For years I felt angry at being ignored, neglected and being taken for granted, by my family. I spent my entire childhood trying to protect my mother, helping her in any way I could – household chores, taking care of my siblings, with hopes to get some attention, some love but I got nothing in return – just more neglect and abuse.

When I reached adulthood, I found myself in an arranged marriage. Throughout my marriage I was obsessed with reforming my husband, controlling his anger, his self-obsessive narcissism and neglect of our children and family. After 11 years of marriage marred by emotional, verbal and physical abuse I finally decided to divorce him. At this time I embarked upon a soul searching journey – I read articles, listened to lectures, stories of other women and joined a support group for women dealing with abuse. I realized for the first time that there was a term for what I was experiencing – Codependency.

Research suggests that children who are emotionally abused or neglected by their parents are more likely to enter co-dependent relationships. Codependent kids are taught to sacrifice their own needs to please or protect a difficult or emotionally unavailable parent. This sets them up for a long term pattern of trying to get love and care from other emotionally unavailable or narcissist people. As in my case, I grew up sacrificing my own emotional needs to protect and please my mother and continued to do the same in my marriage.

After my divorce I realized that I had to find a way to release myself from this pattern. It took a concerted effort, a lot of faith, reflection and deliberate work. And I finally freed myself. Here’s how:

I first learned to love myself. I read somewhere that one has to fills one’s heart with the love from the true source of love, The Creator, to be able to love oneself and others. I thought about all the blessings that I had in my life– my health, my children, a livelihood, the freedom that God had just given me from oppression. So many blessings! I reflected upon those gifts and felt myself surrounded by God’s love. I told myself that I didn’t need anyone else to love me because I had the true, pure love in my life.

The next thing I did was remove the fear of abandonment from my heart. Codependents are afraid of being alone. They would rather be in an unhealthy relationship than be alone. I wrote the following phrase on a sticky note and kept it in my wallet – “I don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy”. I would read it and reflect on it every opportunity I got. By constantly reminding myself I deliberately pulled myself out of the emotional space of fear and into the space of strength, hope and positive mindset.

I joined a support group for women who were victims of abuse. Just being with other women and knowing that I wasn’t alone helped me emotionally. It kept me going forward on my path of recovery.

I wrote journals focusing on my feelings. All these years I kept my feelings bottled up which wasn’t healthy at all. Writing was a good outlet and helped me look at myself as an outsider. I learned a lot about myself and my own words gave me an insight into what I was feeling, why and how to change my circumstances.

All these years I kept making excuses for my parents for neglecting me. But more recently it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was just a helpless kid! It was my parents’ responsibility to protect their children from the emotional abuse and not to ignore them! Even as a child I felt the weight of responsibility on my shoulders for taking care of my mother, for protecting her from my grandmother’s abuse. I could finally let go, release myself from this burden and be free!