Nobody Was Coming to Thaw Me: On Becoming Your Own Source.

For most of my life, I waited for my mother to tell me I was enough.

She never did. Not the way I needed. And I spent decades trying to earn it.

It’s funny how we inherit the stories that define us from the people in authority roles. From the ages of 14 to 24, I was obese. There were brief periods where I would lose the extra weight and be thin for two or three months, but then the 100 pounds would inevitably creep back.

Both of my parents tried different ways to motivate me to shed the extra pounds, and my young mind translated their words into a devastating narrative: nobody will ever love or accept me unless I am thin. Deep down, the translation was even more painful: they will never approve of me or love me unless I am thin. So I built layers of physical protection. I shrank my spirit while expanding my body, playing a supporting role to their expectations and using food to fill an empty void.

The breakthrough came at 24. I met someone who looked entirely beyond those layers of protection. He helped me see what a fantastic, vibrant, and loving woman I was, regardless of the number on the scale. For the first time, the mirror changed. I began to love myself. I stopped using food to fill the emptiness and started to self-nurture.

I thought I had solved the equation. But narratives have deep roots.

It took two marriages that made me shrink, a battle with cancer in my late thirties, career reinventions that nobody around me understood, and one full year in a deep depressive state for the illusion to finally break. I realized that the pattern of waiting for external validation, from a parent, a partner, or a professional title, was still running the script.

In the middle of all that noise, a quiet reality settled in: Nobody was coming to thaw me.

The warmth I was waiting for had to come from my own hands.

So here is the question I want to leave with you: are you still waiting for someone else to provide it?

A parent who couldn’t. A partner who wouldn’t. A version of yourself you keep putting off until conditions are better.

The shift doesn’t happen when the right person finally shows up to validate you. It happens when you turn inward, look at your own reflection, and realize your own approval is the only permission slip you have ever needed.

I know this because I lived it. All of it. The waiting, the hoping, the slow and painful decision to resign from the roles I outgrew and become my own source.

That decision is available to you too. Right now. Not when things calm down. Not when you finally feel ready.

Now.

-Soléa