I Thought I Had to Become Someone Else to Be Loved. I Was Wrong.

For a long time, I believed that to be loved, I had to be different.

Not wildly different—not unrecognizable—but… smaller. More palatable. More productive. More polished. I believed the passionate, bold, expressive parts of me were too much—too messy, too risky, too tied to pain. So I tucked her away, that fire-filled version of me. I didn’t kill her off. I just… locked the door and tried not to listen when she knocked.

In her place, I built a life of competence. I worked hard. I built businesses. I showed up for everyone who needed anything, often before they even asked. I became the responsible one. The solid one. The one who could handle it all.

But what I didn’t realize was that I was also becoming burdened. Not by others, but by the weight of the version of me I thought I had to be.

I told myself I was reinventing. Growing up. Maturing. But the truth is, I wasn’t evolving—I was editing. I thought I had to choose between being deeply loved and being fully me. So I chose the version of me I thought would earn the most respect.

And it broke me.

Slowly, over time, I overworked myself into exhaustion. I sacrificed so much of who I was in an effort to be taken seriously, to be accepted, to feel safe. And when it finally all cracked—when my health gave out and my heart felt hollow—I looked up and realized: I was surrounded by the life I built, but not fully in it. I had traded parts of myself for love and respect, and still felt starved for both.

This week, something shifted.
I remembered her.
The me I locked away.

Not the reckless one.
Not the chaotic one.
But the real one. The one who danced freely. Who laughed loud. Who loved deeply. Who didn’t have to earn her worth through doing.

And more than that—I finally told the truth about her. To myself. And to my husband.

We had one of the most honest conversations we’ve had in years. We talked about the last two years—about sickness, about trauma, about emotional manipulation, about shame. I admitted that I haven’t trusted myself in a long time. That I’ve been carrying guilt, not just about recent pain, but pain from years ago I thought I’d buried.

And I let him see me. Not the first layer. Not the polished version. The raw, unfinished, deeply human one.

And he stayed.

He didn’t recoil. He didn’t reject. He listened. He softened. He chose me.

It’s hard to put into words what that did for my heart.
But I know this: I am unburdening. Not just from burnout and old roles, but from the belief that I had to be someone else to be loved.

I don’t.

And neither do you.

If you’re carrying the weight of perfection, performance, or people-pleasing…
If you’ve been working yourself into the ground just to feel “enough”…
If you’ve hidden your fire to fit someone else’s comfort…

You’re not broken. You’re not lost. You’re just burdened. And it’s okay to put it down now.

There is a version of you—quiet or loud, bold or soft, still or wild—that doesn’t need to earn love to be worthy of it.

I’m learning to let her lead again.
And it’s the most sacred thing I’ve ever done.