Kate Didd

Last year, I burned the ships.

Not in a dramatic, romantic way but in the way you do when you are standing at the edge of yourself and you know that if you don’t jump, you won’t survive. I destroyed everything I thought I knew about my life. I gathered what I could carry with shaking hands, grieved what I had to leave behind, and stepped forward anyway.

It was fucking terrifying.

But when you hate the life you’re living, when every breath feels like you’re borrowing air, it becomes more terrifying to stay.

I wasn’t just unhappy. I was unraveling. I was at the point where I could feel my mind slipping, where I knew I was either going to turn all that pain inward and disappear quietly… or explode outward and burn everyone around me. Either way, I was going to lose myself.

And the truth hit me like a scream I’d been swallowing my whole life:

This was not the life I built.

This was not the life I chose.

This was not who I was supposed to be.

Somewhere along the way, I became a woman whose worth depended on how useful she was. I learned to make myself smaller so others could feel bigger. I learned how to keep people happy in exchange for crumbs of love. I learned how to mother everyone, while no one protected me.

I didn’t even realize how tired I was until my body started screaming for me.

I was exhausted in my bones. Exhausted from being the strong one. Exhausted from being the responsible one. Exhausted from being the person everyone leaned on while stepping over me.

And the most painful truth of all?

All I ever wanted was to be loved without conditions.

The closest I ever came to that was my grandparents. With them, I didn’t have to perform. I didn’t have to earn my place. I was allowed to exist. Everywhere else, love came with rules, what I could say, how much I could feel, how inconvenient my pain was allowed to be.

And then one day, I looked at my children.

Really looked at them.

And something in me cracked open.

My kids mess up. They struggle. They didn’t come into this world with perfect examples of what love is supposed to look like. And that broke my heart—until I realized something else:

That’s on me now.

I stood in the mirror and said it out loud, through tears I’d held back for years:

Not for them.

They will not grow up thinking love has to be begged for.

They will not cry alone in their cars before walking into lives they hate.

They will not swallow themselves whole just to be tolerated.

They will know what it feels like to be chosen.

My awakening didn’t start with accusations. It started with questions. Gentle ones at first. Honest ones. And when people didn’t like those questions, they turned them into accusations.

So I stopped defending myself and started paying attention.

I watched how people reacted when asked to show up. I listened to the ones who said, “I’m a good person,” while never being there when it mattered. I noticed how often my calls went unanswered, how often my needs were minimized, how often I was expected to carry everything alone.

I made myself a promise: I would ask for help three times. And if the answer was no three times in a row, I would stop offering myself to people who couldn’t meet me where I stood.

That’s when everything collapsed.

All I wanted was closeness. Family. To matter.

Instead, I was met with silence. With exclusion. With watching people invite everyone else while making it clear there was no seat for me.

That kind of rejection doesn’t just hurt, it reopens every childhood wound at once. It tells the little girl inside you that she was right all along: you are too much, and still never enough.

But here’s where the story changes.

Because I am not that child anymore.

I felt the grief of her. I held the ache of her. And then I became the mother she never had.

I let my children be children. I made their world softer where mine was sharp. I taught them that their feelings make sense. I showed them history, courage, responsibility, and hope. I stood between them and the kind of pain I was handed too young.

And one day, without realizing it? I saw it in their eyes.

That look.

The one that says: You saved me.

Not in a loud, cinematic way. But in the quiet moments. In the way they breathe easier around me. In the way they trust. In the way they come to me instead of shrinking away.

Redemption doesn’t always look like applause.

Sometimes it looks like your child sleeping peacefully because they feel safe.

I had to become the villain in my family’s story to become the shelter in my children’s lives.

And yes, it hurts to be labeled the crazy one. The difficult one. The problem.

But I would rather be misunderstood than continue a legacy of silence.

Here’s the part no one tells you:

It is actually very easy to be a good person.

Choose love.

Choose courage.

Choose to break the cycle, even when it costs you everything familiar.

You don’t need approval to do what’s right.

You don’t need witnesses to live with integrity.

Sometimes redemption is simply this:

your children looking at you like the world finally makes sense.

And that…

That makes every burned ship worth it.