When Love Stops Hurting: Breaking Free from Self-Sacrifice

When Love Stops Hurting: Breaking Free from Self-Sacrifice 

What if the version of love you've been taught your entire life isn't actually love at all?

In this deeply reflective and vulnerable episode of Star Women Rising, Melinda explores a surprising and sometimes unsettling realization: she no longer experiences love the way she once did. The obligation, the sacrifice, the rescuing, the people-pleasing, the emotional exhaustion—all of the things she once believed were expressions of love have begun to fall away. 

As years of burnout, emotional depletion, and self-abandonment gave way to healing, a profound question emerged: What if true love isn't about sacrificing yourself for everyone else?

This episode dives into the difference between programmed love and authentic love, the hidden dangers of selflessness without boundaries, and the transformative power of finally choosing yourself.

✨ In this episode, you'll discover:

•  Why many of us confuse love with sacrifice 
•  How childhood conditioning shapes our understanding of relationships 
•  The surprising connection between burnout and people-pleasing 
•  Why boundaries can be one of the highest forms of love 
•  How self-love goes far deeper than affirmations and self-care 
•  What happens when you stop rescuing everyone around you 
•  The difference between obligation, attachment, and genuine love 

If you've ever questioned your relationships, felt emotionally exhausted from constantly giving, or wondered why choosing yourself feels so uncomfortable, this conversation offers a powerful new perspective.

Because maybe real love isn't losing yourself for others.

Maybe real love begins when you finally stop abandoning yourself.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Star Women Rising, where cosmic roots meet earthly power. I'm Melinda, and together we'll awaken the fire within and above, exploring intuition, soul wisdom, and the ancient truths written in the stars. This isn't about escaping the world. It's about remembering who you are and rising stronger in it. Star Women Rising is part of the Chicology Podcast Collective. Real women, real stories, rising together. Before we begin, I'd like to invite you to explore more podcasts under the Chicology Collective. We've got some real amazing women with some real amazing stories. They've got some very incredible insights on their personal journey. Check them out. I don't think you'll regret it. Today I I really wanted to dive into this very strange. This journey has been a very wild ride. And it felt like it came to a screeching halt about a year ago, maybe even more than that, where I just felt like nothing was happening, nothing was moving, and I was at a standstill. And then all of a sudden it was like it just broke loose with different insights, different experiences, nothing like I would have thought it would have been. But lately, this concept of love has really been just at the forefront for me. And I'm I'm almost positive I'm not alone in this. You have if you have reached a stage in your journey where you're pondering love, that word love, then you are not alone. At least I'm also there. But I've there's been a lot of turmoil, a lot of disruptions in what I thought my life was, my experiences with my family, my children, just friendships, and this love thing was at the forefront. I I started to kind of realize I was feeling like I don't love you. You know, you you hear people say, I don't love it, I don't love it, but I don't love you. Don't, I don't feel love, not not a loving aspect in my being, my body, my mind. And I'm thinking, what what is this? What what's happening here? And it's a little bit scary because you don't want to be that person. I mean, does this mean I'm a terrible person? Because I just, you know, I am not feeling love. And I'm doing the air quotes here. I am not feeling love for these people or things that that the world tells me that I should feel love for. And I'm not responding in loving ways, you know, what the programming tells me is a loving response. And and man, I've been, I've been deep, deep in it. Like, what is happening? What is going on? You know, you it you look at your your parents and you go, you know, I don't, I don't love you. And I'm not participating with you in the ways that I used to participate with you. And I'm not feeling this, this sense of obligation, or you, you know, you're looking at your children. It's not just parents, it's children or or whatever. You're looking at your friends and you're going, I don't, I don't love you, your spouse, maybe. And like, as always with me, this is this is my journey. It's not about throwing anybody under the bus. It's it's really how how I'm experiencing the world. And I don't feel love. And I don't think that that means that I don't have it in me. I don't think it means that I'm, you know, not a loving person or that I'm a terrible person. But I also feel like I don't have a frame of reference for what is actually happening. And I have a mentor who I love dearly. Now, I do feel a love for this mentor, but if I dissect it, it's not this possessive, this need to express love or or or do things or behave a certain way. There is this genuine love and respect and care that I do feel like this mentor actually commands, but you know, not in this demanding way. But this person's behavior makes it very easy to express love, but not not in the way we've been programmed to think of love. So this mentor actually uh video and was talking about how he didn't he he's into linguistics. He's he breaks down the meaning of words and he he did a deep dive into the word love, and linguistically he didn't like what he was seeing. The the roots, according to my mentor, the roots of the word love was really more like a I I possess you, I love you, I possess you. This was maybe a year or two ago, and that stuck with me because what he was trying to do was figure out other ways of expressing the I love you without using the the idea of I possessed you. But this happened literally before my complete detachment of love that just disappeared. And I mean, it it was like boom, what on earth am I experiencing? So, in my pondering of my feelings, I kind of go back to, you know, children, we we love our, we're taught to love our parents. And in my last episode, I talked about how my love was expressed through absorbing. I just want everybody to be happy, I just want to feel safe, I just want to not be traumatized. I just, I just want to be okay. I want everybody to be okay. I want everybody to be comfortable, and that became really my expression of love. And then, you know, you go, I grew up, became a teenager, and then you know, find this boyfriend. Well, I love him. There's this connection, and it's love. And that love became being somebody that you want me to be. And and I was happy to do it. And I think even in childhood, I kind of learned that too. You learn that if you behave a certain way or you do certain things, it pleases people, right? I I was an athlete, I learned very quickly that if I excelled as an athlete, that really pleased my dad. He really enjoyed the fact that I was athletic and I played the sports that he played. And and this is no slam on my dad. This was my own mind at work, thinking, you know, if I do these things, it pleases people. So then, like I said, you know, teenage years, I'm already working under the idea that if I do things that please people and it makes them happy and it it brings a connection, then it's, you know, it's love. I'm showing love. I will sacrifice myself for you. And that kind of moves into marriage, children. I will, I will sacrifice my very being for you because I love you. I don't know how many other people out there have told your children or you know, felt it, I would die for you. And I mean, I I know I've I've said that, and maybe that wasn't really a a loving thing to say. I think that's actually a lot of pressure. I would die for you. And my mom would say that to me, and I don't think that that she did not mean that. And as a mother, there are some some aspects of that I think that we truly feel that we would sacrifice ourselves for the well-being of our children, but but where does that take you? Where does that lead you? Your friends, I love you, and I'm going to be there for you, and I'm going to sometimes sacrifice my own well-being to be a good friend. I'm going to put myself sometimes through hell to be a good friend to you. I'm going to listen to your stories. I'm going to uh take your side. I'm going to intervene in your relationships because I love you. And let me tell you, when I talk about the fact that I was fried, I think this was a long time coming. I think I came out the shoot on a collision course with being fried, died, and laid to the side, like looking in the mirror and seeing death. Like this is not even an exaggeration. Look in the mirror and not even recognizing this person looking back at me through the eyes of death, sunken in eyes, you know, discoloration of my skin, my um extremities, my fingers, my toes, like everything's pulling back from me. I am literally dying. And recently, in this not feeling love for anybody experience, what I've noted is that I pulled back into myself. I stopped taking shit from people. I stopped being that loving person that says, I will die for you. I will intervene in your dramas. I will, whatever you need, I'm there. I will sacrifice my own well-being to show you that I love you. And when I stopped feeling that, I stopped feeling this love connection that that I used to feel, like even with my own children and even my my grandchildren. And please don't mistake my care. Like I deeply care for my family, I deeply care for the like couple friends that I have left. But what I cannot do anymore is sacrifice myself. And I think what was genuinely missing in the entire equation of this love was that there was no love for myself. And it wasn't like this, oh, you know, I don't love myself. I that type of thing is I hate myself. I don't, you know, I'm not happy with who I am. What it was was this that connection to myself had been completely lost just to keep peace, just to make sure that everybody else was happy, to make sure that everybody else's well-being was was being managed and completely disregarded my own well-being. You know, people, you know, an example, hey, do you we're having this event going on? Do you want to go? And I'm really feeling like, no, I really just don't want to go. I don't want to be around a bunch of people. I don't want to be involved, but going anyway because I wanted them to be happy. I wanted them to feel loved. And in that I was completely sacrificing my own needs of some quiet time or just to be left alone. And and I've really been on a big just leave me alone kit. And that, you know, that causes people to be concerned. While I'm feeling this lack of love, so is everybody else, right? Everybody else around me is looking at looking at me like, how can you just be this way? How can you just withdraw your love? So it's it's blaring at me. This is this is really not just an internal experience because I'm watching the responses. Like my last episode, I talked about being in the middle of a very volatile situation and being clear, being clear in it. And I and people are thinking, how how can you just sit back and watch this stuff happen and not intervene and not get involved and act like you don't care and act like you don't love anyone? And the truth is, I don't care. I don't care the way I used to. I don't care um to get involved. I don't care to dive into somebody's situation where they're circling the drain and I end up in that drain and can't get out. I don't love this situation. I don't love the people involved in the way that everybody has been programmed to think of love. I don't feel that. I don't feel it at all. I don't feel it one bit, but I do care. I care enough to stay out of it. I care enough to protect myself. I do love. I love enough to love myself first and to not sacrifice my own well-being to dig somebody out of a hole that they've dug themselves into and exhaust myself because I've been there. I've been there, done that, don't like it. Don't like looking in the mirror and seeing a dead person staring back at me, lifeless, dead zombie who's just going through the motions. So I've been grappling, I've been grappling with this. But what's remarkable is how much better I feel, how much better I look. I'm now looking in the mirror and going, oh, there's life behind those eyes now. There's no dark circles and hair falling out. I mean, I'm painting an ugly picture, and make no mistake, it's been a very ugly picture. I am not exaggerating not being able to function and just going through the motions of every day because I forgot to love myself. I forgot to respect myself and my own needs. And I'm not backing down. And I think that is causing alarm. But what I'm learning is probably the most loving thing I can do is to love myself and operate from clarity and coherence and not sacrifice my own well-being just so that everyone else can feel loved. And it's been very confusing. It's been confusing for my circle, it's been confusing for myself, but in that meaning so much clarity. And my and my health is improving. I mean, the health routine is really only a very small part of it. It's like treating the symptoms as opposed to treating what's actually causing the symptoms. Yeah, talk about, talk about a really incredible experience. And like I said, I I still don't have a frame of reference. I still feel like I am a bit in limbo with where does this go? You know, where what does it, what does true love really, really feel like? And I don't know. I mean, right now it feels very empty. I feel a deep emptiness, but it's not, it's it's not freaking me out. It's not, you know, it's not concerning. It's intriguing. What's really interesting about this experience is I've I've kind of come to realize what what this programmed love, it's a distorted love that's based on function, you know, what what you can do for me, what I should be doing for you. Uh, it's not a resonant thing. It's you know, resonant where inside it feels right to you, but it doesn't require you sacrificing. It's not role-based. If I'm being totally honest, I just don't feel that. I do not love my parents because they're my parents. There's something else. There's something, there's something deeper. There's a lineage, there's an ancestral, there's this, uh, you know, especially in motherhood, there's this, you you gave me life, but not this, because you gave me life, I'm obligated to put up with your bullshit. When we get into relationships, you know, the dating relationships and how quickly you can fall out of love with somebody for for really the most minor things, right? Yeah, I don't like the way you chew your food. You chew your food, it's loud, it makes me want to vomit. So I I don't love you anymore. I can think about just instances of that. Oh, you're you're you're a terrible friend. You didn't side with me, you sided with with Becky, with so and so. So you're not you're not my friend anymore. I don't love you anymore. So there's there's you know conditions around it, and it's really a love that serves a system, not a soul. And I think what I'm diving into is more of a soul-based love. And you've heard people say you can't love someone until you learn to love yourself. And I think that is deeply, deeply true. But I think it's deeper than what we think. We think, okay, okay, all right, I love myself. You give yourself positive affirmations. I'm I'm beautiful, I'm kind, I'm smart. So now I'm ready to love somebody else. No, no, it's it requires some boundaries, it requires some very deep processing, some very deep work. Again, this is my own experience. There may be people out there that say, no, you know, I I've learned to just love myself and and think that I'm an amazing person, and that works for me. And and that's fine. This is truly my own experience of this much deeper love of myself, and it has nothing to do with how I look or the services I provide to other people, my selflessness. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with being clear, setting boundaries, not engaging, not sacrificing myself or my own well-being for somebody else's happiness and their well-being. And don't get me wrong, I do care. I have compassion, I have empathy, but I do it without entanglement and I do it without absorbing. And it doesn't look pretty, doesn't look pretty to those who are witnessing because everyone's still operating on this programmed thought process of what love means, what love entails. Um, you can have situations that are emotionally taxing. I don't allow myself to dive into those emotions that are not mine. Fear, anxiety. Um I hold my center. And this was never, this was never something I could do before. I think I mentioned last episode, you know, I had a situation of uh my dad having to have a procedure. And I, in a time not so long ago, I would have worried myself sick over is it gonna be okay? Is he gonna make it through this? I'm not there anymore. Keep my center. And I realize I don't have any control. I don't have any control over the outcome. And just having to learn to be okay with whatever the outcome is because they have their own journey. I'm not scared of being traumatized anymore. I'm breathing, going inward and exploring my own feelings, my own emotions, what's truly mine and not everyone else's. And it's such a it's such a strange, such a strange space. And I don't think I've gotten to the end of it. I think I'm still very much in the midst of it. So I don't know where this leads, but it's deeply unfamiliar, deeply familiar. I feel like maybe it's uh something ancient within it, but also not having any current frame of reference to to make it totally clear. It's still a journey for me. And it's deep. It's deep. There is nothing, there is nothing stranger than seemingly waking up one morning and going, Oh, I feel an ounce of love. I don't feel this possessive. I have to control you. You have to behave in a way that makes me feel good inside. It's just not there. I love my garden. I love looking at it. I love the the fact that we constructed it. I love the fact that I got the idea and we carried it out and it's producing. And I tend it and it reciprocates by giving us some of the most delicious greens and I've got peas and radishes, you know, a variety of things that are healthy and thriving, but I'm not out there every second of the day. It's we built it, I planted it, I tend to it occasionally, and I think that there's something about life that this garden is reflecting to me. I love that. I love picking strawberries, I love my animals, but I don't, I love my family. It just doesn't look the same. It doesn't look like what I'm used to. It doesn't feel like what I'm used to. But in that, I also love myself. And I love myself so much that I think it's pouring out and I'm still learning. I'm still learning. Oh, you know, I have to really resist engaging, getting involved, responding out of my own clarity, my own. My own self-love, I I really have to be conscious of how I'm living my life. Am I doing things because that's what's expected? And not even necessarily from somebody else. I've taught myself that this is what's expected of me. So I'm gonna do it, even though it makes me feel like crap inside to do it, even if it's something I don't want to do. I don't, you know, I'm not sacrificing myself. And that is that is such a a deep love for myself that I didn't know was there. And it's changed my world. And I'm still in it. I'm still, I'm still navigating it. But already, like I said, I'm not staring at a dead person in the mirror anymore. I stopped looking in the mirror. It got so bad. But literally, it was just a couple days ago. I looked in the mirror and I said, wow, those dark circles are are gone. My hair looks fuller, the discoloration of my lips is gone, like they're growing back. My my whole face was receding off my skull. It was just the weirdest, most traumatic experience. And that's that's not there anymore. And I I absolutely attribute that to this new found love. And like I said, I know I'm not the only person who who's probably experiencing this. I'm naming it. So if there's anybody out there that feels something similar where you're looking around and you're going, uh, I don't love this. You you may be in a similar place in your journey. And uh, I'm just I'm just offering some of my own insight of what I'm experiencing. And who knows, who knows where this where this goes? And maybe the people around me will sort of pick up on some of it. This is this is truly love. Because I I really feel like the most loving thing you can do is to stay in your center, honor yourself, honor your own feelings, honor your own needs. And it's not bad, it's it's not a bad thing to be selfish, but there's a there's a tag on that word, selfish. You're supposed to be selfless, and selfless will get you looking in the mirror at a dead person. Take my word for it. I I've lived it. Selfish doesn't mean being rude or being unconscious in your behavior and and pretending like you live on an island and that what you do doesn't affect other people. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is honor your own needs, honor your own experience, honor other people's need to hit the damn wall or go through the fire. It's a very different form of being self-ish. We gotta, we gotta figure out a way to get past that word because we've just been trained to completely sacrifice who we are. And I think that just makes makes things harder. So you go through a little bit of the discomfort of now, I'm gonna choose me, because it's difficult. You go through a little bit of that discomfort, but then you start seeing the world starts changing around you. You know, your your personal experience of the world absolutely starts changing. It kind of opens up these very magical moments. So, anyway, I could ramble on about this. If anybody else is out there experiencing this, just please know you're not alone. There's probably more people than we can even imagine that are going through this experience. And I'm just trying to put a name to it and let's start naming it. Start, let's start talking about it. There's because it's okay, and I think it's going to lead someplace amazing. So, with that, thank you for joining me here on Star Women Rising. If today's conversation stirred something in you, trust it. That's your fire awakening. This podcast is part of the Chicology Collective where women everywhere are reclaiming their voice, their power, and their light. Be sure to subscribe, share this with the Soul Sister, and explore more shows under Chicology because we rise higher when we rise together. Until next time, keep reaching for the stars and rooting deep in your power.