Hey guys, I’m back after a long break. I’m doing some deep inner healing work, and I’ve decided to journal here as a way to track my progress. Writing has always been home for me. It’s how I’ve made sense of my world, and this blog has held me together during some of the darkest moments of my life. So what better way to continue than by bringing it back to life as I try to bring myself back to life too?
Today I’m starting with a journal prompt that cracked something open in me: When did I first feel unlovable? I had to sit with that question for a while. And two memories stood out so clearly that I could almost feel them in my body again.
The first time I felt unlovable was after the death of my older sister. I was very young, too young to fully understand grief, but old enough to feel the shift. After she died, I became the firstborn by default. But I wasn’t really seen—I was compared. Everyone talked about how beautiful she was, how good and kind she was, how she had the most beautiful hair. I remember feeling invisible in the shadow of her memory. I felt like I wasn’t enough as I was, and that I had to somehow become her to be worthy of love or attention. I wasn’t the firstborn by birth, just a substitute. I started believing that I needed to perform or behave in a certain way to be accepted. That my natural self was never enough.
The second time I felt deeply unloved was also when I was still a child. Every holiday, we were sent to our grandparents’ home in the village. But something about that experience made me dread the holidays. My grandmother had a deep hatred for me, and it was no secret why—because I wasn’t named after her. I had my mom’s mother’s name, not hers. And while there were other cousins also not named after her, she only treated me differently. It was so personal.
I remember one particular day. She was cutting old maize stalks for the cows and handing them to us kids to carry. For everyone else, she would cut and place them gently into their hands. But when it came to me, she cut them and threw them on the ground, expecting me to pick them up myself. I felt so humiliated, so unwanted, so hated. That moment lodged itself somewhere deep inside me, and it made me believe that something about who I was just made people reject me.
I tried to cry out for help. I remember telling my parents I didn’t want to go back there, and my dad simply said, “You need to understand her—she’s from another generation.” That broke me even more. It felt like no one would protect me. Like I had to accept being mistreated because someone was older or came from a different time. And so I began to internalize that mistreatment as something I deserved.
I carried those experiences with me into adulthood. For years, I didn’t expect anything from my grandma. I didn’t even want a relationship with her until something shifted in me when I was around 17—but that’s a story for another day.
All I know is that these early moments planted the lie in me that I’m unlovable, that love has to be earned by being someone I’m not, and that the real me—especially when I’m hurting—doesn’t deserve protection. Today I name those moments, not to stay stuck in them, but to begin healing the little girl who carried that pain alone.
If you’re reading this and you’ve ever felt unlovable, I hope you know that our stories may be different, but our longing is the same: to be seen, to be chosen, to be loved as we are. Maybe this is where we begin. By going back to the places that broke us, not to reopen the wounds, but to finally let them breathe.
Have a beautiful day. 🖤