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We both came to the table hungry.
He, for intimacy.
Me, for softness.
Both of us aching to be met — fully — in ways that had long felt unreachable.
He told me he longs for closeness — the kind you don’t have to ask for —and instead, he lives in a house with walls.
And me?
I know that landscape. I’ve lived in rooms like that too. Rooms where you touch the surface of another person, but never quite reach their heart.
Where everything looks fine, but you’re starving inside.
It would have been easy to believe that what we found in each other was proof of what was missing elsewhere.
But there’s something deeper here.
Because I’ve come to understand this:
A woman who is in survival
cannot give you her softness.
She cannot open to connection
when her body is scanning for danger.
She cannot relax into affection
when her nervous system is on high alert.
She cannot receive the touch of another
when she has not been met in her own pain.
She is not withholding.
She is protecting.
From what, she may not even know.
But her body does.
And so they label her distant, cold, disinterested.
They make it mean something about them.
About how desirable they are.
About how lovable they must be.
They turn her inability into their unworthiness.
But the truth is this:
Sometimes what they’re seeking isn’t unavailable because they’re asking for too much.
It’s unavailable because her system can’t hold it.
Because to open would be to risk everything.
Because her own tenderness has never been safe.
And I know that too.
Because I’ve been her.
And now I’m me.
So when he shared his longing — his quiet ache for connection, for touch, for intimacy —it struck a chord so deep in me, not because I thought I could fix it, but because I understood it.
I’ve been her, and I’ve been him.
Because I know what it’s like to live in relationships where your truest self is never fully seen. Where the best parts of you stay folded in a drawer, untouched.
This piece is for the woman who is there — a poem for the feminine in hiding.
For the woman whose heart feels far from reach.
Whose body no longer stirs to touch or tenderness.
Who aches quietly in the hollow spaces where feeling once lived.
Or maybe —
she is all of these things at once.
I know this place.
I’ve lived there too.
And if that’s where you are now,
I need you to hear this —
Lovely, you are not broken.
You Are Not Broken
You are not broken.
You built walls around your heart
because the world could not hold its softness.
You learned to survive with your ribs clenched tight
so your tenderness wouldn’t be taken.
You are not broken.
You left your body
because it didn’t feel safe to stay.
You floated just above the skin
because sinking in meant feeling too much.
You are not broken.
You hid your wild
because your wild was too much for them.
Too loud, too emotional, too knowing, too deep.
You became palatable to protect your truth.
You are not broken.
You stopped trusting your own voice
because the voices around you were louder,
were older,
were supposed to keep you safe.
You are not broken.
You shut down your heart
because you had to.
You closed the door on grief, on anger, on rage—
and when you did, joy was locked out too.
You are not broken.
Your senses dulled
because the world taught you numbness was easier than pain.
Touch became foreign.
Pleasure became distant.
You forgot what it meant to feel…
because you were never shown how to stay.
You are not broken.
When intimacy feels like pressure, not pleasure—
when your body says no and you don’t know why—
it is not failure.
It is your nervous system choosing safety
in a world that never earned your trust.
You are not broken.
When you can’t sit still,
can’t slow down,
can’t just be—
you are responding to a culture that worships hustle
and measures worth in motion.
You were raised to do,
but the truth of you longs to be.
You are not broken.
These parts of you—
the quiet ones,
the hidden ones,
the ones that learned how to disappear—
they are not gone.
They are waiting.
Waiting
for the warmth of your own hands.
For safety that doesn’t collapse.
For a room that doesn’t echo with threat.
For a world where the feminine isn’t feared,
but welcomed home.
When you return to safety,
she returns too.
She—
who moves with grace and instinct.
Who drips with intuitive knowing.
Who sings when she speaks and softens when she rests.
She is still here.
She remembers touch as sacred.
She remembers her body as temple.
She remembers her creativity as holy.
She remembers the slow dance of pleasure and presence
without asking permission.
And she remembers love—
not as performance,
but as essence.
As fusion.
As sun on skin,
steady and nourishing.
You are not broken.
You are becoming again.
And she is waiting for you
where you last felt safe.
With love,
Rhian xx
This piece is part of a series. Check out the other posts in the series here.
