For 33 years, I carried questions I was too afraid to ask.

Questions that sat heavy in my chest. Questions that followed me through childhood, relationships, motherhood, doctor visits, and quiet moments when I couldn’t understand why I reacted the way I did.

Then one day I finally looked at my mom and asked…

“Why weren’t you better for me?”

Not because I wanted to hurt her. Not because I wanted revenge. But because the little girl inside of me deserved answers.

“Why didn’t you protect me?”

“Why did you allow him around me?”

“Why was someone who was supposed to be family allowed access to me when he was hurting me?”

Your brother. My uncle.

The person who should have been safe.

The person who took pieces of my childhood I can never get back.

More times than I can even remember, I was put in situations a child should never experience. And while everyone else moved on with life, I carried it. My body carried it. My mind carried it.

I didn’t understand why normal mother-and-daughter things felt so uncomfortable.

Why hugs felt awkward.

Why saying “I love you” sometimes felt like words getting stuck in my throat.

Why closeness felt unfamiliar when it was something I always wanted.

I grew into a woman with so much empathy. Maybe too much. I learned how to see the pain in everyone else. I learned how to forgive people who were broken. I learned how to make excuses for people who hurt me because I could see the hurt inside of them too.

And that was one of the hardest parts to admit.

That somehow, I could look at someone who destroyed parts of me and still recognize they were damaged too.

But being broken does not give someone permission to break someone else.

I spent years wondering why certain things felt harder for me than they seemed to for other women.

Why I felt nervous and exposed at doctor appointments.

Why something as simple as being vulnerable felt terrifying.

Why intimacy wasn’t easy.

Why opening myself up sexually to a man wasn’t something that could happen overnight.

Why it took me years to trust someone enough to feel completely safe.

My body remembered things my mind tried to forget.

And sitting across from my mom, I wasn’t just a grown woman asking questions.

I was that little girl.

The little girl who wanted someone to notice.

The little girl who wanted someone to choose her.

The little girl who needed protection.

I wanted my mom to understand that what happened didn’t end when it stopped happening. It followed me into every stage of my life.

I wasn’t asking her to rewrite the past.

I know we can’t.

But I needed her to sit with me in the truth of it.

I needed her to see the little girl I was and the woman I had to become because of it.

Healing is strange because sometimes you can love someone and still acknowledge the ways they failed you.

You can forgive and still grieve.

You can understand someone and still hold them accountable.

I spent so many years protecting everyone else’s feelings.

Now I’m finally protecting mine.

Because the little girl who wasn’t protected back then deserves someone standing up for her now.

And that someone is me.