Never Loved, Still Becoming: Finding Light in the Lives of Others
Lately I’ve been facing one of the hardest truths of my life:
I don’t think I’ve ever been loved consistently.
Not by my parents. Not by my family. Not in the way I needed.
And with that truth comes a deeper fear:
“If I’ve never been loved, how could anyone love me now?”
“Why would someone walk into this mess and choose to stay?”
It’s a hollow, heavy feeling.
But in the midst of that, I started to wonder — has anyone else felt this?
Has anyone else lived through this kind of ache, this absence, and still found a way through?
So I looked. And what I found moved me.
Vincent van Gogh
He was never truly seen in his lifetime. Rejected by most, misunderstood by nearly all — even his own family. His love was rarely returned. But he kept painting, kept expressing, kept feeling. He poured his longing into colour and shape, and in doing so, he left behind a legacy that says:
“You don’t have to be loved to create something that loves others.”
Frida Kahlo
She lived in chronic pain — physical and emotional. Betrayed by those closest to her. Yet she painted through it. Not to hide, but to be seen. Her self-portraits were a defiant kind of honesty.
“This is me,” they say. *“All of me.”
She didn’t wait to be understood. She painted herself anyway.
Carl Jung
Jung came from a cold, emotionally distant home. He often felt alone, unable to speak about the things that truly mattered. So he created a framework for understanding the human psyche — shadow, inner child, self — all tools he used to reconnect with what he’d lost.
His loneliness became a map for others trying to find wholeness.
Maya Angelou
Abandoned. Silenced. Traumatised. Maya stopped speaking for years. But when she found her voice again, she used it to uplift others. Her truth was painful, but she didn’t let it close her.
She became a voice for everyone who had ever felt too broken to speak.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Raised in chaos. Emotionally neglected. Criticised and commodified. But Basquiat took his pain and painted the rawness of the world. His art was frantic, emotional, true.
He made noise for those who were never allowed to speak.
James Baldwin
Rejected by family. Marginalised by society. Baldwin carried deep wounds, and yet he wrote with empathy, clarity, and grace. He understood that our heartbreak connects us — and that telling the truth is how we begin to heal.
“You think your pain is unprecedented… but then you read.”
So what does this mean for me now?
It means I’m not alone in this.
I’m not the only one who’s lived without consistent love.
And I’m not the only one who’s wondered whether I’m lovable because of it.
These people didn’t wait to be rescued.
They didn’t numb it away.
They created through it. They spoke. They painted. They stood still in the storm and let others see them soaked.
And maybe that’s what I’m learning now —
that I don’t need to be fully healed to be real.
I don’t need a perfect past to offer something honest.
I don’t need to have been loved to start loving — myself, others, life.
Because pain is not the end of the story.
Sometimes, it’s where the real one begins.
If you’ve never been loved consistently — I see you.
And I promise: you’re not alone.
Some of the brightest lights came from people who once thought no one would ever come near them.
And they still became something beautiful.
