Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing

Eirene: [00:00:00] There are women whose love is measured by how much they endure. Women who were taught that staying was strength, that silence was loyalty, that keeping the peace mattered more than naming the pain. They learned early how to smooth things over, how to carry what didn't belong to them, how to protect everyone else by asking less of themselves. In their world survival was praised as devotion.

Endurance was mistaken for virtue and leaving, even when a meant safety, was treated like betrayal. This episode is for those women, for the ones who held families together at their own expense, and for the daughters who are learning that strength doesn't have to sound like silence.

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 [00:01:00] 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 breaks.

Before we begin, I wanna share a gentle reminder. This episode includes stories and reflections about domestic violence, 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.

If you or someone you know is in danger or needs support, you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 800 7 9 9 7 2 3 3 or visit the hotline.org for free. Confidential help is available 24 hours a day. And if you're listening from outside the US you can find international hotlines and local resources @findahelpline.com.

You are not alone. Take care of yourself while you [00:02:00] listen.

In our last episode, we talked about inherited silence, the way pain moves through generations quietly teaching us that love and loyalty sometimes mean keeping the peace at any cost. This week, I want to talk about the woman who embodied that lesson for me. My paternal grandmother. She was the center of our family. The warmth, the glue, the softness everyone clung to. Her house was where we gathered, where laughter and arguments blended into something that still felt like home. She could make a meal out of anything. She could turn an ordinary Sunday into a celebration She loved deeply, maybe too deeply, because her love didn't always come with boundaries. It came with excuses.

In my family, love was often tangled with silence. Accountability felt like betrayal and survival looked a lot like loyalty. When I was younger, I thought strength meant staying, that the women who endured were [00:03:00] heroes. The ones who carried the weight so no one else had to. But now I see how the same silence that held our family together also kept the pain alive. My grandmother was both strength and softness. The person, everyone went to, the one who made a house feel like a home. And even the strongest women have their silences, the kind that keep the peace on the surface while the truth sinks deeper underneath.

For a long time, I saw her through the eyes of a child. The woman who braided my hair, remembered every birthday and made me feel like I mattered. But healing changes your vision. It lets you see the people you loved, not just for who they were, but for what they carried quietly.

When my maternal grandfather wasn't in the United States, my paternal grandmother would watch us while my parents worked. She was more of a mother to me than my own. [00:04:00] Her house was where everyone gathered cousins, aunts, uncles. It was loud, chaotic, and full of movement. There was always laughter in one room, yelling in another, and something cooking on the stove. But underneath all that noise, there was warmth.

I used to sit quietly and watch her French braid my cousins' hair. That's how I learned just by watching her hands move with precision and care. She had so many grandchildren, but somehow she remembered everyone's birthday. She made each of us feel seen, like we mattered. She was the heartbeat of our family. Her home was the center, the place everything and everyone circled back to.

But as I got older, I started to see things differently. Her love was strong, but it came with a cost. She loved to a fault. She couldn't hold the people she loved accountable. She made excuses for them [00:05:00] no matter how much pain they caused. A lot of my uncles, like my father, were alcoholics. Each one acting out in their own way and their wives left behind to deal with the fallout.

When I was in high school, I used to help my parents with their bills. I'd write the checks, fill out the forms. I knew exactly how much they made. And I remember realizing that my mother made more money than my father, that she could afford for us to live on our own. One day when he wasn't home, I pulled her aside. I showed her a paper where I had written a budget. I wrote everything, her income, the bills, and I told her, you don't need him financially. You don't have to deal with this abuse. But she refused. A few years later, when I was stationed in Hawaii, I tried again. When I was home on leave, I told her, you can come live with me, bring my sibling, start over. But she refused again. Both times [00:06:00] her reason was the same. She said, my grandmother, my father's mother would turn everyone against her.

And the thing is, she wasn't wrong. I had already seen how my grandmother spoke about the women who left my uncles, how they were blamed. It was never the men's fault. It was always the women who left. My grandmother led that narrative. She defended her sons fiercely. Even when they were wrong. It didn't matter if they cheated or if they were violent, she would always find a way to justify it. It took me years to understand that my grandmother wasn't just protecting her sons, she was protecting her own story. She had endured so much from my grandfather, and I think in her mind, staying made her strong. Maybe to her survival was the same thing as love.

She lived through so much pain that enabling others became her way of coping. If she could control the story, [00:07:00] she could keep the family together. But what she didn't realize was that keeping the peace isn't the same as creating peace.

When I got married, she told me something that has never left me. She said, "whatever you put up with the first year of marriage, be ready to put up with it for the rest of your life". At the time, I didn't know what to do with those words. I thought she was just giving me practical advice. But now I realize she wasn't warning me. She was remembering herself. I still remember how surprised she was during one of our phone conversations. She couldn't believe my husband and I took turns cooking dinner and cleaning up afterwards, or that he would stay home with the kids so I could go to the movies with friends.

She saw those small, ordinary moments like they were impossible. Like she was witnessing a life women of her time were never allowed to imagine because in her world, the patriarchy ruled. Men worked, [00:08:00] women served and love meant knowing your place and staying there.

She was a woman who learned to endure instead of demand better, and she passed that lesson down to her daughters, to her daughters-in-law, and in some ways, to me. I loved her deeply. She was my safe place in a family that often felt unsafe. But loving her also meant seeing the parts of her that helped build the silence I grew up in.

She was both the woman who taught me how to nurture, and the woman who taught me what not to tolerate. She showed me that love without accountability isn't love. It's survival and survival, no matter how strong it looks, isn't the same as peace. Looking back now, I can see how much my family's story was built on love, but also on fear. Fear of being alone, fear of being judged, fear of being the one who walked away. My grandmother believed love was endurance. That [00:09:00] staying, no matter how heavy it got, was what made you loyal.

And I understand why. She lived through a time when women weren't encouraged to leave. They were told to pray harder, to stay quiet and to wait it out, to make it work, even if it broke them. She made survival into an art form, something that almost looked beautiful from the outside.

It became her strength, her armor, her way of making sense of what she endured. And I think deep down she believed that if she could keep everyone together, if she could hold the family in place, then maybe all the pain would finally mean something. What I've learned though, is that survival and peace are not the same thing.

Survival teaches you how to keep going. Peace teaches you how to stop bracing, and for generations the women in my family learned how to endure, but they were never taught how to rest. I think about her often, [00:10:00] about the weight she carried, about how she made room for everyone else while leaving so little space for herself. About how she filled her house with people and noise and movement, and how lonely it must have felt when the lights finally went out.

She was a woman who gave everything she had and never asked to be held in return. And for a long time I believed that was love. I believed sacrifice was proof of devotion, that the one who endured the most was the strongest.

Healing slowly unraveled that belief. It taught me that strength doesn't always look like carrying more. Sometimes it looks like stopping. Sometimes it looks like saying enough. Like setting boundaries with people you love, like telling the truth even when your voice shakes, even when it changes how people see you.

I used to carry a lot of guilt for not being like her, for choosing distance instead of [00:11:00] silence, for stepping away, instead of staying quiet. But I see now that every time I speak, every time I name a boundary, every time I choose peace over chaos, i'm not betraying her. I'm finishing something she never got to begin. , And that hasn't always felt clean or empowering. Sometimes it's felt awkward, unfamiliar, even lonely. There were moments when choosing peace felt almost irresponsible, like I was doing something wrong by not staying alert, by not anticipating everyone else's needs, by not preparing for the next emotional shift in the room.

I had been taught to prove my care through endurance, to stay available, to absorb discomfort, so others wouldn't have to sit with it. I had to walk away for that role, and over time I began to see what changed when I stopped negotiating my boundaries. What shifted when I let people respond however they needed to, [00:12:00] without chasing understanding or approval. What remained was simple, the knowledge that I no longer had to participate in my own erasing. Maybe that's what generational healing is, giving language to what was never allowed to be spoken.

Breaking patterns our ancestors survived without knowing how to name. Saying this pain doesn't have to keep traveling. It can end here. I will always love my grandmother. She was my refuge when the world felt unsafe. She taught me tenderness, care, and how to nurture others. But I've learned how to hold that love with clearer hands now. Honoring what she gave me without repeating what cost her so much. I think she'd understand, maybe not in words, but in spirit. I think she'd recognize that I'm carrying her strength forward, just shaped differently.

Not through silence, but through truth, not through [00:13:00] endurance, but through peace. Because loving someone doesn't mean inheriting their suffering. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is break the silence and build something softer in its place. As I sit here now, I realized telling her story wasn't only about remembering her. It was about finding myself, seeing where I come from so I can move forward with intention instead of repeating the patterns that caused so much pain.

Every generation adds a new chapter. My grandmother's was survival. My mother's was fear and mine is awareness. Awareness that love doesn't have to hurt. That silence isn't protection, and that peace isn't something we earn, it's something we're allowed to choose. When I began my healing journey, I thought I was doing it just for me, but the deeper I go, the more I understand I'm [00:14:00] healing forward.

For the women who never had language, for the ones who confused loyalty with love. For the ones who stayed because leaving felt impossible. There are still moments when I miss her, her laugh, her cooking, the way she braided my hair like it was an act of love. And sometimes I wonder if she had been given the safety, the permission, the choice, who might she have become?

But healing also taught me that I can stop wishing she had healed. Instead, I can heal for her. I can be the one who breaks the silence, who lets the truth breathe, who learns to stay without abandoning myself. Sometimes healing looks like holding two truths at once. Gratitude for what was given and grief for what was missing. I've learned that both can exist in the same breath. I can love her fiercely and [00:15:00] still name the harm that silence caused. I can carry her legacy without carrying her pain.

If she were here now, I imagine she'd still say whatever you put up with in the first year of marriage, be ready to put up with it for the rest of your life. And this time I would finally know how to answer. I'd say I love you and I'm choosing differently because love is no longer measured by endurance. Not by how much we tolerate, but by how much peace we allow ourselves to create, by truth, by boundaries, by respect. It's about coming home to ourselves fully, honestly, without apology.

So when I think about her now, I don't see the woman who stayed. I see the woman whose survival made my leaving possible. The woman who showed me strength and in doing so, gave me permission to redefine it. And I think that maybe that's what breaking the cycle really is, not turning [00:16:00] away from those who came before us, but turning toward the truth they couldn't afford to face. Honoring their survival while choosing something softer for ourselves. That's how I carry her now, not through silence, but through honesty. Not through endurance, but through care. And that's the real legacy, not the pain that was passed down, but the healing that finally moves forward.

There's a strange peace that comes after you finally tell the truth. Not the kind that fixes everything, but the kind that lets your body unclench for the first time in years. The kind that reminds you the weight was never yours alone. Telling the truth doesn't erase the love. It lets it breathe again. It lets it grow into something real because love without honesty isn't love. It's survival. One of the hardest lessons I've learned is how to tell the truth about the people I love without needing to turn them into [00:17:00] heroes or villains.

That truth can be complicated. It often leaves questions unanswered, but it's sacred because it means I've finally chosen myself. If this episode stirs something in you, please be gentle with yourself. Healing requires us to return to rooms we once locked away. To meet younger versions of ourselves with compassion instead of judgment, and that takes real courage. You don't have to rush. You don't need perfect language.

Sometimes sitting quietly and breathing is enough. Healing doesn't always look like movement. Sometimes it looks like rest, like stillness, like finally saying, enough. Maybe your story sounds like mine. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, you deserve peace that doesn't depend on anyone else's permission. You deserve softness that doesn't cost you your voice, and you deserve to feel proud of who you're becoming.

Even when [00:18:00] the progress is quiet, even when it's invisible, you are still choosing yourself. When I think of my grandmother now, I see her hands steady, capable, and warm. I still see her resilience, but I also see my own, and that's how I know her story continues. Because legacy isn't what we inherit, it's what we choose to carry forward. And the piece we create today becomes someone else's inheritance tomorrow.

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 review helps more people find the podcast and reminds others they are not alone. Don't forget to subscribe or follow the show 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 and [00:19:00] TikTok @borntiredpodcast. I'd love to hear what resonated with you. And if you'd 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.