Graced with Grit

by: Grace Cronk

For a long time, I thought love had to hurt to be real.

Not in some dramatic, movie-scene way, but in the subtle, slow ways I’d been taught to accept: love that demanded smallness. Love that made me work for warmth. Love that apologized less than it should have. Love that felt more like uncertainty than safety. I thought love meant endurance. Proving. Earning.

It wasn’t until I experienced a different kind of love; one that was soft, steady, unshakable, that I realized how deeply I’d been shaped by survival. How much of my heart had been wired to brace for impact; even in quiet moments, I found myself waiting for the catch. For the shift. For the part where things would feel familiar again, which, for me, meant painful.

But the right kind of love doesn’t play hide and seek with your worth.

It doesn’t keep you guessing. It doesn’t make you perform. It doesn’t punish your emotions or shame your sensitivity. The right love holds a mirror to your softness and says, “More of this, please.” It offers safety where you’ve only known tension. It stays when you expect it to disappear. It listens, not because it’s trying to fix you, but because it wants to understand you.

And little by little, that kind of love begins to heal what you didn’t even know was still wounded.

It helps you unclench. Breathe easier. Speak more freely. It teaches your nervous system that not everything good has to come with conditions. That softness isn’t a liability. That real love doesn’t just survive the hard moments, it shows up more for them.

The right love doesn’t erase your past, but it does offer you something different- repair. Warmth. Relearning. It gives you the space to be both the person you were and the one you’re becoming. And maybe most importantly, it reminds you that love isn’t something to be earned. It’s something to be received.

Whether that love comes from a partner, a friend, a chosen family, or even from within, it changes you.

Not overnight. Not all at once. But slowly, with grace.

And if you’ve known what it feels like to brace for love, to flinch when it arrives, then the right love might feel awkward at first. Foreign. Too good. But lean in anyway. Let it rewire you. Let it soften the places that got hard because they had to be. Let it remind you that love, the kind that heals, doesn’t demand your exhaustion. It invites your peace.

You don’t have to earn what you already deserve.

Talk soon! xx