Your definition of love is shaped by what you survived, not what you deserve. Accepting this without blame creates awareness. That awareness opens space between trigger and reaction, where real change can begin.
Chapters
Now comes the first step of AAR: Accept. Accept that your definition of love was shaped by what you survived, not what you deserved. Acceptance isn't blame, it's awareness. It's looking at the pattern, your pattern, and saying, "Yeah, I did that too." Until you own it, you can't change it. I had to admit, I wasn't a victim of her chaos. I was a participant until I went to therapy, 'cause my nervous system shut down. Subconsciously, I must have thought the fire was love because it It felt like my childhood— busy, demanding, alive. But it wasn't love. It was just familiar. When you finally accept that, you create space between the trigger and the reaction. That space is where change begins.