The Woman That Little Girl Needed
The past is part of our story. It doesn’t have to write the rest of it.
By Laura Vanessa Medina · 7 min read
The girl who wanted a different life
In my childhood I went through things no little girl should have to go through.
Experiences like that can stay inside a person for years — shaping her choices, and what she believes she is entitled to.
For a long time all I knew was that I wanted a different life. I wanted to stop hurting and to be happy. I had no idea how to get there. But somewhere inside me was the belief that my story could change.
Now I understand what that girl needed to hear: none of it was her fault.
A child is not responsible for the harm adults do to her. She is not supposed to know how to protect herself from things that should never have happened in the first place. The responsibility belonged to the people who were meant to be taking care of her.
Then the years passed and I became an adult, and a different question arrived.
I couldn’t choose what happened to me. But who decides what happens next?
Does the past decide who we are?
The memories still come back sometimes. Growing up didn’t erase anything.
What changed is that I understand now what is actually mine: the life I build, the decisions I make, the people I let close, what I want for my future.
That doesn’t mean blaming myself for everything that happens to me. And it doesn’t mean believing that healing is a matter of willpower — it isn’t, and anyone who tells you otherwise has never needed to heal from anything.
For me, taking responsibility means recognising the power I do have now. I can look at my choices. I can live with their consequences. I can change direction. I can build the peace I deserve.
The past influences us. It doesn’t have to decide everything.
We can repeat what we were taught, or we can start to question it. We can stay inside the same story, or write a different answer to it.
At some point a moment arrives when you have to decide whether to live entirely through your wounds, or try to see your life another way. We can’t always control what happens around us. But our choices move us closer to — or further from — the person we want to become.
A child is not responsible for the harm adults do to her.
Changing also meant choosing who came with me
When I understood that I would have to build my own life, I didn’t change one thing. I changed how I thought, what I did daily, what I wanted for the future, and who I kept around me.
Some people respect your dreams and help you remember who you are. Others repeat the same patterns with you, hurt you, or quietly pull you back toward the life you’re trying to leave.
I had to walk away from people I loved. Not because the love disappeared — but because loving someone doesn’t justify what they do to you.
Some of them held my dreams back. Some returned me to emotional places I was working to get out of. Our lives simply could not keep moving in the same direction.
Walking away was another way of taking care of myself.
There are people I love who are no longer beside me. I keep them in a part of my heart, and I remember with gratitude the good they did me. Letting someone go doesn’t require denying what they once meant, or deciding they were entirely bad. I can be grateful for what was good and still accept that they don’t belong in what comes next.
That has been one of the hardest lessons of growing up: not everyone you love can come with you toward the life you want.
Nothing changes on its own
I’ve watched people stay in the same emotional place for five years. They may have everything they’d need to change, and still stay tied to the same habits, the same substances, the same thoughts. Perhaps they simply can’t picture another way of living yet.
I don’t say that to judge them. Knowing something is hurting you does not make it easy to leave. Attachment, fear, habit and guilt can make a painful situation feel far safer than the unknown.
But I’ve also learned that waiting without deciding anything eventually becomes a decision of its own. If you repeat exactly the same actions every day, it’s difficult for a life to take you anywhere different.
And the changes that actually transform a life are rarely visible while they’re happening.
Mine started with looking after myself, moving away from what was hurting me, and thinking before I decided things. Each of those looks small. Over time, you turn around and see how far they carried you.
Healing isn’t a straight line
Some days I feel I’ve come a long way. On others, one memory arrives and I’m convinced I’ve gone backwards.
I used to read those days as failure. Now I try to remember that healing isn’t a straight line.
One difficult day doesn’t undo the decisions that got me here. When the memories come, I come back to the present, and I remind myself that I am no longer a little girl with no control over what surrounds her.
I’m still learning — to trust myself more, to loosen my grip on the past, to be patient with the process. I don’t want to present my growth as a finished story, because I’m still inside it.
The difference is that I can now see what I still need to work on without hating myself for not having finished yet.
One difficult day doesn’t undo the decisions that got me here.
What I would tell the girl I was
If I could sit across from the girl I was ten years ago, I would tell her that none of it was her fault. That she is going to make it through. That she deserves a life with peace in it, and that what she wants is possible.
But I think, in some way, she already knew.
That girl had intelligence, and sensitivity, and a kind of strength she couldn’t yet name. She dreamed of a different life because some part of her understood that something existed beyond what she was living in.
I don’t want to forget her. I want to become the woman she needed: someone who protects her, who thinks before she decides, who chooses carefully who stays close, and who doesn’t abandon her own dreams to hold on to relationships that are destroying her.
Our past explains a great deal about us. It doesn’t have to be a sentence.
Change takes time. Healing comes with setbacks. Some of the right decisions hurt. And still — every day there is something small you can do that moves you closer to a different life.
Maybe the change isn’t visible today.
But one day you’ll look back and understand that all those quiet decisions were building the road. And you’ll know that the past was part of your story, and that in the end you decided where it went next.
Laura Vanessa Medina is a Colombian writer covering fashion, food and the women history forgot.
If anything here is close to your own life, please know that support exists and that talking to a professional can help. You don’t have to work through it alone.
