Finding Your Passion After an Abusive Relationship
- Jun 22
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 18
It Was Always Yours
There is a kind of flatness that can settle in even when life looks like it is moving forward.
You are doing things. Getting through the day. Maybe even building something new. But nothing quite pulls you forward. Nothing makes you want to get up before you have to.
If that sounds familiar, this is for you.
Hello Courageous Women
Over the past few weeks we have talked about dreaming again after abuse and how creativity can be part of healing. Today I want to talk about something that sits right alongside both of them: passion.
I remember a season when I had things I genuinely loved doing. My scrapbooking. My fairy pots. Work I was skilled at and proud of. On the surface, life looked like it was coming back together.
But I would wake up in the morning and feel flat. There was no pull underneath any of it. No sense that today held something I could not wait to get to. I was functioning. I was even creating. But something was still missing.
I kept thinking I was just tired. That I needed more time. That eventually the drive would come back by itself.
What I did not understand then was that what I was looking for had a name. And finding your passion after an abusive relationship is not the same as finding a hobby, a skill, or a creative outlet. It is something deeper than that.
What Passion Actually Is, and Why Abuse Quietly Dims It
Passion is not your career. It is not what you are good at. It is not what you enjoy on a quiet Sunday.
Passion is what pulls you forward before you feel ready. It is the thing that makes an hour disappear. It is what gets you out of bed not because you have to, but because something inside you genuinely wants to.
When you are living in survival mode, managing someone else's moods, keeping everything together so nothing breaks, your world shrinks. There is no room for what lights you up. There is barely room to breathe. Passion does not die in that environment. It goes quiet. It steps back. It waits.
You did not lose your passion. You put it somewhere safe while you were surviving.
That distinction matters. Because lost means gone. And it is not gone.
The Difference Between Having Interests and Finding Your Passion After an Abusive Relationship
This is where I want to slow down, because I think a lot of women, myself included for a long time, confuse the two.
An interest is something you enjoy. It brings pleasure, a sense of calm, a creative outlet. That is real and worth having.
But passion has a different quality. It has a pull to it. It is the thing you keep coming back to even when life gets hard. The thing you find yourself thinking about when you are doing something else. What you would do even if no one ever saw it or praised you for it.
I had interests. I had skills. I had things I was genuinely good at. But passion, the kind that makes you want to get up, that took longer to find.
Passion is not always the loudest thing in the room. Sometimes it is the quietest pull, the one you have been dismissing as not practical enough, not serious enough, not possible enough.
A Simple Way to Start Looking
You do not need to find your passion today. You just need to start paying attention.
Here is a two-part practice I come back to:
Look back. What did you love before everything got hard? Not what you were good at. Not what was expected of you. What did you do as a child or a young woman that made time disappear? Write it down, even if it feels far away.
Look forward. What has sparked even a flicker of curiosity recently? A video you stopped scrolling past. A conversation that stayed with you for days. A small thing you found yourself wanting to try. Write that down too.
You are not committing to anything. You are not making a plan. You are just noticing what is still alive inside you.
You Do Not Have to Go Back to What You Were
Some women reconnect with something they once loved. A creative pursuit set aside years ago. A dream that was always theirs, waiting quietly.
Others find something completely new. Something they would never have discovered if life had stayed the same. A direction that only became visible because they finally had space to look up.
Both are real. Both count. Whether you are returning to something familiar or discovering something for the first time, you are doing the same thing underneath it all. You are finding your way back to yourself.
You are allowed to want something that excites you. You are allowed to look for the thing that makes you come alive. You are not asking for too much. You are asking for what was always yours.
If you are curious about where you are on your healing path right now, the quiz is a warm place to start.
With Love and Strength
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