Healing begins when you realise the prison was never them—it was always your own unhealed heart.

We spend so much of our lives believing we are trapped by other people. What they said. What they did. What they never apologised for.

We point to the memory like it's a locked door, and we rattle the handle day after day, waiting for them to set us free. But healing doesn’t come when they change. Healing begins the moment we realise—the prison was never them. It was always our own unhealed heart.

At first, that realisation can sting. It feels unfair. After all, weren’t they the one who hurt us? Weren’t they the reason we built walls around our trust, silenced our joy, or carried shame that never belonged to us?

Yes. And still, healing is an inside job.

The pain they caused may have been real, even profound. But what holds us in suffering long after the event has passed is our relationship to the wound. It's the story we rehearse, the bitterness we cradle, the hope we harbour that one day, they’ll get it. But some people won’t. Some can’t. And some don’t need to.

Because your liberation is not dependent on their remorse. It’s dependent on your own courage to tend to the parts of you that were broken—and begin again.

The heart, when left unhealed, becomes a fortress. Everything feels like a threat. Love feels risky. Trust feels foolish. Even joy feels like a trick. But when you start to heal, something extraordinary happens. The bars begin to bend. The door, which always looked sealed shut, starts to swing. You realise—it was never locked. You were just too afraid to leave.

Forgiveness, self-compassion, and shadow work are the keys. Not because they make the past okay, but because they free you from being anchored to it. They allow you to walk forward without dragging your own chains behind you.

To realise the prison was your own unhealed heart isn’t a defeat. It’s a reclamation. It means you are no longer waiting on them to change. You are choosing, every day, to change your relationship with the pain.

You are no longer a captive. You are the healer. You are the key.