Kate Didd

I don’t resent my father anymore.

I don’t resent my uncle.

Or my brothers.

I don’t even resent my first husband, though for a long time, I believed he was supposed to be better. Supposed to be the one who saved me from the mess that raised me.

And maybe that’s the thing: we spend half our lives believing other people are supposed to make us feel safe, only to realize they were never built to carry that kind of responsibility.

I don’t resent my old job either, the one that chipped away at my confidence, one dismissive manager at a time. Hell, I might even work for them again someday, if I could do it alongside people who understand what accountability truly means.

But him, my second husband, he still holds the last flicker of darkness I have left. Not because I hate him, but because he was the one who taught me what false promises sound like when they’re whispered out of fear instead of love.

So yes, he gets it all. The ashes of what used to haunt me. The shadows of my younger self. All the broken pieces I no longer claim.

The rest of my demons have already been laid to rest.

He’s the last one standing.

And somehow, I think that’s exactly how it was meant to be.

When You’re Just Done

That’s what this season feels like, being completely, utterly, done with the first half of my life.

It’s over. The version of me who begged for peace, who broke herself to earn crumbs of acceptance, she’s gone.

The download took years. The processing. The surrender. I used to think I was behind. Now I realize I was just buffering, gathering data for the life I was always meant to live.

Because when you’re here to do something meaningful, truly purposeful, life will keep breaking you open until you finally listen.

The Mirror Moment

It happened in a dressing room.

Sweaty hair twisted into a knot. Lotion clinging to my skin. My reflection staring back at me, raw and unfiltered.

Six months earlier, I had stood in that same spot, looking at myself with disgust. Rage, even. I wanted to punch the mirror, to shatter the reflection of the woman who kept repeating the same patterns.

But this time, I smiled.

Not because everything was perfect, but because I finally saw the truth: I had outgrown my box.

For so long, I lived like Schrödinger’s cat, both dead and alive, waiting for someone else to open the lid and declare me worthy of existing.

No one came.

So I did it myself.

The Desperation to Escape

The fight-or-flight response to leave my old life was overwhelming. It was desperation with a heartbeat. I caused chaos on my way out so no one would notice how quietly I was slipping free.

Everything I did, every boundary I drew, every tear I hid, every risk I took, was for my children. To give them a mother who didn’t just survive, but transcended.

When I started working out, people thought I was chasing a body.

I wasn’t. I was chasing discipline.

I downloaded an app, built a routine, and posted my progress like it was about health. But it wasn’t about aesthetics, it was about honor. Keeping a promise to myself for the first time in years.

They didn’t know I was training for war.

Not against anyone else but against the version of me who used to quit on herself.

The Study of Becoming

For six months, I read everything I could get my hands on, self-help, psychology, spiritual recovery, emotional intelligence.

Extreme Ownership. 365 Days of Self Discipline. Atomic Habits.

Each book offered me a new weapon. A new language for healing. I learned to rewrite my thoughts. To speak to myself with reverence instead of resentment.

But it was Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” that cracked the code.

Let them misunderstand you.

Let them leave.

Let them talk.

Let them be who they are while you become who you were meant to be.

Because at the end of the day, research means nothing without action.

And all the reading in the world won’t save you if you don’t eventually ask: What am I going to do about it?

Leaving Mediocrity Behind

I worked through the motions until I couldn’t anymore. Even at my brother’s wedding, I felt it the quiet hum of finality. The knowing that I was done.

I started saying it out loud:

“I want out. I’m moving. I’m changing. If no one helps me, I’ll do it alone.”

And I meant it.

Eventually, I took a leave of absence not for rest, but for rebirth. I needed to separate myself from the complacency of people who stopped trying.

Walking through those doors each day, I saw how many had made peace with mediocrity. How they accepted disrespect because it was familiar. How they traded peace for a paycheck and called it stability.

Once you wake up, you can’t unsee it.

When you live as a work in progress, you start noticing how many of your mentors plateaued long ago. They weren’t masters, just experts at pretending they hadn’t stopped growing.

Hamsters on a wheel.

Exhausted.

Convincing themselves it’s motion, not stagnation.

Relapse and Realization

After my move, I relapsed.

The change, the silence, the magnitude of it all it hit me hard. I told myself I needed a “reset,” a reminder of how far I’d come.

So I drank. Four shots.

Heartburn instead of heartbreak.

And in that haze, I realized I didn’t even want to drink. My body was rejecting what my soul had already released.

I didn’t miss it.

The chaos. The pretending. The buzz that made me forget how to feel.

Peace, it turns out, is intoxicating enough on its own.

A Funeral for the Old Me

Today, I stood in front of the mirror again. The woman who survived and the woman who’s becoming, they met there.

The old me, scarred and exhausted, finally looked peaceful. The new me, steady and certain, whispered: You can rest now.

And so I released her.

She can put down her sword.

She can stop apologizing for being too strong.

She can stop wondering why she was never enough.

She did her job. She carried me through every storm. And now, she gets to sleep in peace while I step into my next chapter awake.

Because I am enough.

Always have been.

And now, I’ve added tax.

Takeaway: Peace Is the Revolution

Healing isn’t pretty. It’s not yoga poses and candles. It’s sleepless nights, trembling hands, and crying on the bathroom floor because you’re mourning the version of you who made survival look easy.

But peace, real peace, is when you stop performing for it.

It’s when you stop running from your own reflection and start holding eye contact with the person you’ve become.

So if you’re reading this, and you’re still trapped inside the box I want you to know: you can lift the lid yourself. You don’t need permission. You don’t need closure. You just need courage.

You’ve outgrown your pain. Let it rest.

You’ve finished your first life. Begin the second.

And when you look in the mirror, remember,

You’re not staring at what broke you.

You’re looking at what survived.