When Old Wounds Echo Through New Moments

This week, something small and seemingly unrelated cracked open a place in me I didn’t expect. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even about me. But it stirred up emotions I’ve carried for a long time — the kind that sit quietly until life brushes against them just right.

My mom is preparing to move to a new state, and her new HOA only allows one pet. She has three. Two of them are registered emotional support animals, which technically means she could make the case to keep all of them. I don’t know what thoughts she wrestled with or how heavy the decision felt for her. All I saw was the simple, swift act of rehoming two animals she has loved for years — one for almost a decade.

And it stopped me in my tracks.

My heart didn’t break for her, though I’m sure she had her own heartbreak to carry. My heart broke for the animals — for the sudden shift in their world, for the loss of the security they trusted, for the feeling of being left. They were being sent somewhere partially familiar, but not home. Not the place where they had been loved.

The intensity of my reaction surprised me. It was deeper than empathy. It was personal.

If I’m honest, it’s because I’ve felt that kind of abandonment before. More than once. During my parents’ divorce, when my mom seemed to choose a new man over me. And again at the end of my freshman year of high school, when she chose to move to Florida and I stayed behind. Those are stories with layers I’ll unpack in other posts, but the truth is simple: those moments shaped me.

They made me someone who fights for the underdog. Someone who cannot bear the thought of anyone — person or animal — feeling unwanted, unseen, or unloved. Someone who steps in, even when it costs me.

And that part of me, the part that aches at the idea of abandonment, is also the part that led me into an abusive marriage. I kept believing that if I could just love him enough, make him feel wanted enough, prove he wasn’t alone, everything would finally be okay. I didn’t realize I was reenacting an old wound — trying to save someone so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of being left again.

This week reminded me that the things we carry from childhood don’t disappear. They echo. They surface in unexpected places. They shape the way we love, the way we protect, the way we choose.

And sometimes, they show us exactly where we still need healing.