What Reclaiming Your Power Looks Like

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Back in 2019, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship.

I talk about this experience often because it fundamentally changed who I was. At first, for the worse. Eventually, for the best.

Even while I was in the relationship, I knew I wasn’t being treated well. I recognized that his words, his actions, and the way he behaved toward me were not okay. I would even tell my friends, “I know this isn’t right… but I just care about him so much.”

And so, despite knowing better, I stayed.

The relationship dragged on for far longer than I like to admit. Until, eventually, he left me.

And when he did, I shattered. I became a broken shell of myself, unable to understand how I could have sacrificed so much of myself and still not been enough. I couldn’t make sense of how someone who claimed to care about me could inflict so much damage and then walk away so easily.

In the months that followed, I spiraled through a storm of emotions. Grief, helplessness, sadness. But above all else, anger. So much anger. I watched him move on almost immediately with someone else while I was still drowning in the wreckage he left behind. And the further I got from the relationship, the less I understood.

So, I waited. I waited for him to see how much he had hurt me. I waited for an apology, for some acknowledgment of the pain he had caused. I convinced myself that the only way I could ever truly heal was if he realized he had made a mistake. That he saw my worth. That he regretted everything.

But that moment never came.

And that’s when I realized something that changed my life forever.

Taking my power back had nothing to do with him.

For so long, I had proclaimed that this relationship was the worst thing to ever happen to me. And in many ways, it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. But now, years later, happily married to a man who loves, respects, and cherishes me, I can say with absolute certainty that this experience was also one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Because it forced me to confront a truth I had spent my whole life avoiding.

Your life is a mirror of the worth you hold.

At first, this realization stung. It felt like another way to place blame on myself for the things I had suffered. But I now understand that this isn’t about blame at all—it’s about power.

For as long as I could remember, I sought validation in my relationships. I measured my worth based on how much love I received from others. If they were committed to me, I was worthy. If they treated me well, I was lovable. If they left me, I wasn’t enough.

This belief system shaped every relationship I entered. It inevitably led to unhealthy, imbalanced dynamics because I didn’t love myself enough to demand more.

It wasn’t until the fallout of this relationship that I finally understood what love was by first learning what it was not.

Love is not tolerating mistreatment in exchange for the bare minimum.
It is not sacrificing your needs to keep someone else happy.
It is not walking on eggshells, constantly stressed about how someone will act or react.

Those definitions of love create codependent relationships, where one person over-gives and the other over-takes. Those dynamics always fall apart in the end.

Real love is a balance between loving yourself and another person.
Real love is acting from love, not for love.
Real love is knowing you are just as deserving of the love you so freely give.

The truth is, the anger I held onto after that breakup wasn’t really about him. It was about me.

I wasn’t just angry at him. I was angry at myself.

Angry that I had tolerated so much.
Angry that I had allowed someone to treat me so poorly for so long.
Angry that I had, on some level, believed I was worthy of so little.

And this is where I learned one of the most painful but most transformative truths about relationships.

The way we allow others to treat us is a direct reflection of how much we love and value ourselves.

But let me be clear. Trauma is never your fault.

What I endured in that relationship was not something I deserved. The way he treated me was not my fault. And the wounds I carried from my past were not a reflection of my worth.

However, while my trauma was not my fault, healing from it was my responsibility.

I had to learn how to set boundaries.
I had to stop looking for validation outside of myself.
I had to believe that I deserved better before I could attract better.

This is what reclaiming your power looks like.

It’s not about relieving others of their responsibility. It’s about taking full accountability for your own.

The moment I stopped waiting for him to apologize or recognize my worth, everything changed. Because my healing was never meant to come from him. It was always meant to come from me.

And once I learned to experience love within myself, every relationship I welcomed into my life began to reflect that love back to me.

It wasn’t until I forgave myself for what I had tolerated that I was able to truly heal.

And it was in loving myself this way that I found my way into the arms of someone who loves me the way I always deserved to be loved.

For so long, I searched for love outside of myself, believing I needed it from others in order to feel whole. But it was never about my relationships with them. It was always about my relationship with me.

And when I finally changed that relationship, everything else fell into place.

So, if you are still waiting for someone else to validate your worth, stop waiting. The more you learn to love and care for yourself, the more you will attract people who will do the same.

And that is the real lesson.

With love
Gabrielle N.