04/01/2026
One of the questions I get asked most often, in the therapy room and outside of it, is some version of this: how do I know if what I experienced growing up was actually love?
It’s a harder question than it sounds. Because most of us were told that what we received was love, and we had no other frame of reference to compare it to. You believe what you’re handed until something shows you a different possibility.
And when life gets hard enough, long enough, that question can turn into something darker. Not just “was that love?” but “is love even real? Does it actually exist, or is it just something people say?”
This week’s essay is about that, and about a framework I use for thinking about how we love and what happens when the spaces inside us don’t get filled the way they were supposed to. It touches on grief, on longing, and on what the ache you carry might actually be pointing toward.
Read it at the link below, and let me know if it lands for you.
https://open.substack.com/pub/carybrownphd/p/the-rooms-we-carry?r=5ohi4f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
