If this hits a nerve, you’re not alone. Healing Thoughts is where I say the quiet parts loudly. If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s the time. It’s only getting rawer from here.
“Emotional starvation gets passed down like tradition. You don’t have to pass it forward. You can feed yourself now.”
I grew up in a kitchen with no scent,
no steam, no slow-simmered comfort.
They served silence like bread—
day-old, stiff, breaking at the crust.
I learned to chew my questions
until they turned to paste.
When hunger woke me at night,
I ate memory instead.
Years later,
I set a plate for myself,
hand shaking,
not knowing if I deserved it.
I sat.
I ate.
And nothing burned.
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
— Stephen Chbosky
A childhood without emotional nourishment teaches you that hunger is normal. The body learns to ration connection. It learns to ignore its appetite for tenderness, praise, or comfort. That adaptation is what keeps you alive. But it can also keep you small.
When you begin to feed yourself, it will feel disorienting. You may suspect you are taking too much, even when you are still starving. This is the body trying to keep you in the familiar. The fear of abundance is often louder than the pain of deprivation.
Healing means teaching yourself that hunger is not a shameful state. It means filling your plate even when no one else eats with you. At first, the nourishment might taste foreign. Over time, your nervous system adjusts, and what once felt dangerous starts to feel like home.
☕ This newsletter runs on coffee and confession.
If you’ve found something honest here, consider tipping the truth.
Buy Me a Coffee →
Before you move on, consider this:
Where have you been living on emotional scraps? And what would feeding yourself look like today?
I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for preorder now. Release date: October 1. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.
Scraps + Bandaids:
🕊 New messages drop most weekdays—quiet, but not gentle.
🔥 Paid subscribers keep the wounds lit long enough to be named.
📚 When the pain overflows, it becomes a book.
🧢 Healing wears well when stitched into something real.
☕ This newsletter runs on coffee and confession.
🖤 Shadow Thoughts carries the pieces too jagged for here.
Paid subscribers get deeper essays, unreleased poems, behind-the-scenes drafts, and the darker questions I’m not ready to share with the world yet. If you want that access: