{"id":99412,"date":"2026-06-24T16:15:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T16:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=99412"},"modified":"2026-06-24T16:15:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T16:15:49","slug":"echoes-of-trauma-the-love-we-deny-ourselves-must-i-earn-the-right-to-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=99412","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of Trauma: The love we deny ourselves: Must I earn the right to matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lillian Okenwa<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are people who spend their lives pouring into others.<\/p>\n

They are dependable, hardworking and generous. They answer calls at odd hours, remember birthdays, volunteer to help, stay behind when everyone else has gone home and carry burdens nobody sees. Friends rely on them. Families lean on them. Colleagues know they can always be counted on.<\/p>\n

Over time, many begin to absorb a dangerous lesson. They start to believe they matter only when they are needed. Appreciation follows performance. Love and approval begin to feel like rewards for sacrifice rather than gifts freely given.<\/p>\n

It is a heavy burden to carry.<\/p>\n

Across Nigerian workplaces, countless employees do far more than their job descriptions demand. Some work weekends, rescue failing projects and help others succeed, only to watch somebody else receive the recognition. There are assistant producers who develop stories and take risks while their superiors collect the awards. There are employees who drive sales and watch commissions disappear into another person’s pocket. Young writers have seen articles they painstakingly researched appear under someone else’s name. Others carry entire departments only to be told during appraisals that they have achieved nothing remarkable.<\/p>\n

The financial loss hurts, but what cuts deeper is the feeling of becoming invisible. Human beings need more than salaries. They need acknowledgment. They need to know that their efforts matter.<\/p>\n

The same experience often plays out beyond offices. Friends who are always available eventually discover that kindness can become an expectation. Parents spend decades sacrificing sleep, ambitions and comforts for their children without keeping records of what they gave, only to wonder whether anyone truly understands the price they paid.<\/p>\n

Healthcare professionals have held together broken systems under crushing conditions before seeking dignity elsewhere. Citizens who exposed wrongdoing have sometimes found themselves punished rather than protected.<\/p>\n

Many Nigerians know what it means to give their best and feel taken for granted.<\/p>\n

It is often said that one can never go wrong by adding value to others. There is truth in that. Human beings flourish when they feel supported and appreciated. Gratitude strengthens relationships. Recognition gives meaning to sacrifice. A sincere “thank you” or “I could not have done this without you” speaks to something deep inside us.<\/p>\n

That is why appreciation is more than good manners. It is emotional nourishment.<\/p>\n

Its absence leaves wounds too. A person repeatedly overlooked may not become poorer, but they often become emptier. Some become resentful. Others lose confidence. Some withdraw into themselves. A few begin to question their own worth.<\/p>\n

What makes this burden even heavier is that many people who feel unappreciated are often hardest on themselves. Rather than stepping back, they give more, prove more and stretch themselves further, hoping that one more sacrifice will finally earn the recognition they long for.<\/p>\n

The tragedy is that many of us learned this pattern early in life.<\/p>\n

Without anyone intending harm, some children grow up believing affection must be earned. Good grades attract praise. Obedience brings approval. Success receives applause. Failure brings disappointment. Slowly, performance becomes identity. Achievement becomes self-worth. Being needed becomes proof that one matters.<\/p>\n

No wonder so many people struggle to rest.<\/p>\n

Some feel guilty whenever they say no. Others apologise for being tired. Many are uncomfortable receiving help because they have become more familiar with giving than receiving. They pride themselves on being strong, dependable and selfless, but underneath that strength is often a fear they rarely admit: the fear of becoming unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is addicted to success. Some are addicted to usefulness.<\/p>\n

And so, they keep showing up. They keep rescuing. They keep carrying. What began as generosity gradually turns into exhaustion. Joy gives way to obligation and resentment creeps into relationships that once brought meaning and fulfilment.<\/p>\n

There is, however, a difference between generosity and self-erasure.<\/p>\n

Kindness does not mean becoming a doormat. Serving others should not involve abandoning yourself. Healthy boundaries are not acts of selfishness. They are acts of wisdom. The ability to say no is not cruelty. Sometimes it is self-respect.<\/p>\n

Many mothers know this struggle. They spend years taking care of everyone else and then discover that they no longer know what brings them joy. Some fathers carry responsibilities for decades and measure their worth almost entirely by what they provide. Even after retirement, many men continue to wrestle with the belief that they are valuable only when they are useful.<\/p>\n

Young people are not exempt. Social media encourages comparison and turns life into a competition nobody can truly win. Success stories arrive by the minute. Everybody appears to be thriving. Rest feels undeserved. Ordinary struggles begin to look like personal failures. In trying to keep up, many become strangers to themselves.<\/p>\n

The truth is that even strong people need appreciation. Even dependable people need rest. Those who spend their lives carrying others deserve to be carried from time to time.<\/p>\n

Recognition and gratitude matter. Appreciation nourishes relationships and strengthens people. But no human being should spend a lifetime trying to earn the right to matter.<\/p>\n

One of life’s cruellest deceptions is convincing people that they must exhaust themselves before they deserve love. That they must always be available. Always productive. Always useful. Always strong.<\/p>\n

Life does not work that way.<\/p>\n

Our worth does not increase when people applaud us, nor diminish when they fail to notice. Promotions come and go. Awards gather dust. Careers end. Titles fade. Even applause, however loud, eventually dies away.<\/p>\n

What remains are the relationships that made us feel valued and the grace we extended to ourselves when nobody else seemed to notice.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the hardest lesson is accepting a simple but inconvenient truth. There is a difference between sacrifice and self-neglect, between serving others and losing yourself, between being kind and forgetting that you, too, deserve kindness.<\/p>\n

After all, the hand that gives endlessly also needs someone to hold it.<\/p>\n

And perhaps one of life’s gentlest discoveries is realising that we do not have to spend our days proving that we deserve to be loved.<\/p>\n

We always did.<\/p>\n

\u25cf A lawyer and equity advocate, Lillian is the publisher of Law & Society Magazine. She can be reached at Lillianokenwa@gmail.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lillian Okenwa There are people who spend their lives pouring into others. They are dependable, hardworking and generous. They answer calls at odd hours, remember birthdays, volunteer to help, stay behind when everyone else has gone home and carry burdens nobody sees. Friends rely on them. Families lean on them. Colleagues know they can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":98322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[1351,2199,896],"class_list":["post-99412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-opinion","tag-love","tag-matter","tag-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99413,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99412\/revisions\/99413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/98322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}