Taking Up Space as a Soft-Hearted Person 

A Child So Soft

She was so soft, the child in me. So wonderfully open and attuned — both to the vibrant world within her, and the curiosities of life around her. 

She loved animals and playing in nature around her home. She’d let her imagination run wild as she ran through the paddocks with the dog by her side, unafraid to bring her inner vision to life. 

Her emotions were rich and flowed with ease. She felt big feelings for someone so young. Grief, despair, longing … The tears flowed easily. Joy, too; absolute mischief and glee. The full spectrum lived within her.  

She loved playing with others — she lived for it. Her tiny body held so much space for connection. A heart wide open. Such tenderness… 

It’s a pity the world couldn’t hold her. This life is too harsh an environment for such a soft-hearted child.  

A World Too Harsh

At the fragile intersection of childhood and adolescence, something within me began to strain.

No matter how much I reached, friends just… drifted away. I never understood why I stopped being invited. I decided that it must be me — too sensitive, too intense, and altogether “too much.”

At home, my emotions flooded the room in ways my family couldn’t comprehend. Most evenings, I would cry for hours, grappling with enormous feelings. My mum would try to reason with me before inevitably departing in a fluster, leaving me with a storm I didn’t know how to weather.

And so I often found myself alone. Just me and my bleeding heart.

My childlike imagination persisted… but eventually became a point of embarrassment. At eleven, I still believed in Santa, clinging to magic long after others had outgrown it. And while others moved on to makeup and boys, I was still playing make-believe in the paddock. Subtle judgements found me, along with the occasional pointed remark. I sensed the disapproval. I sensed that I needed to grow up.

I began to chide myself for being too much, for wearing my heart on my sleeve. Shame grew like a weed. How stupid I had been to expose my emotions. How selfish I was to ask for more than others were willing to give. How foolish I was to express myself freely, leaving myself open to mockery and misunderstanding. 

My sensitivity hung on a thread no one dared pull.

To be soft-hearted? It just wasn’t safe. I was too exposed to rejection, too vulnerable to pain.

So what does a child do when their heart is too soft for this world?

We retreat. The pain of not being met is too great. We learn to self-abandon, leaving our softness behind.

Hiding to Survive

Some of the soft-hearted harden, just as the world demands.

Others — like me — learn to shrink. We dim our light and usher our tenderness into the shadows.

We give in to what’s expected of us. We keep quiet in order to survive. We harden in order to be loved.

The world doesn’t always welcome our emotions. It doesn’t like to be inconvenienced by our needs. We learn early how to obey — first our parents and teachers, and later our managers. We learn to sit down and be quiet. To be agreeable. This is what the world seems to want.

As a highly sensitive child, I sensed this, and it changed me.

I learned to repress my big emotions, feeling them quietly, behind closed doors. Gradually, I distanced myself from others — isolation disguised as independence. My creativity became something I indulged in privately, where nobody could witness the rawness of my self-expression.

I learned that to be pleasant is to belong. Compliance came first, and my needs came second.

But here’s the thing: softness never really vanishes. Who we truly are cannot be quashed. A sensitive child will still cry in the dark — even twenty years later.

Begging to be Free

With time, unmet needs and repressed emotions begin to eat away at you, begging to be heard, felt, and held. 

My adult self is reserved but grounded, strong but unknowable. I’m somebody who looks like they’ve got it all figured it out.  

The truth?

I am starving for connection. I wear competency as a shield, but quietly, I am drowning in the same overwhelming emotions that plagued me as a pre-adolescent. Sometimes, I feel so much that I barely know how to breathe. 

The truth is: I am so soft I fear I’ll melt. 

I long to feel more fully — to witness the glorious mess of my inner world. I crave to express myself truthfully, without the facades I’ve grown accustomed to using as barriers. I wish to be known — truly known — and for my thoughts and feelings to be heard and felt.   

I want more: from myself, from others, from life. 

What can a person do when they know they are dimming their light? 

They do what they can to set themselves free. 

Reclamation (A Child So Soft)

Taking up space is a courageous affair in a world that rewards compliance.

But the child in us — so wonderfully open, so soft — never truly leaves. She is there, waiting to be invited back into the world. And this is where we begin.

I dared to reach back and take the hand of my child self. I listened to her whispers. She began to tell me about the things that hurt her and the things that she wants. She filled my heart with stories and longings. By acknowledging her, self-abandonment began to ease.  

I began to carry her into my days. The more I attuned to her whispers, the more I recognized her thoughts and feelings as my own. Her wishes and passions were mine. They hadn’t died — they had simply been hidden.

Reclamation is a gradual process of undoing, and it takes patience. We slowly remove the layers that protect us, alongside the beliefs that keep us hidden. “Too much” becomes “I am enough.” “Unacceptable” becomes “unconditionally lovable” — regardless of how we are received. We dare proclaim: “My needs matter and I deserve to take up space. I deserve to be who I am — no hiding, and no shame.”

​I do it for her, the child in me. She is soft, but that is her gift.

For the world may not always want our emotions. It may prefer compliance. But I’ve come to think that softness is healing — a necessary equilibrium in a society hardened by shame. The world may not know how to hold softness, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

And so, I try to be who I am: intensely feeling, deeply honest, often quiet, but always open-hearted.

I still shrink. Most days, I still feel unknowable. But I’m learning to take up space and exist as the soft child within. She is me, and I believe there is space for her to thrive in this world — even if her softness is not always welcomed or understood.

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A Letter to My Younger Self