Excerpt from Raised by Wounds

What was truly lost was not love itself, but safety. The safety to express emotion without punishment, to make mistakes without shame, and to exist without performing. When safety is absent in childhood, it does not automatically appear in adulthood. Many people spend years trying to build relationships that can finally provide what they never received, without realizing they are asking partners to heal wounds they did not create.

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This is how resentment grows, cycles repeat, and love collapses under the weight of unspoken expectations.

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Most people are not afraid of love. They are afraid of being unprotected inside it. Afraid that relaxing will cause everything to fall apart, that needing too much will lead to abandonment, or that being fully seen will result in rejection. These fears were learned, not imagined.

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Until we confront what raised us—the wounds, the silence, and the survival—we will continue mistaking familiarity for fate.

This book is not about blaming parents. It is about telling the truth. Healing does not begin with forgiveness. It begins with clarity. Clarity begins when we finally say out loud what we were taught to keep quiet.

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We were not raised by love. We were raised by wounds, and that distinction matters.