For the ones who stayed soft… even when it hurt.

This piece hit me in a place I didn’t realise was still tender.

There’s something quietly devastating in the way it unpacks the effort of becoming smaller — of swallowing your voice, your needs, even your pain — just to keep someone close. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Laughing when we wanted to break. Nodding when everything in us wanted to scream.

But what stayed with me most was this:

“Shrinking isn’t the same as being loved.”

A line that echoes long after the words fade.

Whoever wrote this… thank you. You spoke for so many of us.