometimes wish I’d figured it out sooner? Of course. But the journey doesn’t end. Sometimes a wound looks healed, and then it shows up in a new disguise.
The difference now is that I don’t panic. I recognise it. Each time it resurfaces, I meet it with more awareness and less drama. I’m healing at deeper layers.
That’s the work.
This isn’t the love story you see in wellness posters with glowing crystals, chanting circles, and fairy dust.
This is the gritty, grounded, soul-deep kind of love.
The kind where you catch your inner critic mid-rant, squint sideways and mutter,
“Not today, Karen.”
The kind where you honour the light and the shadows — the parts of you still fumbling, healing, screwing it up.
Because this isn’t about being fixed.
It’s about being real.
It’s about showing up again and again, even when your old habits sneak back in wearing a new disguise.
Transformation isn’t some glossy movie montage set to inspiring music.
There’s no slow-mo scene of you dancing in the rain with a fresh haircut and a healed soul.
Nah.
It’s messier than that.
It happens in the quiet.
In the gritty silence between sobs.
In the middle of the night when you choose-again-to show up, even when no one’s watching.
In the tiny rewiring moments when you catch yourself being someone you no longer need to be…
and gently say, “Not today.”
There comes a moment in this journey where things don’t necessarily get easier — but they finally start making sense.
You’re not just reacting, spiraling, over-giving, people-pleasing, shutting down.
You’re finally able to name it.
“Ohhhh, that’s why I freeze up when someone raises their voice.”
“That’s why I say yes even when I’m screaming no on the inside.”
When you can name your patterns, they lose their mystery.
And with that — their power.
The clues were always there. I just hadn’t looked yet.
There’s a moment on this wild inner journey where you stop obsessing over the now… and start tracing the lines back to where it all began.
You start seeing how the past shaped the patterns.
The emotional shutdowns.
The overreactions.
The way you twist yourself into knots to feel safe or loved or enough.
And then comes the part that cracked me wide open:
I stopped blaming my 8-year-old self for surviving in the only way she knew how.
At first, I thought “self-awareness” meant just knowing I was triggered.
Cool, I knew it. Still snapped. Still sulked.
But this phase?
It’s the watching phase.
Like being in your own reality TV show… and slowly realising you’re both the drama and the audience.
There’s a moment—maybe quiet, maybe chaotic—when you realize: “I can’t keep going like this.”
That was me during early COVID, exhausted and ragey, hustling for everyone else while secretly cracking inside. I had read every self-help book over the past decade, but I hadn’t lived what they taught. When my husband, Ant was shot during lockdown, everything stopped. It stripped me bare. And in that raw pause, I finally started seeing things clearly.