Safety First

Healing cannot happen in environments that continue to harm us.

I’ve spent many years learning how to show up differently.

Learning how to communicate more effectively, regulate my nervous system, and respond rather than react.

Learning how to become a healthier parent, partner, woman, and human.

This work matters. Personal responsibility is incredibly important.

But so is context.

Alongside the inner work we are doing to heal and grow, I continue to witness a troubling pattern in how we relate to women.

We ask:

“Why is she so reactive?”

“Why doesn’t she do things differently?”

“Why can’t she just calm down?”

Or my favorite, “Why can’t she just be nice?”

Too often, we blame women.

We project our beliefs about what is right for another person’s life and place an unfair burden of responsibility on them for the behaviors, choices, and actions of others.

This is especially true for mothers, who are so often expected to carry, fix, manage, and be accountable for everyone around them.

While also smiling and keeping everyone comfortable.

But no one person is responsible for another’s behavior.

Healing, accountability, and change belong to each of us.

I want us to start asking a very different question.

Does she feel safe?

Because no human being can consistently show up in healthy ways when living in environments that are unsafe, disrespectful, or dehumanizing.

Safety is not a luxury; it’s a biological necessity.

Our nervous systems are designed to detect danger and keep us alive. When our bodies perceive threat - whether physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, relational, financial, or spiritual - we shift into survival.

We fight, we flee, we freeze, we fawn.

Survival responses are not character flaws to be shamed.

They are necessary adaptations to the environments and experiences we have survived.

Many women do not feel safe in their own homes.

Many live with abuse, control, intimidation, invalidation, manipulation, and criticism.

Many carry the invisible labor of entire families while their own needs, feelings, and humanity remain unseen.

Many are navigating the lingering and persistent effects of generational trauma.

Many are carrying enormous pain while receiving very little support as they parent their children and also attempt to reparent themselves.

Many are living in environments where they are regularly disrespected.

Respect matters.

Feeling valued matters.

Being listened to and validated in our unique experiences matters.

Safety is not simply the absence of physical violence.

Safety is also being spoken to with kindness, having your boundaries honored, being believed, being allowed to have needs, having your no respected, being treated as an equal, being able to rest, being able to tell the truth without fear of punishment, being free to be fully yourself.

I know intimately how difficult all of this can be.

After years of moving through trauma, abuse, and unhealthy dynamics, I began cultivating safety within my own body.

Layer by layer, breath by breath, boundary by boundary, truth by truth.

It requires tremendous courage.

When we have lived in survival for long periods of time, safety itself can feel unfamiliar, often terrifying.

Yet healing asks us to keep moving toward safety.

Toward respect, toward reciprocity, toward love.

So before asking how women could show up differently, let’s ask a different question.

How can we help women feel safe, respected, and valued?

Because everything changes from there.

The goal is not to shame ourselves or others for the ways we learned to survive.

The goal is to create enough safety that new ways of being become possible.

Here are some ways to create more safety in our homes:

• Speak with respect, especially during conflict.

• Honor boundaries and consent.

• Know and express your non-negotiables.

• Take responsibility for your own emotions and healing.

• Repair after rupture, own what is yours.

• Share emotional and domestic labor.

• Listen to understand, rather than defend.

• Validate experiences, even when perspectives differ.

• Eliminate manipulation, mockery, intimidation, and name-calling.

• Encourage authentic expression without punishment.

• Seek support when harmful patterns emerge.

  
  

Finding safety in my relationship with my partner has been beautifully complex.

When we met, I was finally feeling safe in my body for the first time in my life. I had never experienced being loved, honored, respected, touched, and communicated with in such beautiful ways.

And yet, as healthy as our relationship is in many ways, we both carry wounds, conditioning, and protective patterns from previous relationships, our families, and the collective. There is so much for each of us to unlearn, heal, and release.

We recorded a visual poem, Safe, together several months ago. At the time, I was struggling to feel safe within our relationship. We both had (and still have) a lot of inner work to do.

After separating for a few months, we found our way back to one another. Since then, the safety between us has grown in ways I could never have imagined.

Safety isn’t the absence of challenges or pain. It’s knowing that both people are willing to meet themselves, each other, and the relationship with honesty, respect, accountability, and love.

I’m grateful to finally share this creation with you. I wish you safety within yourself, within your relationships, and within all spaces you choose to enter.

May all beings be Safe.

Love you all,

Melissa