By Amber Rae
For most of my life, I believed being good was the key to love and praise. If I was pleasing, perfect, agreeable—if I didn’t disrupt the peace or make myself too much—then I’d be worthy of care and connection.
This belief shaped everything. I learned to read the room instead of myself, to measure my worth by how others responded to me. I mastered the art of approval-seeking, thinking love was something I had to earn. And for a while, it worked. Or so I thought.
But the cost was me.
I abandoned my truth to be agreeable, swallowed my needs to stay easy, and smoothed out my edges to fit into the version of myself I thought others would love. And even then, the love I received never felt like enough—because I never felt like enough.
My life changed when I realized this truth:
Being “good” wasn’t the answer; being honest was. Going with the flow didn’t bring me peace; it left me disconnected from myself.
I had to stop asking, Who do they need me to be? and start asking, Who do I want me to be?
This shift didn’t happen overnight. It was awkward and messy, full of false starts and stumbles. But as I started to choose myself—to let go of perfection, to stand in my truth, to disappoint others rather than abandon myself—I began to feel something I’d been chasing all along: love, self-respect, peace. Not the kind that comes from being good enough for someone else, but the kind that comes from being good enough for myself. And the irony? Once I found that love within, the rest followed. The husband. The life. The joy. They weren’t the source of my worth; they were the result of it. The real transformation wasn’t about finding the right person or the right life. It was about finding myself.
It would be easy to stop the story here with a perfect bow. To tie it all up neatly, as if that’s how healing works. But that’s not how this story goes. Because here’s the truth: Loving myself doesn’t look how I thought it would. It’s not a grand resolution or the final chapter neatly closed. It’s a practice. A daily reckoning. A constant rewriting of the story I once believed about myself.
Some days I still want to hide from conflict, or do whatever it takes to keep the peace. It still makes me uncomfortable when someone is disappointed in me. Some days I catch myself saying yes when I mean no, or feeling guilty for choosing what feels most true. Still, I notice a desire to be liked when I walk into new rooms. And sometimes, I still compare myself to other women’s perfectly curated lives on Instagram.
But the difference is this: Now I don’t make it mean I’m not worthy of love. Now I don’t think I need to bend myself to fit someone else’s expectations of me. I remind myself instead that love isn’t something I have to chase, prove or earn.
That’s the story that stops here.
And just in time for a new one to begin.
From the book Loveable by Amber Rae. Copyright © 2025 by Amber Rae, reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Essentials, an imprint of the St. Martin’s Publishing Group