Kate Didd

I have arrived at a strange and holy intersection of my life, one I never expected to travel. I’ve been a power-housed eldest daughter since the first breath I took, forged into steel by responsibility, protected by no one, shielding everyone. Even after fifteen years of marriage, the dynamic never changed. The weight never disappeared. I remained the family’s torchbearer, father figure, mother, sister, soldier, all in one. This is my Taylor Swift healing era: soft, poetic, aching, rewriting my own mythology by hand.

For years, I’ve been stuck in a tantrum of heartbreaks, not just heartbreak from lovers, but heartbreak from myself. Shattering, reforming, shattering again, like stained glass thrown against cathedral floors until the light finally understood how to pass through me. I searched for myself so fiercely I forgot why I was searching. I was digging for diamonds, but I never asked what I would do once I found them.

And yet, here I am, more gemstone than bone, more truth than fear.

Mothered by Fire, Surrounded by Women Who Roar

I live among fierce, conviction-forged women, lionesses who walk into rooms and make men tremble. They spin entire universes with their breath, command circles where patriarchs once lived, and I am in awe of their power. For a long time, I believed there was nothing left I could teach them, nothing soft enough, nothing deep enough. They were rabid for power, and they wore it well.

But even power needs a place to lay its head at night.

Corporate life taught me what I never wanted: the cold aftertaste of people too frightened to feel anything real. When I left that world, I began studying people, quietly learning how to draw their stories out of them and finally take the conversation off myself. I began speaking with boundaries instead of barbed wire. My voice stopped being messy survival, and started sounding like truth.

In that listening, I found the universe.

The Gaslight Gospel: I See the Truth Now

A year ago, I was gaslit out of my own body, sent spinning into a place where nothing made sense. And then, it happened again. But this time, I was not perplexed. This time, I saw the projections for what they were mirrors dressed like daggers. People never called me names; they confessed their own wounds through me. Once you recognize that truth, that most accusations are self-portraits, you unlock the universe.

For years, I would respond to situations with clarity about actions. Meanwhile, others would respond with projections about me as a person. That difference, the ability to separate what happened from who someone is, is a superpower that most people never learn. I became fluent in the language beneath the language. I saw the shape under the shadow. I could hear the heartbeat under the lie.

I don’t project, I speak with intention.

I do not harm, I protect.

I change rooms by speaking metaphor, not malice.

I have been gaslit, twisted, manipulated into more shapes than origami, and somehow, every fold sharpened my focus. I became a living lie detector.

A Mosaic Made of 300 Souls

I am not special, but I was treated like I was dangerous, and that taught me everything I needed to know. I stayed trapped in toxic cycles for years, not because I was weak, but because I was gathering data. Watching patterns. Studying pain. I wanted to recognize red flags miles away, not when they were already burning down my life.

And yes, sometimes I used the system to win. Sometimes I sent cease-and-desist letters to people who thought I would stay silent. Maybe it was aggressive. Maybe it was strategic. But every tactic was recommended by professionals, and that means none of those survival instincts were born from cruelty. They were born from guidance. From self-protection. From finally realizing that the villain costume they stitched for me never belonged to me.

I am a mosaic built from 300 fragments of teachers, therapists, mirrors, enemies, lovers, weapons, wombs. I learned from them all. They live inside me, not as ghosts, but as architecture. I am flawed, layered, imperfectly perfect. That is my crown.

The Loneliness of Seeing Too Much

I love who I have become more than I can articulate. The pain I carried is a currency that bought me clarity. Now, when I see someone’s sadness, it doesn’t devour me. I can sit with it silently and whisper, You just haven’t healed yet. But this knowledge is lonely, because I stand further down the path than most, and the road is quiet when you’re ahead.

As an autistic woman, transitions feel like tectonic plates shifting underfoot, violent, unavoidable, holy. But once the tremor passes, I am new again. I learned to treat change like I treated my childhood ticklishness, train myself out of the knee-jerk flinch. Now, I meet change like an old friend. And I teach my children to do the same, faster, wiser, deeper.

My Daughter, My Sun

Every single thing I’ve ever done, every transformation, every heartbreak, every rebirth, has been for one person: my daughter.

I love her past the edges of the universe. No one will ever suppress her. She is my mirror, my magic, my morning star. I would raze worlds before letting someone clip her wings.

If you’ve never known a mother who loves you beyond reason, that is the superpower I’m giving her.

I have mothered other women, too, loved them more fiercely than their own bloodlines. They call me when their mothers don’t. They trust me like daughters do. And I carry them with the same intensity. My maternal heart has no borders.

Raising Sons Who Do No Harm

But I am also raising boys.

And here lies the alchemy

How do we raise boys who do not grow into men who break women the way women before us were broken?

It is time to soften.

To unlearn the worship of aggression.

To teach that strength and gentleness are siblings, not opposites.

Power is not meant to be a hammer.

It is meant to be a hearth.

We must evolve, not into weaker beings, but into deeper ones. We must model nurturing, not only for our daughters, but for our sons. For those raising children, and those choosing not to, we must nurture the world itself. We must create soft men. Men who listen. Men who hold. Men who love without conquering.

Let us become the gardens where boys learn how to bloom without burning the flowers growing beside them.

This Is My Era

I am no longer the eldest daughter holding up a collapsing house;

I am the architect building a new one.

I am no longer surviving projections;

I am teaching others how to see past them.

I am no longer trapped in sharpness;

I am choosing softness with teeth.

This is my Taylor-Swift healing era,

where I rewrite the story, reclaim the throne,

and teach the people I love how to build gentler kingdoms.

The world is changing.

And so am I.

One rebirth,

one metaphor,

one soft revolution at a time.