Where Love Heals

I thought love
would always arrive
with conditions.

That if someone touched
the deepest parts of me,
they would recoil eventually—
or worse,
stay
and punish me gently for surviving.

I had grown used to becoming smaller.

Used to apologizing
for things that were never mine to carry.

Used to being looked at
like a wound first
and a woman second.

Until you…

You recognized me
and made me feel wanted.

You looked at me
as if nothing sacred had been taken from me.

Not hungrily.
Not like taking.
Not like my body was separate from the rest of me.

And I did not realize
how long I had been grieving myself
until I saw myself reflected back
through your eyes.

Whole.

Not healed completely.
Not untouched.
But whole.

You never tried to rescue me.

You never turned my pain
into the most important thing about me.

You asked questions
without pity.
You touched me
without hesitation.
You listened
without trying to rewrite my story into something easier to hold.

And slowly,
without naming it,
I began becoming someone new.

Someone softer with herself.

Someone who could imagine a future
that was not built entirely around survival.

Someone who finally understood
that healing is not a reward
for suffering well.

It is a choice.

A quiet one.
Daily.
Sacred.

And maybe that is why
loving you changed me.

because you never saw me
as something ruined.

You did not save me.

But you stood beside me long enough
for me to see
I was never broken.

Just buried
beneath everything
I survived.

And there are some people
who do not simply enter our lives—

they return us
to ourselves.

Jacque 🤍