Everyone thought they knew Sara.
Her parents, siblings, friends. Even her husband. They knew her or so they believed. But what they recognized was only the version of her she allowed them to see. The curated calm, the practiced smile, the silence where truth once tried to speak.
Sara’s childhood had the appearance of joy games, school days, festive tables but the emotional landscape underneath told a different story. Her days were mapped out for her long before she understood she had a voice of her own. Choices were made not through exploration, but instruction. If she liked the color black, it was replaced by pink. Black was “too grown-up,” “too heavy.” Pink was safer. Softer. More ladylike. More acceptable.
She didn’t get to choose her friends either. Relationships were vetted by surname, by faith, by family reputation. Connection was filtered through expectation. And yet, she obeyed. Not out of agreement, but out of survival. The ache of being misunderstood wasn’t sharp it was constant. A slow erosion of self.
Sara loved her younger sister deeply their bond remained precious through it all. But her mother’s affection was often selective, reserved more clearly for the youngest. Sara, the eldest, carried an invisible weight: the burden of being both protector and perceived problem. When others disappointed or upset her mother, Sara somehow bore the blame. “It’s because of you,” her mother would whisper, her voice edged with frustration Sara didn’t understand.
She longed to be heard. To be known. But instead, she was often spoken about. Sara can still hear the late-night phone calls her mother confiding in a close friend; retelling stories laced with disappointment. Sara, the ungrateful one. The source of her worry.
Her mother has since passed. May peace be upon her. And yet, her voice lingers in fragments of memory sharp, weighty, unforgettable. Now an adult and a mother of four, Sara moves through life with a radiant smile. People see her joy and rarely ask what shaped it. But inside, certain triggers still awaken the child within. The one who was always trying to make others happy without knowing how to make herself whole.
Yet one thing never wavered, Sara’s private conversations with her Creator. In the quiet corners of adolescence and adulthood, she poured her heart to the One who always knew. Who saw her, when no one else seemed to. Today, Sara listens to others in the same way she once needed to be heard. In the safety of a therapeutic space, when broken hearts speak without realizing they’re revealing their wounds, she recognizes them, not from textbooks, but from lived experience.
Because no one really knows her but she knows them. And in that sacred knowing, healing begins.
There are stories we carry quietly until someone gives us permission to speak to them aloud. At Wellness Within Therapy, you’re not just heard you’re seen.
By Naazi Morad
