What Letting My Dad Go Taught Me About Love

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” ~Hermann Hesse

My dad was intubated, so he couldn’t say the words back to me.

I told him I loved him anyway.

Instead, he slowly pointed to himself and then to me.

“You love me too?” I asked.

His eyes widened ever so slightly, and he nodded gently, giving me the biggest response his body could offer. I held onto that moment like it was something solid in a room where everything else was slipping away.

It was the last moment we had together before he started slipping in and out of consciousness, mostly out.

In those first few days, I asked him to fight. To hold on. Partly because I knew he wanted to fight. I knew he wasn’t done. And partly because I was far from done.

I asked about his stats and relayed them to a doctor friend, hopeful for any sign he might recover. At first, there were a few promising signs, until there weren’t.

As each day passed, his condition became a little less hopeful. The doctors had fewer ideas of what else we could try. And his body started to look tired.

Watching someone I loved so deeply, someone who had always personified strength to me and had been my safest place growing up, weaken bit by bit was heartbreaking. I felt helpless, small, and untethered, like my world was crumbling around me.

I wanted more of his warm, safe hugs. More of the steadiness I felt with him. I just wanted more time.

But not like this.

After some very direct conversations with the doctors, it became clear that he wasn’t going to wake up. We could keep him on life support, but he was in pain. And I wasn’t okay with keeping him in that place in an attempt to avoid my own pain.

It was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made: to remove the life support. But his peace mattered more than my desperation to keep him here.

So the next time I spoke to him, I gently whispered in his ear, “I know you tried. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. You can go.”

I floated through that day like I was in a dream. It felt surreal to be on the subway surrounded by people, most of whom were likely moving through an ordinary day, while I had just made the decision to let my dad die.

For a long time, I carried that moment with a kind of stunned disbelief. How could life keep moving when mine had cracked open? How could there be commuters, coffee runs, small talk, and dinner plans when one of the most foundational loves of my life was gone?

In the beginning, grief felt sharp and immediate. It lived close to the surface. It was the ache of missing him, the shock of his absence, the disbelief that someone so central to my life could simply no longer be here.

With time, the grief hasn’t disappeared, but it has changed shape. For a while, it felt huge and consuming, like it took up all the air in the room. There was fear there too: How do I live in a world without him? What does that even mean?

Years later, it feels more like a quiet, familiar ache. More like, Thank you for the love. I still wish you were here.

And somewhere in that shift, I began to understand something I couldn’t see when I was in the thick of it: letting go is not always giving up. Sometimes it is the most loving thing we can do.

Before my dad died, I think some part of me equated love with holding on. With fighting harder. With not loosening my grip. Letting go felt unimaginable, almost like betrayal.

It was as if, by insisting this shouldn’t be happening, or this shouldn’t be how it ends, I could somehow change what was unfolding in front of me.

But eventually, I could feel how much of my pain was tied not only to losing him but also to how badly I wanted it not to be true. Grief has a way of revealing where we’re still fighting what has already happened.

I wanted more time. I wanted a different ending—for the story to go another way. I wanted life to be kinder than it was.

It didn’t.

And that was its own heartbreak.

I think this is why letting go can feel so hard in so many parts of life, not only in death. We don’t just hold on to people. We hold on to hopes, plans, identities, expectations, and versions of life we thought would last longer or look different by now.

We hold on because something mattered. Because we’re not ready. Because letting go can force us to face how much has changed and how little control we really have.

Alongside the loss itself is the fear of uncertainty: How do I move forward from here? Who am I without this? What do I do now?

But sometimes, what we’re really holding onto is not the thing itself. It’s the hope that it can still be different, the wish that the ending can still change, and the refusal to meet what is because it hurts too much.

Letting go doesn’t mean what we wanted didn’t matter. It doesn’t mean we stop caring or that things suddenly feel fair.

And it isn’t the same as giving up on ourselves, other people, or our dreams. Sometimes it means loosening our grip on how something has to unfold, so we can begin to meet life as it is.

That understanding has changed the way I move through endings now, though not all at once, and not without resistance. It’s one thing to understand letting go in our minds, and another to feel it in the body when something we love is changing.

I’ve learned that before I can ask myself to reflect, I often need to first notice what’s happening in my body—the tightening in my chest, the urge to brace, the part of me that wants to grip harder.

Meeting that response with a little gentleness helps me soften enough to ask: Am I holding on because this still feels true, or because I’m struggling to accept that it is changing?

Sometimes I ask: Can I honor what this meant to me without needing it to stay exactly as it was?

And sometimes the question is even simpler: What am I afraid letting go will ask me to feel?

I still miss my dad. I still wish I could hug him. I still wish life had given us more time.

But I no longer see that final act as giving up.

I see it as love without the illusion of control. Love that could no longer fix, bargain, or keep him here. Love that could only tell the truth.

You tried. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. You can go.

I think many of us are taught to admire the parts of ourselves that hold on, persevere, and keep fighting. And sometimes those parts are deeply needed.

But there are also moments when strength looks softer than we expect. More surrendered. More tender.

Sometimes strength is loosening our grip.

Sometimes letting go is not the absence of love, hope, or meaning, but the moment we stop asking life to be something other than what it is.

And sometimes healing begins there—not when we stop caring, but when we stop believing that holding on tighter will change the truth of what is already here.

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About Christina Wong

Christina Wong is a personal growth coach, writer, workshop facilitator, and speaker. Her work explores the emotional patterns, beliefs, and protective strategies that shape how we live and love. Through grounded reflection, nervous system support, and compassion, she helps people reconnect with themselves with greater clarity, care, and self-trust. You can connect with her on her website, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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The Simple “Doomscrolling Replacement Kit” That Helps Me Unplug

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” ~Anne Lamott

You know that familiar routine: an exhausting day at work, a long commute, children, errands, messages, dinner, and notifications.

And then—finally—rest at the end of it all.

A soft, welcoming couch that curves in all the right places. A new episode of a beloved series that whisks you away to a rugged farm in rural Montana. And some short videos that make you laugh: AI-animated cats reviewing street food, influencers in wigs enacting the bickering of a married couple.

The flickering screens distract you just enough to ward off a headache, and your everyday anxieties fade into the background.

It’s rest, but it’s not too mentally taxing because your brain has wrestled with enough already.

And sure, you’d love to finally start that thick novel on your nightstand or pull out your dusty watercolors for a quick sketch.

You’d love to do something meaningful.

But your head is too foggy after a long day, and your mind just can’t take on any more challenges. You want to tune out and drop into a long sleep.

But here’s the thing: your evening routine only feels relaxing. But then you wake up groggy the next morning, bracing for another long day as you gulp down coffee and check your emails.

Your relaxing evening of doomscrolling did little to relax you.

It didn’t bring the kind of revitalizing rest that would have empowered you to face another day.

It distracted and numbed you instead.

Because it might seem counterintuitive, but couch rotting is actually far less restful than challenging yourself.

And maybe you know it already. The dangers of doomscrolling have been well-documented. Nobody needs yet another study linking social media to depression and anxiety.

But when you’re coming out of a ten-hour workday, an evening of reading novels sounds comically unrealistic.

Slow-cooked stews and walks in the garden are nice for those who don’t have real jobs. For those who don’t have kids, busy schedules, difficult clients, and family problems.

And I’m not going to lie, I love a good doomscrolling session myself.

I love those hilarious AI cat videos. I love snarky travel bloggers and well-edited tutorials on how to make Nordic fish soup.

But I also know that sinking feeling when you realize you’ve willed away too many evenings online.

That demoralizing feeling when your occasional doomscrolling indulgence turns into a default, robotic habit that you don’t even question anymore.

And I’ve tried all the usual digital detox tips and hacks over the years. I set screentime limits, I downloaded meditation apps, and I put my phone away at dinner. But nothing really worked. 

Because I was just too exhausted in the evenings to attempt a new lifestyle change. I didn’t even know where I’d put those dusty watercolors.

Then it hit me. And I realized I wasn’t doomscrolling because I was unmotivated or lazy.

I was doomscrolling because I didn’t have anything else to do.

Watercolors? Reading? Walks in the park? Meditation? Gratitude journaling?

What should I write about? How should I meditate? Which apps should I use? Where did I put my supplies?

Those aren’t exactly the decisions you want to make after you’ve been stuck in traffic for an hour and wolfed down a plate of microwaved spring rolls for dinner.

So I decided to eliminate those decisions.

I decided to make my cozy, analog evening activities just as easy and accessible as my smartphone and my TV remote.

No more wondering what to do with myself. No more doomscrolling because it’s the easiest available option.

I created an analog basket.

I took an enormous straw basket (that once held a Christmas gift set of gourmet sauces and spices) and filled it with everything I needed for a quiet evening away from my screens. 

The items included:

• headphones (for listening to jazzy playlists and inspiring podcasts)
• adult coloring books (to keep my hands occupied while listening)
• a challenging literary novel, a self-improvement book, and a light romance (to fit my various moods and energy levels)
• colored pencils, watercolors, and oil pastels
• lined notebooks (for gratitude journaling)
• tarot cards (for journaling inspiration)
• blank notebooks (for drawing)
• old magazines (for reading and vision board/collage making)
• jigsaw puzzles
• a commonplace book (for gathering recipes, quotes, and anything else that would otherwise disappear into my notes app)

Then I put this basket next to my nightstand, in a visible place where I’d kept stumbling over it and couldn’t easily ignore it.

And you know what?

It actually worked.

It wasn’t easy at first. My hand cramped when I journaled for too long. I didn’t know what to draw in my watercolor pad, and my sloppy sketches reminded me of how much worse I’ve gotten since I practiced daily at college.

But at some point, I stopped caring if the sketches were worth sharing on Instagram Stories. I stopped caring if I sounded eloquent enough in my journal to turn that entry into a first draft.

Because no matter what I created (and no matter how much time I spent creating things that would later end up in the recycling bin), I realized it was still infinitely more satisfying than creating nothing.

And then came that magical evening when I reached for my analog basket without thinking. Just as automatically as I’d once picked up my phone.

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About Dee Nowak

Dee is a writer, coach and former journalist. She explores the intersection of analog living, creativity and journaling with tips for overwhelmed people in the digital age. Get her free guide to analog living here.

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Embracing Slow Growth: The Big Turning Point That Never Came

“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part.” ~ BoJack Horseman

If you’d told eighteen-year-old me where she’d be at twenty-eight, she would have laughed nervously and changed the subject.

That was her move, by the way. Laugh it off. Deflect. Eat another biscuit.

She was the girl who cried in bathroom stalls and called it “being sensitive.” The one who said yes to everything because no felt too dangerous. The one who googled “how to be more confident” at midnight and then did absolutely nothing about it.

She had plans, sure. Big, vague, terrifying plans. But mostly she just had anxiety and a very unhealthy relationship with her phone.

I don’t say this to be unkind to her. I say it because I know her better than anyone. I was her.

She thought growing up would feel like something.

Like a switch flipping. Like a moment she could point to later and say—there. That’s when I changed.

She was waiting for the dramatic montage. The turning point. The wise mentor who would sit her down and explain, with great clarity, what her life was supposed to mean.

Instead, she got Tuesdays.

Unremarkable, undramatic Tuesdays where she made her bed even though no one was coming over. Where she chose the salad—not every time, let’s not get carried away—but sometimes. Where she replied to an email she’d been avoiding for three weeks and discovered that the world did not end as she feared it would.

Nobody clapped. There was no montage.

And yet, something was shifting.

The changes came so quietly she almost missed them.

She stopped apologizing for her food order at restaurants. Small, yes. Revolutionary to her.

She started going to the cinema alone, which she once thought was the saddest thing a person could do, and discovered it was actually wonderful. No one to negotiate with. Popcorn all to herself. Complete emotional breakdowns during animated films entirely on her own terms.

She took a solo trip—just a weekend, nothing heroic—and spent the whole train ride convinced she’d made a terrible mistake. She hadn’t. She came home quieter in a good way, like something had been settled inside her that she hadn’t known was unsettled.

She learned to sit in a room without filling every silence with noise.

She learned that some friendships were seasonal, and that letting them go wasn’t failure—it was just honesty.

She learned, slowly and somewhat reluctantly, that she was allowed to take up space.

Nobody tells you that growing into yourself is mostly just… maintenance.

Not transformation. Not revelation. Just showing up, again and again, to the small and ordinary work of being a person.

The therapy appointments she almost cancelled. The boundaries she stumbled over before she learned to say them cleanly. The mornings she got up and tried again after the evenings she’d rather forget.

There was a version of her—the eighteen-year-old version, clutching her plans—who needed growth to look impressive. Who needed a story worth telling.

What she got instead was a life worth living. Which, it turns out, is better.

Here’s what I’d tell her, if I could.

You are going to be okay. Not in the vague, dismissive way people say it to make you stop worrying. In the specific, earned way—because you will do the work, even when it’s boring, even when nobody notices, even when you’re not entirely sure it’s working.

You will not wake up one day fixed. But you will wake up one day and realize that the things that once hollowed you out no longer have the same reach. That’s not nothing. That’s everything, actually.

You still overthink. I won’t lie to you about that.

But you do it now with a kind of fond exasperation for yourself—the way you’d treat a friend who keeps making the same endearing mistake. You’ve stopped being at war with the way your brain works. Mostly. On good days.

You still don’t fully know what you’re doing. But you’ve made a kind of peace with that too.

She showed up anyway.

That girl who cried in bathrooms and googled confidence at midnight and laughed too quickly to cover how scared she was.

She showed up on the Tuesdays that asked nothing of her and the days that asked everything. She showed up uncertain, imperfect, still a bit of a work in progress.

And at twenty-eight, sitting here, I want her to know:

That was enough.

That was, it turns out, exactly enough.

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About Kalyani Abhyankar

Kalyani Abhyankar is an Assistant Professor of Law at Christ University with six years of teaching experience. She believes the courtroom and the written word have one thing in common—both, at their best, tell the truth. She writes to inspire, to connect, and to remind people that growing up quietly still counts.

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From Blending in to Belonging: My Journey Out of Self-Consciousness

“True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world. Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ~Brené Brown

For years, I felt like I was always one step behind everyone else.

Not in a way I could prove. Not something visible or measurable. It was quieter than that—persistent, internal, and hard to name.

It felt like everyone else had been given something I missed. An unspoken understanding of how to move through life. How to talk without overthinking. How to walk into a room and feel like you belonged there without needing to earn it.

And I was always trying to catch up to something I couldn’t quite see.

I was adopted from Russia, but for most of my life that fact lived on the surface. It explained things to other people. It never fully explained me to me.

Because what I actually felt wasn’t about where I came from.

It was about where I fit.

Or didn’t.

That awareness showed up early in small, ordinary moments.

Standing in elementary school with a lunch tray in my hands, slowly scanning the cafeteria, trying to find a table that wouldn’t make me feel out of place before I even sat down.

Sitting in high school lunchrooms, half-listening to conversations while quietly tracking when it would be my turn to speak—and often deciding it was safer not to.

Laughing a second too late at jokes I didn’t fully understand, hoping no one noticed the delay.

Walking into group conversations already rehearsing how I should enter them, only to end up saying less than I meant to—or nothing at all.

Over time, I stopped trying to naturally belong and started trying to strategically blend in.

I became an observer first. A participant second.

I watched how people spoke, how they joked, how they carried themselves. I studied what seemed effortless for others and tried to replicate it just enough to not stand out.

But it never felt like mine.

Even at home, the contrast was obvious.

My brother could walk into a room and speak mid-thought, and people would naturally lean in. There was no hesitation, no calculation.

Watching that as a kid created a quiet belief I didn’t yet have language for:

Some people belong without trying. And some people don’t.

Then there were the moments that reinforced it more sharply.

In fifth grade, a kid singled me out for teasing. It wasn’t dramatic enough to tell anyone about, but it was consistent enough to internalize. Small comments. Laughter from others. That subtle experience of being “the one” chosen for something you didn’t ask for.

I remember walking home and replaying it over and over, trying to figure out what I did to cause it. Not if it was my fault, but how.

That question stuck longer than the moment itself. And it followed me into every new environment after that. New classrooms. New groups. New phases of life.

The pattern stayed the same: enter the room, scan for cues, adjust yourself slightly, say less than you think, observe everything, leave without fully being seen.

From the outside, nothing looked wrong. Internally, everything was measured.

If I speak, will it land right?

If I joke, will it feel off?

If I stay quiet, do I disappear?

Without realizing it, I started building my identity around that mode of survival. Not around who I was, but around who I needed to be in order to get through the moment without feeling exposed.

That’s where comparison took hold.

I would look at people who seemed comfortable in themselves and assume they had something I didn’t. I would see people moving forward in life—socially, professionally, emotionally—and quietly assume I was behind.

Like there was a timeline I had missed the start of.

What I didn’t understand then was how distorted that comparison really was.

I was measuring my internal experience—overthinking, self-doubt, constant self-monitoring—against other people’s external ease.

Moments of confidence against years of internal noise.

It was never an equal comparison. But I treated it like it was. And I missed something deeper:

Not everyone grows up questioning whether they belong simply by being in a room.

Not everyone learns to observe life before participating in it.

Not everyone builds identity from the outside in. But I did. And for a long time, I saw that as a disadvantage.

Now I see it differently. The same awareness I once tried to hide became the thing that shaped me most.

It taught me how to read people more deeply. How to listen for what isn’t being said. How to notice the space between words.

Even the silence I once used to disappear into became the place where I learned to understand others—and myself.

But the real shift didn’t happen all at once. It came in small, uncomfortable decisions.

Speaking when I would have stayed quiet.

Letting myself be slightly misunderstood instead of perfectly invisible.

Choosing presence over performance.

I remember one of the first times I felt it change at work.

Normally, I would’ve sat there rehearsing what I wanted to say, waiting for the perfect moment—then letting it pass. But this time, I felt the hesitation and spoke anyway.

It wasn’t perfect. I stumbled over my words. But the conversation didn’t stop. No one reacted the way I had feared. Someone actually built on what I said.

And for the first time, I wasn’t analyzing how it landed. I was just in it.

That moment didn’t matter because of what I said. It mattered because I didn’t disappear.

Another time, I noticed myself in the middle of a group conversation doing what I had always done—performing slightly. Laughing when I should, filling space when it got quiet, managing how I was being perceived without even thinking about it.

And then I stopped. Not dramatically. Just… stopped managing it.

I let the silence sit for a moment instead of rushing to fill it. I let myself speak without shaping every word in advance. And for the first time, I left that conversation without replaying it in my head afterward.

Not because it went perfectly, but because I had actually been there for it. That changed everything.

I started asking different questions.

Not:

How do I compare?

But:

Am I honest in this moment?

Am I showing up or just managing perception?

Am I actually here—or just trying to be acceptable?

That shift didn’t make life instantly easier. But it made it real.

Today, I don’t see my life as something that started late or fell behind. I see it as something that developed differently from the beginning.

I don’t move through the world with effortless ease. But I moved through it with awareness I had to build piece by piece. And I don’t take that lightly anymore. Because I understand now:

You can’t measure your life against someone who never had to live yours. Different starting points create different paths. And different does not mean behind.

For me, belonging was never something I found by becoming more like everyone else. It only began when I stopped performing and started becoming myself, on purpose.

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About Caleb Rogers

Caleb Rogers is a writer exploring personal growth, purpose, and the quiet complexities of becoming. Through honest reflections on success, loneliness, uncertainty, and self discovery, Caleb writes about the experiences that often go unspoken yet shape us most deeply. His work is rooted in authenticity, with the hope that sharing real and unfiltered stories can help others feel more understood and less alone in their journey. Visit him at http://caleblrogersblogs.com.

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On Staying Light in a World That Feels Bleak

“Love life more than the meaning of it? Yes, certainly.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

When I was a child, there was a special moment during dusk when the old sodium lanterns switched on in the streets, morphing the world from one of saturation into one of yellow monochrome, and it always made me sad.

One such day, my dad asked me why I became so quiet during those evenings. I wasn’t sure what to answer—how did he not feel the same way?

The evening had just begun, and the ditch outside had started freezing. Looking through the window, I could see the clouds of people’s breath in the air.

“Let’s get an ice cream in the village,” he said.

I sat on the back of his bicycle, and the yellow world was drifting by. The people on the streets had lost their color. The shop was about to close, but we were just in time.

Moments later, we were standing outside the shop, directly under one of those lanterns. My dad was holding his bike in the snow, enjoying his ice cream with sprinkles.

“Lekker he?” he said. (“Delicious, huh?”)

I’ve never been sure, but it felt as if in that moment, he meant to say, “We are both feeling this together, aren’t we?”

On Staying Light-Hearted 

I’m thirty now, and it’s been ten years since I lost my dad to cancer. In hindsight, growing up felt much like those evenings when the sodium lights lit up the streets: with time passing by, the world inevitably lost some of its color.

Broken hearts, bad decisions, dreams that’ll never make it into reality, words unspoken, too late to be said. More things to look back on, to be bitter about, or to get stuck on somewhere along the way. Time leaves its marks one way or another, and nobody seems to escape it.

How do we cope with this fact of life? And how can one hold onto color, resist growing bitter, and stay light-hearted like a child? Is it even possible?

Growing up, I watched people cope with this in various ways: clinging to careers, projecting it onto partners, turning to gurus, or simply turning grey themselves. Others got drunk on the idea that with enough effort, they could make a change in this world.

I subscribed to the latter, pledging myself to a quest to stay lighthearted as I’d grow older.

In my twenties, I would lose myself in philosophy, the arts, powerlifting, trading, traveling, filmmaking, and writing. I loved being busy, being neurotic, staying up late, trying to learn new things, new ideas, new perspectives—anything to fight off embitterment. It felt as if the pursuit of meaningful answers justified the meaninglessness of most of life’s suffering.

One of my earlier mentors in art school one day said to me, “Sam, being a romantic in this world is one of the hardest things you can do.” I didn’t fully understand her at the time, but as with most things she said, they would only make sense years later.

Throughout my twenties, seen from the outside, I fared pretty well. But even in moments when life was genuinely good, the question remained unresolved: how can we stay light in the heart while carrying the weight of the lingering past?

The more I found, the bleaker the world seemed to be. It got me to a point where the sodium-lamp-feeling stopped being something that happened solely in the evenings and had become something that was always there. The colors didn’t come back in the mornings anymore.

There came a period where I’d exhausted my known world entirely—or at least, that’s what it felt like. Every answer I found produced a bleaker world than the one before it. And somewhere in that monochrome stretch, a thought kept returning—not exactly as a plan, but as a kind of assurance: that the door was there if I wanted it. That I could step out.

During that time, I spoke to a woman who was light, full of color, and always seemed to smile. She had a tea box that didn’t have red bush, mint, or Earl Grey. Instead, she’d have Namastea, empatea, tearapy, etc. Actually, she forgot the actual flavors, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

We spoke of many things, and each time she reacted with a smile, a joke, a weird face, never dismissing the weight of our conversations, but always choosing the light.

The steam of my teacup was gently flowing upward. Outside, the snow was dripping water. A young tree had started to blossom.

“Aren’t you simply a man who comes and goes, exploring as genuinely as he can? If so, why not continue exploring? Sure, it won’t be a convenient lifestyle, but who cares?” she said.

“You don’t care, do you?”

I realized then that in my search for answers, I had ceased the search for questions.

The Unknown

The unknown is a child’s friend—until the child grows up and it becomes its enemy, inflicting heartache and hopelessness.

That hopelessness led me into the abyss, and within that abyss, I found I had nothing left to lose. And if I had nothing left to lose, then I could go anywhere and do anything.

The unknown that had become my enemy was suddenly the only place left that still breathed with life.

So I went looking for it.

My love and I walked backwards for two months across northern Spain, literally backwards, on the Camino de Santiago, because we wanted to know what “embracing the unknown” actually felt like. At first, we were constantly braced for catastrophe because we couldn’t see where we were going.

But with enough slowing down, nothing terrible happened. Instead, the unknown gradually stopped feeling like a thing to be wary of, and we found ourselves feeling lighter, freer, and more present.

Then we left Amsterdam entirely and moved to the campo of Panama, because we wanted to know what happens in real solitude, far away from anything distracting and familiar.

In that solitude, I found myself face-to-face with everything I’d been outrunning: the unwillingness to accept things as they are, the need “to be something” in a world that felt bleak, and the frantic desire to make sense of it all.

Finding Your Ice Cream

Getting to know my dad through the stories of others, it turns out he had been struggling with existence just as much as I had. I just never saw it. After all, he was Dad: the person who knew everything and could fix anything.

But on that particular night, I think he knew what I was going through. And he didn’t try to fix it, explain it, or rationalize it into oblivion.

Instead, he got on his bike and rode us to the ice cream shop.

I think about that a lot now—not about the ice cream itself, but rather the refusal to let the monochrome ‘win.’

He didn’t fight the sodium lanterns or pretend the world wasn’t turning colorless. He just decided that wasn’t a good enough reason to skip out on vanilla with sprinkles.

The other evening, sitting in the sun with my love in Panama, overlooking the heights of Volcán Barú and the day slowly turning into night, I caught myself saying,

“Lekker hé?”

I realized that in that moment, I was living in the same place my dad had been all along. Not above the world, not against it, but inside it, enjoying something nice, next to someone I love.

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About Samuel van Keeken

Samuel van Keeken is a Dutch writer, artist and filmmaker based in Panama, where he co-founded Same Worldwide: a home for essays, artistic works, and retreats. At its heart is the Same Method, a framework for cultivating existential courage and meaningful action in everyday life.

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How I Broke My Painful Relationship Patterns for Good

“Sometimes we fall for the same mistakes because we haven’t learned to love ourselves fully.” ~Unknown

As long as I can remember, my relationships followed the same script.

At first, there was charm. Attention. Sweetness. Intensity. That intoxicating feeling of being seen and chosen, sometimes for the very first time.

Then, slowly, the cracks appeared.

It started small. A comment like, “You’re overthinking it again,” said with a laugh when I tried to express how I felt, and suddenly I went quiet, wondering if maybe I was the problem.

Then came the silence, and instead of questioning it, I found myself drafting messages, deleting them, rewriting them, trying to sound “less needy.”

And in between, there were those moments where I felt small, unsure, almost apologetic for being… me.

So I adapted.

I softened my voice. I overexplained. I apologized for being “too sensitive.” I bent over backward to keep the peace, convincing myself that love required sacrifice.

And somehow, I didn’t notice that I was disappearing.

What scared me the most wasn’t that it happened once. It’s that it kept happening—with different people, different stories, but the same ending.

That Quiet, Terrifying Moment

One evening, I sat in my car after a long day, my chest heavy and my mind racing.

I kept replaying the same moment from earlier that night. The date had started so well—easy conversation, laughter, and that feeling of maybe this time it’s different. But somewhere along the way, something shifted.

He started checking his phone more often. His replies became shorter. At one point, I was in the middle of sharing something personal, and he interrupted with a distracted “Yeah, I get it” before changing the subject. By the end, he smiled, said, “I’ll text you,” and walked away. And I already felt that familiar knot in my stomach.

Sitting in my car, I could feel it rising again—that familiar pull, the urge to explain myself, to replay everything I said, to wonder if I shared too much, talked too much, was too much.

And then it hit me: “Why am I doing this to myself again?”

The answer wasn’t in him. It wasn’t in the world. It was in me.

My old wounds, my fear of being alone, my belief that love was conditional—these were the forces quietly steering my heart. And for years, I had handed over control without even noticing.

I remember gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white, thinking, “So this is what I’ve been running from. So this is why I keep repeating it. So this is why I keep hurting myself.”

Facing the Patterns I Couldn’t See

I started keeping a notebook—my private, messy confessions. No one would ever read it, but it became my mirror.

I started writing down the moments I usually brushed past, the ones where I felt myself shrink but said nothing. The times I silenced my own needs to keep things “easy.” The times I excused behavior that didn’t sit right with me.

Like telling myself, “He’s just busy” when he canceled last minute for the third time, even though I felt disappointed and dismissed.

Or rereading a message over and over before sending it, softening my words so I wouldn’t come across as “too much.”

Or laughing something off in the moment, only to sit later with that feeling in my chest that something wasn’t right.

I started to see how often I chose their comfort over my truth. And then one pattern became impossible to ignore.

I noticed how quickly I would abandon myself the moment I felt someone pulling away. If their energy shifted even slightly, I would immediately turn inward, asking, “What did I do wrong?” I would reread our conversations, adjust my tone, try to be easier, softer, less “complicated”—anything to keep them from leaving.

I also began to notice other patterns I hadn’t allowed myself to see before:

• How I always picked someone who made me prove my worth.
• How I ignored the quiet voice in my gut telling me, “This isn’t for you.”
• How I equated love with chaos and intensity, and peace with boredom.

Every line I wrote chipped away at the illusions I’d been living under. And slowly, painfully, I started to see a path out.

Tiny Actions, Big Shifts

Change didn’t happen overnight. It never does. But it began in the small, almost invisible moments:

• I noticed when I over-apologized and stopped, like the time I was about to text, “Sorry for bothering you” after sending a simple question about plans, but paused and realized I didn’t need to apologize for asking something reasonable.
• I listened to discomfort instead of burying it, like the moment I felt a knot in my stomach when something didn’t sit right, and instead of brushing it off, I told him honestly how I felt in the moment, without hiding what was bothering me.
• I started saying “no” without shame, like the time I declined a last-minute plan instead of dropping everything to be available.
• I reconnected with parts of myself I had abandoned: hobbies, friends, quiet moments alone.

These tiny actions didn’t feel dramatic, but they were revolutionary. They reminded me: my peace is my responsibility, my boundaries are my compass, and my needs are valid.

The Truth About Love and Pain

Here’s the hardest truth I learned: love isn’t supposed to hurt like this. Not consistently, not in a pattern that leaves you drained, anxious, or questioning your worth.

The people I dated were not villains; they were mirrors, and they reflected the parts of me that needed attention, care, and healing.

I realized that the moment I stopped blaming them and started examining my own patterns, I could finally begin to break the cycle.

Reclaiming Myself

Healing meant reclaiming myself in ways I had forgotten I could:

• My voice: I started saying what I truly thought and felt. No softening, no editing. Even when my voice shook, even when part of me expected rejection, I chose honesty over approval.
• My body: I honored how I felt physically, emotionally, and energetically.
• My heart: I stopped expecting validation from others and started giving it to myself.

Every small step reminded me that I was worthy of a love that didn’t demand I shrink, hide, or change to be accepted.

Lessons I Couldn’t Learn Any Other Way

Looking back, here are the truths that hit me so hard they could have knocked the wind out of me, but instead, they set me free:

1. For many of us, patterns, not partners, are the problem.

You may think the “wrong person” keeps showing up, but if you find yourself in the same position over and over, your unhealed patterns are likely guiding your choices.

 2. Awareness is everything.

The tiny acts of noticing when you compromise yourself make all the difference over time.

3. Boundaries are your compass.

When you start recognizing your limits, you see clearly who belongs in your life and who doesn’t.

 4. Healing is gradual.

Leaving a relationship is only the beginning. The real work is learning to love yourself fiercely, consistently, and unapologetically.

5. Love should feel safe, not exhausting.

If it consistently drains you, it’s not the kind of love you need.

When I Finally Stopped Attracting the Wrong Love

I won’t lie: the process is ongoing. There are moments when old patterns sneak in, whispering doubts. But I’ve learned to pause, breathe, and ask myself the hard questions:

• Am I shrinking to please someone else?
• Am I ignoring my intuition?
• Am I staying out of fear instead of choice?

Every boundary I honor, every reflection I write down is another step toward a love that aligns with my true self.

And slowly, the cycle lost its power.

I started attracting relationships that were steady, kind, and nourishing; not because I found the “perfect” person, but because I finally became someone who doesn’t settle for less than respect, safety, and authenticity.

Your Turn

If you read this and felt your chest tighten, your stomach clench, or your heart whisper, “That’s me,” know this: you are not broken. You are human, you are learning, and you can stop repeating the same painful patterns.

Notice. Reflect. Set boundaries. Reclaim yourself. And in the quiet moments, trust yourself again.

Healthy love starts with the relationship you build with yourself.

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About Melany Essentials

Melany Essentials shares insights from her own journey through toxic relationships and the lessons she learned about self-worth, patterns, and love. Through her experience, she created a FREE guide, to help readers uncover hidden emotional patterns, reflect deeply, and take their first steps toward healthier, more fulfilling love. You can download it here: Why You Keep Attracting TOXIC Partners and How to STOP. For questions or feedback, you can reach her at: melany@melanyessentials.com

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