There’s a moment in every survivor’s life when silence stops feeling safe and starts feeling like suffocation.
For years, I carried pain like it was a secret I wasn’t allowed to speak. I tucked it into journal pages. I wore it on my skin. I felt it in the way my voice trembled when I tried to explain what I’d been through. But no matter how I tried to bury it, pain has a way of echoing back. And it doesn’t go away—not until you call it by its name.
That’s why I wrote Love Child. Not to relive the trauma, but to finally give language to what had always been unspoken.
Because healing doesn’t begin with pretending it didn’t happen.
Healing begins with naming it.
The Power of Saying: “This Hurt Me”
There’s something radical about saying: “I was abused.”
Or “I was abandoned.”
Or “This should never have happened to me.”
Those words can crack open years of silence. They feel heavy, but they also carry light. Naming the pain allows us to stop internalizing it. It stops being our fault and starts being our truth.
When we don’t name our pain, it shapeshifts—into anxiety, shame, distrust, silence, numbness. But when we name it, we take the first step toward reclaiming power over it. We begin to rewrite the story from a place of clarity, not confusion.
Denial Doesn’t Heal. Truth Does.
Many of us—especially women, especially survivors—are taught to soften the truth to make others more comfortable. We downplay. We excuse. We wrap our pain in politeness.
But unspoken pain doesn’t disappear. It just finds quieter ways to haunt us.
In Love Child, I talk about things I was told never to speak of. Religious manipulation. Sexual assault. Emotional exile. And even as I wrote, part of me asked: Is this too much?
But you know what’s too much? Carrying unacknowledged pain for a lifetime.
What’s too much is the weight of pretending you’re fine.
Naming Isn’t Just for You—It’s for Every Person Who Needs to Hear It
When we name our pain, we don’t just free ourselves—we give others permission to do the same. We open doors for conversations that heal generations. We let someone else feel seen in a way they never have before.
I didn’t write Love Child just for me. I wrote it for every person who’s been made to feel invisible, who’s second-guessed their own memories, who’s had to smile through survival.
If any of that sounds like you, I hope my story gives you courage.
Not because it’s tied in a perfect bow.
But because it begins with one simple truth: “This happened. And it hurt.”
Your Voice Matters. Your Story Matters.
Whether you’re ready to write, speak, or simply whisper your truth to yourself—start by naming it. Start by telling your pain that it no longer gets to own you in secret.
Because once you name it, you start healing it.