Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Magda’s Progression: Bottom Level—Cleared. ✅* Food, shelter, clothing. Check, check, check. But I was starved for affection, acceptance, and the security of belonging. After years of therapy, recovery work, and training in child development, I sense that my pervasive distress came from a genuine need for affection,
The people I relied on for protection were the same people I needed protection from. They were also the ones teaching lil baby Magda about herself, relationships, and the world. And so she gravitated toward relational patterns imprinted on her
No Dimmer Switch I feel everything the most amount—the good and the unpleasant—constantly. Everything in high definition. I am a deep feeler, or as the archetype likes to say: thin-skinned, overly sensitive. Not a crime. Not a defect. But not
With all of the therapy, writing, reading, reflection, and somatic work, a lot is coming up for me. Memories. Patterns. Correlations that I had not previously made. I am finding that this process is much less like the discovery of
Something began when I was four years old, and it was reinforced, repeated, normalized, and sustained over the course of decades. The injury wasn’t only the abuse itself. It was also the fact that the person who harmed me was