She Was Never Too Much, She Was Me | Pause & Breathe Journal Entry by JBE Mindful Pathways

Pause & Breathe | JBE Mindful Pathways
Journal Entry: “She Was Never Too Much—She Was Me”

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Dear Me,

July 22nd, 2025

When the Inner Child Speaks and No One Listens

I used to think feeling meant failing. That if I cried, I was weak. That if I spoke up, I’d be abandoned. I didn’t just learn that—I lived it. So I shut my feelings down. I learned how to perform strength. But reparenting means holding space for the parts of me that were always told to be quiet. It means crying without apology. Needing without shame. Loving myself out loud—even when it makes others uncomfortable.

But here’s the part they don’t tell you about healing:
Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like rising. It feels like unraveling.

It’s asking yourself why you feel guilty for saying no to people who never respected your yes.
It’s catching yourself feeling broken for having emotions—because somewhere along the way, someone taught you that being sensitive made you difficult.
It’s realizing that silence wasn’t peace. It was survival. And now, your voice is terrified to come back out into the light.

Reparenting yourself is not a checklist.
It’s waking up one day and wondering why you still feel obligated to prove your worth to people who never cared to see it in the first place.

It’s that moment you find yourself saying:

“I love her. I appreciate everything she did for me. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep sacrificing my sanity for her approval.”

It’s feeling selfish for wanting peace.
It’s feeling dramatic for needing space.
It’s grieving relationships in real time—while still showing up for them, because you don’t know how to walk away from people who taught you that love was earned through suffering.

And somewhere in all that mess, you realize:

You were never too much.
They were just too unwilling.
To meet you where you were.
To listen without twisting your words.
To love you without conditions.

Sometimes I still wonder if I’m allowed to say no without shaking.
If I’m allowed to speak without my hands trembling, wondering what they’ll think of me afterward.
I second-guess myself before I even say a word.

I’ve learned how to read a room before I learned how to read my own emotions.

I still hear the echo of voices that told me:
You’re too much. You’re too sensitive. Get over it.

So I did.
Or at least, I tried to.

I hardened. I adapted. I smiled.
And I lost myself in the performance of being easy to love.

But deep down, I’ve always known—
I was never hard to love.
I was just surrounded by people who didn’t know how to love loudly, patiently, or without conditions.

Reparenting isn’t just me trying to give myself what I didn’t get.
It’s me grieving that I even had to.

It’s me whispering to the little girl in me,
“You shouldn’t have had to carry so much, but you did. And you did it beautifully.”

And now I let myself cry without cleaning it up.
Now I let my voice tremble and still speak.
Now I let the silence mean safety—not punishment.

I’m still scared sometimes.
Still learning. Still unlearning.
Still catching myself shrinking.

But I promise, I won’t abandon myself again.
Not for approval.
Not for peacekeeping.
Not even for love.

I’m reparenting myself—not with perfection,
but with presence.
And that’s more than enough for today.

And that’s more than enough for today.

I’ll meet myself here again when I’m ready.
Until then—softly, always.

~ JujuBee Divine Empress

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Journal Reflection Prompt: What parts of you were silenced that still need to be heard? If you could speak to your younger self today, what would you promise her?