Relearning softness

After years of defense…

I grew up in confusion more than darkness. My childhood wasn’t all pain it was just uneven, unpredictable. A lot of second-guessing about where I belonged. At home, I was always quietly wondering: Is it safer with Mom today? Or Dad? I learned to read the room before I learned to trust it. To feel the air change and adjust myself before anyone asked me to. It wasn’t all bad but it was unstable, and instability has a way of teaching you to hold your breath even when you’re smiling.

My mother was chaos sharp, unpredictable, the kind of love that could turn cold before you even finished reaching for it. My father wasn’t cruel, just absent in the ways that matter most. He wasn’t the man you called for comfort or guidance after a breakup. He was, and will always be, the “what can I do to fix it” guy, logical, detached, ready with a solution when all I wanted was to be understood. Between her storms and his mechanics, I learned early that love was something to navigate, not rest in.

My grandmother was the safety net and the solitude. She was where I landed when everything else felt like walking on eggshells. With her, I didn’t have to perform or explain. Her house smelled like soap and coffee, and a kind of stillness told me I was okay without having to earn it. Her voice was the one that broke the static inside my head, calm, steady, always sure. She gave love quietly, without expectation. She made home feel like something I could trust.

Now, I watch my mother and sister’s relationship, and it hurts in a way that feels both familiar and foreign. It’s like watching the same cycle replay itself — love, hurt, apology, repeat. I see myself in both of them — the ache for understanding, the invisible negotiation for peace. It feels like watching my own reflection beg to escape. And part of me does — not out of bitterness, but out of clarity. I want to be the woman who ends the pattern, not inherits it.

When my grandmother passed, the silence that followed felt heavier than grief. It felt like being untethered again. I built my walls higher after that, mastering control, humor, and independence like survival skills. I stopped waiting for anyone to show up emotionally, because I had learned that expecting softness was the fastest way to get hurt.

But motherhood changed that. My son’s laughter cut through everything I had buried. His small hands reached for me without fear, and I realized I couldn’t teach him softness if I kept refusing it myself. He’s teaching me what safety actually feels like, not because he’s giving it, but because I finally want to hold it.

Softness now looks like breathing without waiting for the next blow and resting without apology. Saying I’m tired and not feeling weak.
It’s the quiet rebellion of choosing calm after generations of chaos.

The defense kept me alive. But softness, that’s what’s teaching me how to live.
And sometimes, when it’s really quiet, I can still hear her voice — my grandmother’s — whispering from somewhere beyond the noise:
You can stop fighting now, baby. You’re home.

And then, in that same steady tone I grew up on, she says what she always did when it was time to part ways —
I won’t say goodbye, because we’ll always see each other again, baby.