21/08/2026
The strangest part of estrangement is not that they leave.
It is how quickly their silence becomes a story on your worth and who you areā¦
As I get older, I tend to look backwards as often as forwards.
And Iāve come to realise that the people who shape us, the people who really shape us in the end, are a collection of all the people we were lucky enough to love.
So what happens to your identity when one of those people decides to live without you?
The person you call āmeā might still be a frightened eight-year-old who never updated the story of how to be okay.
The helper.
The achiever.
The perfectionist.
The invisible one.
The strong one.
Not because that is who you are.
Because that is who fear rewarded you for protecting each time your needs werenāt met..
Every child is trying to answer three questions:
How do I stay safe?
How do I get love?
What must I do to belong?
Your nervous system answered before your adult brain had a map - this isnāt logic .
Then the abandonment, rejection play out..
And that frightened child does not hear:
āThis relationship has broken down.ā
She hears:
āYou were not worth staying for.ā
Maybe if I had been a quieter kid.
Kinder.
Less needy.
More lovable.
Perhaps they would have stayed.
That is the wound.
You can know their silence is not proof and still feel it as proof.
āCourage is grace under pressure.ā Hemingways dad suicided..
But grace is not carrying their rejection beautifully.
Courage is refusing to keep abandoning yourself because somebody else left.
That is the gap between recognising the pattern and rewiring it.
Rewire Emotional Mastery is not about forgetting the people who shaped you.
It is about no longer allowing their absence to decide who you are.
If their silence has become the loudest voice in your identity, DM me REM.
Even if they never come back, you can.
Love, Louisa xo
Louisa Nixon
The Confidence Whisperer
Rewire Emotional Masteryā¢