A Love Letter to the Woman Who Built My Future, Part Two: When Love Becomes a Shield

By Leila Briggs

Last week, I shared about the woman who built my future - the self who loved by giving herself away. I could finally see the pattern and thus a new love started to grow from that awareness. This week, I want to go one step further: to share what it looked like to see through the pattern so real transformation could begin.

I didn’t survive by fixing other people. I survived by transforming myself. Over and over, I tore myself down - quietly, skillfully, and without question.

If something hurt, it must have been me. If someone pulled away, it must have been something I said, something I failed to understand.

If a relationship or friendship cracked, it was another opportunity for me to grow, to be softer, to love more purely.

On the outside, it looked like devotion - endless compassion, unshakable patience, light-filled grace.

On the inside, it was control. Not the kind that manipulates others, but the kind that keeps pain at bay.

Because if it was always me - my lesson, my karma, my chance to evolve - then I never had to face the unbearable possibility that someone might not love me back.

That illusion gave me structure. It gave me a way to keep believing in connection, even when it wasn’t mutual.

And I did experience deep intimacy - even real moments of soul-level meeting - but there was always a current underneath. A hum of vigilance. A waiting for the moment I’d inevitably “mess it up” again.

Avoidance never led to stability. It led to a kind of deep exhaustion on many levels - the kind that comes from constantly rebuilding yourself in the image of an ideal that’s impossible to reach.

The hardest part has been realizing how deeply I built my sense of safety around this pattern. To stop tearing myself down felt unnatural - even threatening. My nervous system didn’t trust peace. My heart didn’t know what to do with being seen without “earning it.”

Learning to stay in my own skin while loving another has been its own kind of initiation.

I still catch the impulse - the quiet thought that says, you could have handled that better, or maybe if you were more patient. But now I recognize it for what it is: the echo of an old belief or as some would call it, a contract. The belief that if I kept perfecting myself, love would never leave.

When that contract finally broke, everything flipped.

After years of believing it was all my fault, I saw how often it wasn’t.

The relief was enormous - and so was the grief. Suddenly I could see how much harm and neglect I had absorbed that never belonged to me. For a time, it made the world feel hostile, like everyone was out to take something. Losing the illusion of control left me feeling victimized by the truth I had avoided.

But even that was part of healing.

I needed to see both extremes - the self-blame and the helplessness - to find the middle ground where reality actually lives.

Now I see myself and others more clearly. Some actions are theirs, some are mine, and love exists in the space between.

I don’t need to disappear to feel safe, and I don’t need to harden to feel powerful. I just need to stay present enough to see things as they are and make choices from there.

It’s tender work, this rebuilding. There are still days when the urge to disappear into sacrifice feels safer. By nature, I am a deeply giving person, and this sacred work has been about finding the fine line between honoring that truth and gently untangling the unhealthy threads woven through it

But each time I choose to stay - to stay visible, to stay honest, to stay me or even use my coping mechanism of sacrifice consciously - I feel another brick settle into a foundation that’s finally mine.

Maybe that’s what healing really is.

It turned out the soul’s journey was never about becoming softer or brighter, but about learning to hold balance - to see truth clearly, without letting go of love.

A little note of thanks for allowing me to share a small piece of this more recent journey. The last six years have changed the way I see relationships, teaching, and healing itself. I’m deeply grateful for everyone who reads and offers feedback. The healer’s path is never truly complete. With love. 🤍