What My First Heartbreak Revealed About My Self-Worth

The first time I got my heart broken—really, painfully broken—I remember feeling too ashamed to ask for support. I didn’t talk about it with anyone because, at the time, there weren’t many people I trusted with such a raw and tender part of myself.

I cried a lot, so people around me knew something had happened, but looking back, I think it’s tragic that I had no friends or family I felt safe enough to open up to. No bestie to cry into a tub of ice cream with. Tragic, but also a bit revealing.

Like all painful experiences of loss, it eventually became more bearable. I resumed my regular routines. Heartbreak is just another part of life, and we move on as time passes, right?

It was over a decade later when I chanced upon a letter I had written to my ex shortly after our breakup. I found it at my parents’ house in the pocket of an old pair of pants, in a drawer full of remnants from those restless years of young adulthood when I had no true home of my own.

My stomach sank as I pulled it out, recognizing it instantly. Had someone found it and read it? Imagine that. Shame outweighed curiosity even all those years later. But the envelope was still sealed. It had his name written on the front in my handwriting.

The letter was written to him, but it was always meant for me. I had been drowning in misery when I wrote it, and re-reading the words pulled me right back into that pain. But with years of distance, I saw something I couldn’t have grasped back then.

At the time, I had believed the pain was all about losing him—that I couldn’t imagine not being with him anymore. Missing him felt like a black hole in my life, one that only he could fill. And yes, part of my pain was indeed about him. But if I’m being honest, our connection was never strong enough to justify the depth of pain I felt when it ended.

The true source of my pain—the visceral agony of the weeks that followed—was not about him at all. It was about what his rejection confirmed for me.

I’m not enough.

That is why the whole experience was so closely tied to feeling shame as much as (or more so) than feeling grief. Every insecurity I had carried since childhood—not smart enough, not interesting enough, not attractive enough, not cool enough, not sexy enough, not fun enough—felt legitimized the moment he decided I wasn’t for him. Losing him was a personal failure and a reflection of my insignificance.

Even more than that, I realized that our entire relationship had been a desperate attempt to prove my own worth. If I could be loved by him, then maybe I was good enough. That was my only focus. And in making that my focus, I sabotaged the relationship.

In the early days, I was being me. That’s what had sparked the attraction. But once we committed, I became hyper-aware of everything I thought I needed to be in order for him to keep wanting me. I stopped being present. I stopped enjoying him. Without even realizing it, I created drama—not because I wanted to, but because I needed him to prove he cared enough to stay. I was so obsessed with being enough for him that I never paused to ask myself if he was enough for me.

I didn’t know it then, but breakups don’t just hurt because of who we’ve lost. They crack open something deeper. They expose wounds we didn’t even know we were carrying.

At the time, I looked at other people—especially my ex—who seemed fine, and I convinced myself that something must be wrong with me. But looking back, I see how misguided that was. I wasn’t broken. I was reckoning with my own self-loathing. Without support. Without any reason to see how human it was.

I wish I had known that the pain of a breakup isn’t necessarily just about missing someone. It’s also about what the feeling of desertion stirs up in you. It’s about how the sudden loss of connection can make you question your own worth.

I tried to be strong by pushing through, distracting myself, pretending I was okay. I tried to hate him, fixating on all his flaws. But avoidance isn’t healing—it only postpones the inevitable. The feelings I refused to process didn’t disappear; they resurfaced in my self-doubt, in my choices, in the quiet moments when no distraction was enough.

Standing in my parents’ home that day, I was able to see the missed window of opportunity. I understood how going through that alone due to my shame never gave the experience a chance to be properly digested. The same inner critic and shame resurfaced again and again in the years that followed until eventually, I was brave enough to do the work and step into a version of myself who believes in my inherent value.

If I could go back, I would tell myself a few important things:

This isn’t something to just get over. It’s something to move through. The pain isn’t here to break you—it’s asking for your attention.
Real strength isn’t pretending you’re fine. It’s allowing yourself to feel what needs to be felt. It’s getting the right support, whether from a therapist, a coach, or a trusted guide. It’s letting the experience change you—not by making you harder, but by making you whole.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean waking up one day and realizing you no longer care. It means learning from the loss. Understanding yourself more deeply. Stepping forward with a clearer sense of what you truly need and deserve.

I can’t go back and give my younger self this wisdom. Who knows if she would have been ready to listen anyway? But I can offer it to anyone who might be there now—wondering why it still hurts, wondering when they’ll finally be “over it.”

The truth? The most painful moments of our lives often carry the greatest invitations for self-discovery. Normalizing our pain and meeting it with self-compassion can unlock massive personal growth.

We don’t get through life unscathed. We will be hurt. We will face pain. We will have to accept the incomprehensible.

But if we learn to turn inward—to become a safe refuge for ourselves, filled with kindness and understanding—we can evolve. We can transform our lives rather than repeat the same lesson over and over, carrying that wisdom into our next experience.

So here is my wish for all of you with a broken heart. May you meet your pain so it won’t just wound you but shape you into a truer version of yourself. Stay in your heart.