You Don’t Have to Carry It Forever. Just because someone projected their hurt onto you doesn’t mean you have to carry it the rest of your life. Sometimes pain passes through people like a storm that doesn’t know where to land. It finds the closest heart—often the kindest one—and pours itself there. And before you…
Category: self love
The Weight of What We Do
There are people in this world who can do harmful things and still move through life as if nothing happened — as if words didn’t wound, trust wasn’t broken, or hearts weren’t affected. It happens in families, between parents and children, among siblings, in marriages, friendships, and workplaces. Pain doesn’t always come from strangers; sometimes,…
A Letter To My Younger Self
Dear younger me, You were always the quiet one — the girl who preferred books over parties, cozy corners over loud rooms. You felt safer in your own world, where your thoughts could wander freely and your heart didn’t have to perform. And that’s okay. That was never a flaw. That was your beginning. I…
Memoir of my Heart
There’s a quiet place in my life where I go to make sense of the mess, the beauty, the ache, and the grace of it all. That place is Charina Writes. It began simply—as a space to share thoughts, to process life, to speak gently into the noise. But somewhere along the way, it became…
A Love Focused on Self is Not Love
There’s a kind of love that feels good, sounds right, and even looks admirable from a distance—but when examined closely, it is rooted not in care for others but in the elevation of self. We live in a culture that often confuses love with desire, attention, or validation. “Love yourself first,” we’re told—and while there…
Love Shouldn’t Cost You Yourself
There’s a hard truth many of us learn only after we’ve been bruised by love: You cannot change someone by loving them harder. Maybe you’ve been there—giving all you had, hoping your unconditional love would be enough to soften their words, change their actions, or finally make them see your worth. You stayed quiet to…
What’s Your Love Language?
If you look up the meaning of love, it is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. But what you do with that intense feeling of deep affection is what really shows love, at least in my humble opinion. Saying you love someone is easy. Showing that love is another story. My father’s love…
Our Kintsugi
Nowadays, we have all kinds of applications and filters to make everything look good, perfect, and unblemished. We have everything we can use to hide our flaws and everything else that we think of as imperfections. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. It symbolizes…
That Thing Called Self-Love
“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” – Charles Bukowski At some point in our lives, we were told to give our all in everything. To love with all our heart. To be the best person that we can be. To always put our best foot forward. That sacrificing is the greatest…
Who Are You?
It’s 3 a.m. (3:12 to be exact). And just like as always, I try to make myself fall back to sleep by scrolling through my social media account. Sometimes it works, at other times it doesn’t. While I was scrolling, I saw this article about motherhood. That of being a stay at home mother. The…
Charina.Writes 