I am The Watered Willow

There is something I want you to know about me before we go any further.

I have never believed in being hard on myself.

If I gain weight, I don't punish myself for it. If I don't get the job, I don't decide that I'm not good enough. If a relationship doesn't work out, I don't want to spend the rest of my life believing that must mean something is wrong with me.

Life is already going to be hard on us.

I don't believe we need to join in.

And after everything I have lived through, I have come to understand something that I wish I had understood much earlier:

You, my Willows, are the one person you will spend your entire life with.

So, what would happen if you learned to really take care of that person?

To listen to her.

To trust her.

To forgive her.

To feed her soul.

To be gentle with her.

That has become incredibly important to me.

I Don't Want Someone Else's Life

I've never been someone who chases celebrities or social media influencers. I don't want someone I've never met telling me what my life should look like, how I should dress, what makeup I should wear, what I should buy, or what I need to become in order to be enough.

Because none of that has anything to do with my life.

It doesn't know where I've been.

It doesn't know what I've survived.

It doesn't know what makes me laugh, what brings me peace, what I value, or who I am becoming.

And I don't want to build a life based on someone else's idea of who I should be.

I've already spent enough of my life doing that.

I Didn't Know I Was Living in a Familiar Cycle

My story with narcissistic abuse didn't begin with my marriage.

It began much earlier.

I experienced narcissistic abuse in my family, particularly in my relationships with my mother and sister. Later, I found myself married to someone with many of the same harmful patterns.

At the time, I didn't understand that I had stepped into something familiar.

I didn't know there was a cycle.

I didn't understand why certain behaviors felt almost normal to me, even when they were hurting me.

Eventually, I began to see it.

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

That realization changed my life.

Finding Myself Again

Healing, for me, wasn't about learning to like myself.

I've always liked who I am. Even as a child, there was a part of me that knew who I was.

What changed was that I began to understand just how important it was to protect that part of myself.

For years, I had people around me telling me who I was, what was wrong with me, how I should feel, and what I should believe about my own experiences. When that happens long enough — especially when it begins in childhood — those voices can become incredibly loud.

But somewhere underneath all of that, I was still there.

I started paying closer attention to my own thoughts.

My own needs.

My own voice.

I researched. I learned. I sought help. I asked hard questions. I looked honestly at patterns that went back much further than I wanted to admit.

And the more I understood, the more things began to change.

I felt lighter. I felt healthier. I felt more peaceful. Even my skin seemed brighter. There was a light in me that was becoming harder and harder for anyone else to dim.

Not because I had finally learned to love who I was.

Because I had stopped allowing other people to interfere with the love and kindness I had always had for myself.

There is something incredibly freeing about knowing who you are and no longer needing someone else to confirm it for you.

I feed my soul now.

I listen to myself.

I protect my peace.

I am gentle with myself.

And I will never willingly give someone else the power to take those things away from me again.

Why I Am The Watered Willow

A willow can bend through incredible storms.

But surviving the storm isn't the end of its story.

It still needs water.

It still needs nourishment.

It still needs light.

I am The Watered Willow because I finally learned how to give those things to myself.

I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have researched, learned, sought help, reflected, cried, questioned, grown, and started again more times than I can count.

I didn't come out of narcissistic abuse with all the answers.

I came out of it knowing myself better.

And now I have lessons to share.

My Wish for You

If you're reading this and you're just beginning to understand what happened to you — or maybe you already understand what happened but have no idea who you are anymore — I want you to start somewhere very simple.

Be gentle with yourself.

That's it.

You don't have to rebuild your entire life today.

You don't have to have all the answers.

You don't have to become some perfect, healed version of yourself.

Start by becoming a safe place for you.

Speak to yourself with kindness.

Pay attention to what you need.

Notice what you love.

Question the voices that taught you that you weren't enough.

And start listening for your own.

Because when you begin there, doors can open that you never imagined were waiting for you.

I know because they opened for me.

I am The Watered Willow.

I feed my soul. I am kind to myself. I know who I am becoming.

And, my Willows, I want you to discover who you are, too.

I'm so glad you're here.

Let's Grow. Let's Flourish. Let's Become.