There is a particular kind of goodness women are taught.

It looks like patience.

It sounds like forgiveness.

It wears the soft voice of “understanding” and the quiet smile of “it’s okay.”

It is praised.

It is rewarded.

It is often called strength.

But underneath the gold star language lives something much darker:

Self-abandonment.

We are taught to stay.

To soften.

To endure.

To carry emotional weight that was never meant to be ours alone.

To become the regulator, the translator, the healer, the buffer, the bridge.

We are taught that our ability to tolerate harm is maturity.

That our ability to remain small is grace.

That our silence is peace.

But peace that requires your disappearance is not peace.

It is erasure.

Somewhere along the way, devotion became synonymous with depletion.

Love became synonymous with labor.

And “good woman” became synonymous with self-betrayal.

And when women finally begin to ask,

“But what about me?”

they are met not with curiosity — but with fear.

Fear-based articles.

Fear-based statistics.

Fear-based warnings.

You will lose your security.

You will lose your family.

You will lose your value.

You will lose your safety.

Not because it’s always true —

but because fear has always been an efficient leash.

The truth is quieter and more dangerous:

Staying in a relationship that requires you to disappear will cost you far more than leaving ever could.

It will cost you your voice.

Your nervous system.

Your joy.

Your body.

Your sense of self.

Your children’s sense of safety.

And eventually — your belief that you are allowed to be fully alive.

Leaving isn’t radical.

Returning to yourself is.

And the women you see glowing after divorce?

They didn’t “get lucky.”

They came home.

They stopped calling survival love.

They stopped calling endurance devotion.

They stopped calling self-abandonment virtue.

They chose life.

And life chose them back.