Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

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Eirene: Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones you make to people who are still alive, not because the love ended, but because staying kept costing you pieces of yourself. It's walking away without closure, without accountability, without the family you kept hoping would one day feel safe. It's grieving what never happened, the conversations you waited for, the change you kept believing in, and realizing that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop fighting for relationships that only survive when you shrink inside them.

This is Born Tired, Where Survival Meets Healing. A podcast for those of us who grew up in survival mode but are ready to heal and speak our truth. I'm Eirene, a cycle breaker learning what peace feels like after years of survival. Every episode is an invitation to rest inside your truth, to feel seen, and to remember you are never alone. This is what it sounds like when silence finally [00:01:00] breaks.

Before we begin, I wanna share a gentle reminder. This episode includes stories and reflections about childhood trauma and abuse. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you. If at any point you need to pause or step away, honor that. Your wellbeing matters more than finishing the episode. You are not alone. Take care of yourself while you listen.

Last week, we talked about what it means to love someone enough to let them go. About the kind of love that chooses peace over proximity, and the strength it takes to walk away from relationships that only survive through sacrifice. We explored how sometimes healing doesn't look like fixing what's broken. It looks like finally stepping out of what keeps breaking you. But what no one prepares you for is what comes after the goodbye. Because the leaving isn't the end of the pain. In many ways it's where a different kind of grief begins. There's a kind of healing no one talks about, the kind that starts once the chaos quiets. [00:02:00] Once the constant tension is gone, once you're no longer fighting to be understood, chosen, or treated with care, and instead of relief, you're met with a silence that feels heavier than the storm ever did. No one prepares you for the grief that comes after going no contact.

It isn't the kind that people recognize or know how to hold. There's no casseroles at the door. No sympathy cards, no rituals for mourning relationships with people who are still alive. Just a quiet ache that follows you through ordinary moments. Folding laundry, hearing, a song that carries a memory, scrolling past photos from a life that no longer exists in the same way. It's grief for the mother you hope would one day choose you, for the father you kept forgiving, for the sibling you kept reaching for until there was nothing left to give you. Grieve the childhood you tried to repair in adulthood, the family you kept believing would grow with you, and the version of yourself who stayed far longer than she should have, because love [00:03:00] once meant endurance instead of safety. And the world doesn't always understand this kind of loss. They see distance and call it bitterness. They see boundaries and mistake them for punishment. They don't see the years you spent trying. The conversations you initiated. The grace you extended. The pieces of yourself you kept shrinking to keep the peace. Leaving wasn't giving up. It was self-preservation.

And still, even after choosing peace, you carry the ache of what could have been. The apologies that never came, the accountability that never arrived, the relationships you kept hoping would finally feel safe. This is a part of healing no one warns you about. The grief that comes after clarity, after the dust settles and you finally see everything for what it was, not through hope, but through honesty. It's the grief that comes from letting go of what could never meet you in safety.

[00:04:00] When I went in no contact, I cried for months. Not the kind of crying that heals, the kind that empties you. It felt like my body had been holding back years of tears, and they all came rushing out at once. I cried for the version of me that kept trying. For the daughter who kept hoping that if I loved hard enough, if I explained myself one more time, maybe they'd finally see me.

I cried for the family I imagined we could be, the one I built in my mind when I was a little girl trying to make sense of chaos. I cried for the holidays I pictured, the healing I waited for. The moments I believed would finally feel safe. And I cried for the life I was taught to hold onto, even when it was slowly breaking me.

There's also a guilt you feel that doesn't actually mean you're doing something wrong. A lot of it comes from trauma bonds, from being taught over and over, that love meant [00:05:00] staying, fixing, forgiving, and carrying what wasn't yours to carry. When you grow up having to keep the peace to feel safe, your body learns to panic when you choose yourself.

So when you set boundaries or step back, your nervous system calls it guilt. Even though what you're doing is protecting yourself. Then there's a guilt that doesn't just come from your family, but from the world around you. From the way people tilt their heads when you say you don't talk to your mother, your father, or your sister anymore.

From the silence that follows the comment, "but they're your family". It comes from the pressure to explain yourself, to justify your boundaries, to make your pain more palatable for other people. They don't see the years it took to survive being someone's child. They don't see the nights you question your own reality. They don't understand that sometimes love means walking away, [00:06:00] not because you stopped caring, but because staying would destroy what was left of you. And then there's another kind of grief, the grief of losing the extended family who believe everything, the abusers say. The ones who rewrite history because it's easier than facing the truth. The ones who minimize, deflect, and pretend not to know. Who carry guilt and denial like family heirlooms pass through generations and the ones who become messengers. Flying monkeys carrying news, gossip, and reminders straight to your door. The aunt who sends pictures of you and your sister as little girls, as if nostalgia could erase the truth. The relative who sends a photo of your father, like a reminder of what you're supposed to miss. They don't realize those messages, reopen wounds you've spent years trying to close. It's like being asked to mourn the same person over and over [00:07:00] again.

There's something else I need to say here, because going no contact was never just about me. It was about my children. For a long time I was taught that access to my family is automatic. That blood means entitlement, that, no matter how someone treats you, they deserve a place in your life and in your children's life. That keeping the family together mattered more than safety. That silence was loyalty, that endurance was love.

But healing taught me something different. Access to my children is a privilege, not a right. Anyone who abuses me in any way: with their hands, their words, or by denying my truth is not a safe person. And if someone is not a safe person for me, they are not a safe person for my children. It is my job as a parent to protect them. Not to keep the peace, not to preserve family images, and [00:08:00] not to make other adults comfortable. My responsibility is to break the cycle. To make sure my children grow up knowing that love does not come with harm attached to it, that boundaries are normal, that safety matters more than tradition.

I refuse to teach them that they have to tolerate mistreatment just because someone shares their DNA. I refuse to teach them that abuse is something you endure for the sake of family . What I will teach 'them is that love is respectful, that relationships should feel safe, and that walking away from harm is strength, not betrayal.

I've had those age appropriate conversations with my children, especially my adult ones, because life is unpredictable. And if something were to happen to me tomorrow, my children need to know the truth. They need to know who the safe relatives are, who protects them, who honors boundaries. Who believes survivors. [00:09:00] Not everyone who shares blood deserves access. Not everyone who says family acts like it, and part of healing is being brave enough to tell the truth even when it disrupts old narratives.

The distance of no contact also brought me clarity. It was the first time I could see everything without survival blurring the picture. For years, my body had been screaming before I even knew why. Daily hives, weight that wouldn't move, my cortisol was off the charts. I lived in fight or flight for so long I thought exhaustion was just part of my personality.

And then slowly, peace began to look like health. My labs were normal for the first time in years. I could sleep, I could breathe, I could go days without my heart racing for no reason. And for the first time in my adult life, I started to believe that calm could be safe.

But healing is not linear. [00:10:00] About five months after going no contact, I made the mistake of unblocking my mother's number. Part of me still hoped she'd call me for my birthday. That year my birthday fell the day before Mother's Day, and I thought maybe she'd reach out, but she didn't.

The next day, on Mother's Day, my father called instead using my mother's cell phone. He didn't ask how I was. He called to guilt trip me, for not calling my mother, for not calling him, for not being the daughter he thought I should be. He said I was a terrible daughter and I told him maybe I am a terrible daughter, maybe even a terrible sister.

But there's one thing no one can say about me. That I'm a terrible mother. Then I said what I had never said out loud. I listed everything he had done to me, everything he had done to my mother and every man in his family and in my mother's family who had [00:11:00] violated me while he drank his pain away.

His response, he said sarcastically. I'm such a terrible dad. Maybe I should kill myself. Is that what you want? And then he hung up. That was the last time I heard his voice. I blocked the number again for good, and that's when I understood. Some closures don't come from peace talks.

They come from finally telling the truth and walking away from anyone who refuses to hear it. The months after that call were heavy, but something in me started to shift. I stopped waiting for apologies that would never come. I stopped rehearsing conversations in my head and started learning what silence can sound like when it's peaceful, not punishing.

For the first time, quiet, didn't feel like danger, and one day my adult son said, "I'm proud of you, mom". He said, "the [00:12:00] decisions you've made will have a ripple effect on the generations that come after. Thank you". And in that moment, I understood what healing across generations really means.

It's not about proving anything to the ones who hurt you. It's about protecting the ones who come after you. It's about teaching your children that love can exist without pain attached to it. But healing doesn't mean it stops hurting because the distance comes with another kind of pain. The kind that surfaces when you finally have enough peace to process everything you've been through. When your nervous system isn't just surviving, it starts remembering. You begin to unpack it all piece by piece, and realize how much you've carried, how much you've endured. Some nights, I'd sit alone and trace back every memory, every moment I minimized, every time I blame myself for what I couldn't control. And the deeper I went, the more I realized [00:13:00] I had spent most of my life trying to love people who didn't know how to love me back. I'm still in that process. I just made three years of no contact, and the grief that comes with unpacking it all still catches me off guard sometimes because even when you know it's the right choice, the absence still aches.

There are moments when I sit with it, all of it, and I can finally see the full picture, everything they put me through, everything I survived. The little girl who kept waiting for someone to come save her, and the woman who finally learned to save herself. And that's when it hits me. There's no going back because going back would mean abandoning the peace I fought so hard to find.

I don't see the silence as punishment anymore. I see it as space, the kind of space healing needed to finally find me. For most of my life quiet meant danger. It meant tension before yelling, [00:14:00] walking on eggshells, waiting for the next explosion.

But this silence is different. This silence feels like oxygen going. No contact wasn't about cutting people off. It was about no longer abandoning myself. It was about choosing peace over performance, truth over tradition, and learning that love without respect isn't love. It's control wrapped in guilt.

There's something sacred about the first moment your body realizes it's safe, it's subtle. You don't notice it right away. It's in the morning you wake up and you realize your chest isn't tight. In the evening, you cook dinner without bracing for a call that ruins your mood.

Healing sneaks in quietly the same way pain once did. People talk about closure, like it's a conversation, like it's something you get from someone else, but sometimes closure is a decision. The moment you stop waiting for them to understand and you [00:15:00] start understanding yourself, it's when you realize you can't rewrite someone else's story to make sense of yours.

And even then the grief doesn't disappear. It just changes shape. Some days it shows up in memories that don't hurt anymore. Other days it hits out of nowhere. It's learning to let that ache exist without inviting it to stay. There are still days I miss what could have been, the family I imagined. The mother I needed, the father I kept trying to reach, and I let myself feel that because missing them doesn't mean I made the wrong choice.

It just means I'm human enough to still feel love for people who couldn't meet me where I was. Healing taught me that grief and peace can coexist. You can be proud of how far you've come and still ache for the family you never had. You can love them from afar and still know that distance is the only way to stay whole.

Both can be true, and [00:16:00] that truth is where strength lives. There's also a strange kind of gratitude that grows with time. Not for what happened, but for what it revealed. Distance showed me who I am without their version of me. It gave me back my reflection. It gave me back my voice. It showed me that peace isn't something people give you. It's something you build piece by piece every time you choose yourself again. It is finally giving yourself permission to grieve what was and grow into what's next. Because the truth is, I didn't break the family. I broke the silence. I ended the cycle that buried it.

Healing is remembering, forgiving yourself, forgetting, and then remembering again. And one day you wake up and you realize you no longer need them to see your worth because you see it yourself. You start to feel lighter, more grounded, more at [00:17:00] home in your own body. And that's when you know the grief may never leave, but neither will the peace you built in its place.

The longer I walk this path, the more I realize healing isn't about finding all the answers. It's about learning how to live with the truth without letting it harden you. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how things might have been different if the people who hurt me had done their own healing. But I don't stay there long because I know that their growth isn't my responsibility, mine is. I don't know if the grief ever fully disappears. Maybe it just learns to walk beside you, but it's lighter now. It no longer controls the story. It simply reminds me where I've been, and maybe that's enough to keep choosing peace, even on the days it feels lonely. To trust that the distance that once hurt so much is the same space that made room for me to finally breathe.

If [00:18:00] you're in that space somewhere between loss and liberation, I hope you know you're not alone. You don't have to rush your healing or explain your peace to anyone who hasn't earned the right to hear your story. You're allowed to keep walking forward. When I think about everything that's changed since I walked away. I realized healing didn't happen all at once. It happened slowly in the moments that didn't look like progress at all. In the days I couldn't stop crying. In the silence that felt too heavy to hold. In the moments I question if peace was worth the cost. But healing has a way of proving itself in time.

One day you wake up and the ache that used to define you has turned into understanding, the memories that used to sting start to soften around the edges, and the version of you that once only survived, starts to live again.

And it starts by saying, I can't carry this anymore. By letting the people that broke you live with their [00:19:00] own silence. By learning to meet yourself with the kind of compassion you always wish someone had given you. And to me, that's what freedom really is. The presence of truth. The quiet certainty that you've come this far because you finally stopped running from your own story.

And I know not everyone can go no contact. Not everyone has the same choice. For some cultural expectations, financial realities, or safety make distance impossible. And I see you. If you're still navigating closeness you didn't choose, please don't lose sight of who you are inside it.

Don't let survival shrink your spirit. Don't let constant harm dim your light. You are still allowed joy. You are still allowed dreams. You are still allowed to take up space, even in hard places. Protect the parts of you that make you, you. Hold onto your truth even when you can't change the [00:20:00] situation yet.

Your light matters and the fact that you're still here, still trying to heal, still choosing yourself in small ways, that's courage. So if you're here somewhere between grief and peace, between who you were and who you're becoming I want you to know this. You're doing it right. You're allowed to take your time. You're allowed to not have all the answers yet. You're allowed to move slowly toward the life that feels safer, softer, and more honest. You're allowed to feel proud of how far you've come, even if you're still learning what peace feels like, because every boundary you hold. Every truth you speak, every moment that you choose rest over survival it's all healing. It's all growth, it's all becoming.

If this episode resonated with you, please share with someone who might need it and take a moment to leave a review wherever you listen, your [00:21:00] review helps more people find the podcast and reminds others they're not alone.

Don't forget to subscribe or follow those shows so you never miss an episode. You can also join me on substack, where I share weekly reflections and gentle reminders to help you feel less alone on your healing journey. You'll find the link in the show notes .

if you'd like to connect beyond the podcast, you can find me on Instagram @borntiredpodcast. I'd love to hear what resonated with you, and if you like to support the podcast, there's a link there to buy me a coffee. Thank you for being here, for listening with an open heart. Most of all, remember this, your story matters. Your voice matters, and you are not alone.

This episode was written and narrated by Eirene Torres, audio production by Carlos Torres. Original music composed by Carlos Torres.

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