The Regrettable Thank You

Chapter 1: A Thank You I Never Asked For

I didn’t want this story, I didn’t ask for these wounds and I never prayed for these storms.

And yet, here I am. Looking back, not with peace… but with clarity. Not with joy… but with purpose. I’m thankful, yes. But not in the way most people mean it.

I’m thankful in a regrettable way. The kind of thank you that comes after too much silence. After too many nights crying into a pillow with no answers, after being told that “I was the problem” when all I did was love too loudly.

I didn’t deserve it. But I can use it and make something out of what was meant to break me.

Because survival wasn’t enough for me, I wanted healing and wholeness. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life dragging around the wreckage of people who never tried to build me. So, I turned inward, and I faced the shadows of abuse in all its forms. The emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual. I’ve stopped apologising for my sensitivity. I stopped believing that my worth was up for debate. As I peeled back the shame, the conditioning, the manipulation, and found a version of myself I had never met before: powerful, grounded, compassionate, and free. Free to speak, free to feel, free to live and ultimately   in that freedom, I found my faith again, not just in God, but in myself. Faith in my resilience to overcome all that has transpired and faith in my voice again. In the truth that I was never the storm, I was the survivor in the eye of it and that alone is worth every regrettable thank you I now offer from the other side of pain.

Chapter 2: The Pain That Spoke Louder Than Love

What do you do when the people who are meant to love you the most… are the ones who destroy you?

Not strangers. Not enemies. But the ones who were meant to tuck you into bed. The ones who were supposed to sign your school notes, help you feel safe, and guide you through childhood. The same ones who looked others in the eye and said they were “doing their best” … but never actually showed up when it mattered.

They said it was love.
But they showed everything else but that.

I learned early that pain can wear a familiar face, it can come dressed as family. Neglect wears the face of a mother who disappears behind closed doors. Abandonment smells like stale beer and cigarette smoke lingering in the kitchen where love should have lived. In my world, love was hollow. It came with rules, with performance and silence.

There was no birthday cards filled with affirming words. No late-night talks that calmed my fears or dreams. There was no steady presence, just tension, chaos, and me. Always me, trying to be good, trying to be helpful. Trying to be enough and yet remain invisible.

I adjusted myself to survive. I made myself smaller to keep the peace. I softened my voice, hid my pain, and twisted myself into whatever shape I thought might finally be lovable. But they never truly saw me. They only saw what they could control. Yet somehow, I still carried light. Even after being blamed, ignored, and reshaped by other people’s wounds, I still gave love, I still hoped and I still believed in goodness of anything.

Not their words. Not their presence. Not their permission.

But the truth that even in the deepest chaos, I never lost myself completely.
I kept a soft heart in a harsh world and no one can take that from me.

Chapter 3: A Thank You to Those Who Broke Me

So this is where I say it. Out loud, Unshaken and Honest.
Thank you. Not because you deserved to be part of my growth, but because you taught me exactly what I would never be.

- My abusive, neglectful, grooming mother — for showing me what absence looks like, so I could learn to be present.

- My alcoholic, emotionally unavailable father — for teaching me that silence speaks louder than words.

- My narcissistic, manipulative stepmother — for showing me how control is never love.

- My systematically abusive aunty — for the lies you fed me, so I could learn how to starve deceit.

- My submissive grandmother — for showing me what enabling looks like, so I could break the pattern.

- My controlling, abusive, lying step-grandfather — for teaching me that power doesn’t equal protection.

- My manipulative, controlling sister — for making me the scapegoat, so I could find my own truth in the wilderness.

- My manipulative partners — for taking advantage of my softness, so I could learn boundaries made of steel.

- The “friends” who never asked for my truth — you wanted a reason to hate me, and you found one. But it was never about me. I gave, and you took. And I still rose.

- My in-laws — who twisted words, enabled abuse, and harmed my child while claiming to love us. Your silence is your signature.

- And finally — my ex-husband: The man who broke what was left of me—who abused, lied, cheated, gaslit, used, and tried to erase me. Who touched what should have been protected. Who projected his own failures onto me, to escape his reflection. Who wore a mask in public while destroying everything sacred in private.

Thank you. Because you lit the fire and I walked through it. Yes it hurt but I didn’t burn, I transformed.

Chapter 4: The Mother I Became in Spite of It All

Now I get to teach my boys what love actually is. Not because I had it, or have to but because I earned it through pain and want to because that’s a choice I am willing and wanting to make.

I show them consistency.
I show them presence.
I show them healing.
Now when I cry, it’s no longer because I’m broken. It’s because I’m whole enough to feel it all.
They see a mother who stood in the ruins and rebuilt with faith. A woman who didn’t wait for an apology to start rising. A soul who held scars like scripture and used every wound as wisdom.  Where She chose wholeness even while bleeding and turned every broken piece into a brick for rebuilding her future.

Chapter 5: It Ends With Me

This is not just a survival story, this is a declaration. I don’t look like what I’ve been through, but I carry it. Not as shame, but as proof. Proof that faith works, proof that scars can heal and as proof that the fire was real, but so is my freedom. So to everyone who thought I wouldn’t make it, who hoped I’d stay small, silent, broken. I regretfully, honestly, powerfully say THANKYOU. Because of you… I know who I am, and I found my voice in the wreckage you left behind, and I no longer need permission to exist fully. My life is no longer defined by your choices, but by the healing I chose for myself.
Because of you… I know who I am. And it ends. With. Me.

Prayer:

You saw me when no one else did.
You held me in the quiet moments when I was just a child—confused, invisible, and aching for love I never received.

You knew my heart long before it was broken.
You knew the battles I would face… not because I deserved them, but because the world is sometimes cruel, and people are sometimes careless with the souls they’re meant to protect.

But through it all, You never left.

Thank You for protecting the light inside me when the world tried to dim it.
Thank You for whispering worth into me, even when the voices around me said otherwise.
Thank You for making my pain a platform, not a prison.

Lord, help me continue to rise with softness, not spite.
Let my heart remain open, but not unguarded.
Let my past shape me, but never define me.
And may my healing remind others that they, too, are worthy of love, even if they’ve never truly known it.

I release the need to be chosen by those who never saw me.
Because You chose me first.

And that is enough.

Amen.