I was seven years old the day my life split into a “before” and an “after.”

My mom drove me to my grandparents’ house, set my things beside the driveway, and left.

No explanation. No goodbye.

Just a silence heavier than any words could have been.

That moment became the first wound I didn’t have the language to name. I didn’t understand abandonment—I only understood the feeling of being unwanted. I didn’t understand trauma—I only knew the world suddenly felt unsafe.

That little version of me learned quickly how to survive without being held, without reassurance, without being chosen.

And yet… she kept going.

She learned to raise her newborn sister at six.

She learned to move from apartment to apartment, never fully unpacking because stability was never guaranteed.

She learned to become the strong one long before she should have had to be.

I’m writing this because many people see the woman I am now but not the girl I once was—the girl who cried quietly in new bedrooms, who made a tent over her bed because she needed a safe world inside the unsafe one she lived in, who worried about food, who hoped someone—anyone—would show up and stay.

No one did then.

So I became that person now.

BeYourselfHaven143 was born from her story—my story.

A place where the abandoned find belonging.

Where the unheard find a voice.

Where the broken don’t have to pretend they aren’t.

I’m not a doctor.

I’m not a therapist.

I’m simply someone who lived through the things most people never talk about—and I refuse to let that suffering go to waste.

If my pain can help someone else feel less alone, then that seven-year-old version of me didn’t survive for nothing.

Healing starts here.

With honesty.

With courage.

With us.