Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Womenāa day that echoes through the bodies and nervous systems of so many trauma survivors.
Especially the first-born, parentified, petrified soulsā¦ the ones who tried to hold the family together with a sensitive heart and no roadmap.
š± When Chaos Is Your Childhood, You Think Itās Love
For many of us, love was absent or unpredictable. There were no hugs, no soft words. Sometimes there was yelling. Sometimes silence. Sometimes fear.
And as children, we adapt. We tell ourselves: This must be what love feels like. This must be normal.
It sets the blueprint. Chaos becomes familiar.
Neglect feels like home. And peace feels uncomfortable.
āØ Sensitive Souls Attract What Feels Familiar
Highly sensitive children often grow into highly intuitive, empathetic adults. We become the peacekeepers, the mediators, the emotional translators.
But when you grow up feeling like a burden, you often attract people who confirm that woundāpeople who drain your light, mistake your softness for weakness, or call their harm āa momentā while your body stores it as a lifetime.
Not because youāre broken, but because your nervous system is repeating the familiar.
š§” You Were Never the Burden ā You Were the Blessing
You were the light. You were the heart. You were the sensitive soul trying to survive environments too heavy for your spirit.
The harm wasnāt your destinyāit was your conditioning.
šæ Breaking the Cycle Starts with Inner Child Healing
Ending patterns of narcissistic abuse doesnāt begin with romantic partners. It begins with the child inside you who never felt safe:
The child who grew up too fast
The child who took care of adults
The child who believed they were ātoo sensitiveā
The child who received emotional scraps and called it love
When we heal that part of ourselves, everything changes. We stop accepting crumbs. We stop confusing intensity with intimacy. We stop attracting people who harm us.
And we start choosing people who offer steadiness, safety, gentleness and peace.
āØ You Are Love. You Are Peace. You Are Energy.
When your energy shifts inward, your relationships shift outward.
You get to choose what your energy allows. You get to choose what peace feels like in your body. You get to choose what love looks like from here on.
Today, we honour every survivorāevery woman, every girl, every sensitive soul, every person who grew up believing pain was normal and is now learning it isnāt.
Healing isnāt a return. Healing is a homecoming.
š§” Sending loving-kindness from Canadaās capital, Dee ā Dee, Letās Talk! šæ
If your nervous system could speak today, what would it ask forārest, self-love, self-nurturing, self-compassion, softness or safety?
š¬ Share in the commentsāyour answer might be the medicine someone else needs to hear today.
š§” Why November 25?
The United Nations chose November 25 to honour the Mirabal sisters ā Patria, Minerva and MarĆa Teresa ā three Dominican women who were brutally assassinated on November 25, 1960 for resisting the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
They were activists, mothers and freedom fighters.
Their code name was āLas Mariposasā ā The Butterflies. š¦
They became symbols of courage, resistance and the fight against gender-based violence.
Because they were murdered for being women who stood up to violence, Latin American feminists began commemorating November 25 in the 1980s.
In 1999, the United Nations officially declared November 25 the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in their honour.
šæ The deeper significance
This date represents:
the silencing of women
the courage to speak out
the cost of resisting abuse
the global cycle of gender-based violence
the hope for collective healing
It is a day for survivors, daughters, sisters, cycle-breakers, and sensitive souls whose lives have carried the invisible scars of trauma ā often beginning in childhood.
If you are suffering in silence with shame.
You are not alone. šon your path to c-ptsd Peace.