28/11/2025
The holidays hurt extra this year.
They’ve always hurt in their own way, but this year is different. This is my first year since stepping away from my marriage… my first year after “breaking the cycle.”
People glamorize that phrase like it’s some empowering movie moment, but what they don’t tell you is how lonely and isolating it actually is. To most people, I’m just the girl who left her husband.
That’s the headline, the Wi******er, IN, rumor, the surface-level story.
But it was so much more than that.
I didn’t just walk away from a marriage. I walked away from a relationship that was holding my trauma captive and not letting me heal. From emotional neglect. From the same fights, the same patterns, the same triggers that kept re-opening old wounds instead of helping us close them.
I didn’t leave because I stopped loving him.
I left because I loved him, and because I love our child more.
Only one of us was willing to really look at the toxic cycle we were trapped in and admit that if we didn’t change, our life was going to leave a mark on our child that she’d carry forever.
And before anyone says, “She’s too young to remember,” no, she’s not.
I’m 27 years old and my entire life has been shaped by my parents’ horrible fights and the lack of love they had for each other. I still remember the yelling, the holes in the walls, the tension, the way the air felt heavy in the house. Those memories didn’t disappear. They followed me into every relationship I’ve had.
My 8-year-old niece talks all the time about her family’s fighting. She remembers being locked in rooms while the adults screamed and hurled fists at each other. She’s eight. So yes, it does matter. It matters more than people want to admit.
Adaline is already five. And it terrified me to think she might grow up thinking that kind of love is normal. That this level of chaos and hurt is just what relationships are.
So I chose to leave.
Not because I didn’t love him.
Not because I wanted someone else.
But because I couldn’t bear the thought of my daughter repeating the same story I’ve been trying so hard to heal from.
And now, here I am, spending the holidays without the family I built… because only one of us was ready to look our situation in the face and say, “Enough.”
I wanted it to work. I still do, if I’m honest. If he came to me tomorrow and said, “Let’s really do this. Let’s do the work and do it right,” a part of me would want to jump in with both feet.
But I know that’s not going to happen.
And that reality hurts in a way that’s hard to explain.
So these holidays hurt extra.
Not just because I’m alone…
but because I had to break my own heart to protect my child’s.
If you feel lonely or misunderstood this holiday season, you’re not the only one. Some of us didn’t “give up.” Some of us chose to stop passing down pain. And it costs more than people will ever see.
