Red Ink and Ownership

Last summer, I picked up a red pen and started writing.

Not because I wanted it to look dramatic.
Not because it was cute or aesthetic.
But because something in me felt urgent.

I wasn’t trying to be inspiring. I was trying to be honest.

For a long time, I’ve felt like two different women living in one body.

One of them is steady and clear. She thinks deeply, stands up for what’s right, sets boundaries, and lets fear sharpen her instead of silencing her.

The other one shrinks. She avoids conflict, people‑pleases, lets her boundaries blur, and then wonders why she feels so small. She hides. She stays quiet. She disappears into the background of her own life.

I spent years bouncing between those two versions of myself.

At some point, a hard truth landed:
I wasn’t only a victim of my circumstances.
I was participating in my own unhappiness.

Not on purpose. Not because I wanted to suffer.
But over and over again, in the same quiet ways.

I stayed in rooms that made me doubt my worth.
I swallowed words that needed to be spoken.
I let fear make my decisions.
I called it “self‑awareness,” but really it was self‑criticism dressed up as growth.
I used what I knew about myself as a weapon, not a tool.

That was my self‑sabotage era.

It didn’t look explosive from the outside.
It looked like erosion.

A little less confidence.
A little less ambition.
A little more guilt and shame.
A lot more replaying old conversations and wishing I had chosen myself.

I told myself that taking “full responsibility” meant blaming myself for everything. I thought being strong meant carrying my pain in silence and calling it “being mature.”

I was wrong.

Real ownership is not self‑punishment.

Real ownership is noticing what you’ve allowed, what you’ve ignored, what you’ve been too afraid to say out loud—and then choosing differently next time. It’s refusing to keep abandoning yourself in the same familiar ways.

That realization hurt.

But it also set something in me free.

I started to see regret differently. Regret is heavy when you don’t let it teach you anything. When you receive the lesson, adjust your behavior, and stop repeating the pattern, regret loses some of its power. It becomes information, not identity.

Without the wrong turns, the trauma, the bad decisions, and the seasons when I felt like I was drowning, I wouldn’t see what I see now. I wouldn’t be rebuilding my life with intention instead of living in constant reaction.

And this is where it stopped being just about me.

I’m raising a son, and I want him to grow into a man who never questions whether he’s allowed to be himself. I want him to speak up. To hold boundaries. To respect others and also expect respect in return. To know that love, strength, and compassion can all exist in the same person.

I also want him to understand this:
Anyone who refuses to respect your boundaries is not safe for your growth.
Anyone who consistently makes you feel small doesn’t get a permanent seat in your life.

I had to learn those truths through pain and repetition. Through the quiet heartbreak of betraying myself again and again. Through finally getting tired enough to stop.

Healing hasn’t been linear. There’s no neat before‑and‑after picture.

But I am closer to myself now than I have ever been.

I feel stronger. More grounded. More honest about what I need and more willing to act on that truth instead of just thinking about it.

I still get scared. I still overthink. Old patterns still try to sneak back in—people‑pleasing, silence, shrinking.

The difference now is that they don’t run my life.

I know how to notice them.
I know how to interrupt them.
I know how to get back up faster.

That, to me, is growth.
Not perfection. Not enlightenment. Just ownership.

And somewhere in the pages of that journal, in red ink, it was the first time I told the truth to myself without flinching.

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in any of these patterns, I hope you know you’re not broken for being here. You’re just human, learning. You’re allowed to stop betraying yourself, even if you’ve done it for years. What would it look like, in this season of your life, to have your own back just a little more than you did yesterday?