I Used to Be Extremely Jealous — Here’s How I Finally Healed It

My three girls, whose confidence and beauty helped me heal this part of my story.

I Used to Be Extremely Jealous — Here’s How I Finally Healed It

There was a time in my life when jealousy wasn’t a small insecurity or a fleeting feeling — it was the very first language my body ever learned.

I remember the exact age it started.

I was ten, the day I walked into my new school.

I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know where to sit. All I knew was this overwhelming urge to compare myself to every girl in that building.

Who was the prettiest?

Who would boys like?

Who had better hair, better clothes, better everything?

And in my mind, the answer was always anyone but me.

That was the beginning.

It wasn’t normal comparison.

It was intense, consuming, embarrassing, and secret.

I didn’t talk about it, because how do you admit something like that at ten?

Or at sixteen?

Or at twenty?

Or at thirty?

Jealousy became the shadow of every relationship I ever entered.

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THE JEALOUSY THAT FOLLOWED ME INTO EVERY RELATIONSHIP

My jealousy in relationships wasn’t loud or dramatic.

It wasn’t obvious.

It wasn’t even something my partners could easily see.

It was covert.

It came out sideways through:

- shutting down

- pulling away

- acting “off”

- overthinking

- withdrawing

- internal panic

- trying to act normal while feeling terrified inside

And the worst part?

The person I was with usually thought I was just:

- upset

- distant

- moody

- emotional

They didn’t know — because I didn’t know how to tell them — that underneath it all, I was actually jealous and scared.

I wasn’t trying to be difficult.

I was trying to hide the part of me I didn’t understand.

Because I was embarrassed.

So they reacted to my withdrawal instead of understanding my fear.

And that made everything worse.

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WHEN CHEATING CONFIRMED MY WORST FEARS

High school relationships were brutal for a jealous kid with no emotional tools.

When someone cheated, it didn’t just hurt — it confirmed what I had already believed since age ten:

“See? You were right. You’re not enough.”

Instead of walking away or healing, I went into overdrive:

Trying harder.

Changing how I looked.

Scanning every girl in every room.

Trying to be the one they would notice.

Trying to outshine everyone I felt threatened by.

It wasn’t confidence.

It wasn’t empowerment.

It was survival.

I can still, even now, vividly remember every single event with everyone I ever dated — that’s how hyper-vigilant I was. My brain recorded everything, every look, every shift, every possibility that I might be replaced.

Jealousy didn’t just follow me.

It consumed me.

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WHEN JEALOUSY BECAME MY IDENTITY

I didn’t realize until much later how heavy it was to live inside a body that was constantly scanning, comparing, and bracing for loss.

Most people think jealousy is a personality trait.

Mine was a wound.

A wound from childhood unpredictability.

A wound from feeling unchosen.

A wound from chaos and emotional confusion.

A wound from never feeling pretty enough or good enough.

A wound from always trying to earn my place.

I didn’t know who I was without jealousy.

I didn’t know how to love without fear.

I didn’t know how to exist without comparison.

I didn’t know how to trust without preparing to be hurt.

And the shame of all of it kept me silent.

Jealousy became the thing I carried alone for decades.

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THE FIRST TIME I SAW MYSELF IN A PHOTO

One of the first cracks in that wall came years later — long after high school, college, and so many relationships.

It was a small thing, really.

After my ceremony with Jamie, a close friend made us a picture book. I opened it expecting to do what I’d always done: criticize myself, judge my face, pick apart every detail before anyone else could.

But something unexpected happened.

I flipped through the pages and caught a glimpse of myself.

And for the first time in my life, I thought differently.

I stared at the photos like I was looking at a stranger.

A stranger I didn’t instantly hate.

It didn’t magically heal my jealousy.

It didn’t erase years of insecurity.

But it was a hot second of truth — the first moment I saw the possibility that I might have been wrong about myself.

And then, just as quickly, the old stories tried to come back.

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MY DAUGHTERS BECAME THE MIRROR I COULD TRUST

The real repair came later, through my girls.

Two of my biggest healers have been my older daughters.

Daylin helped me with my confidence long before I had words for it. Watching her move through the world so boldly and unapologetically showed me something I never had at her age — a sense that she belonged. That she was enough.

Then there’s Makay.

Makay and I share so many features — our eyes, our expressions, our face shape. She is absolutely gorgeous. I could see her beauty so clearly, in every picture and every moment.

Reese was a teaching of connection and bravery. She spoke through her eyes of pure joy and calm.

But for a long time, I couldn’t connect any of that to myself.

How is it possible that I could look at my girls — and see nothing but beauty, and then look at myself and see nothing but flaws?

That question stayed with me.

And here’s the part I will never forget:

My older girls always saw me differently than I saw myself.

They saw a mom they thought was beautiful.

They saw strength where I saw brokenness.

They saw someone who showed up for them, even when I was fighting my own battles inside.

They didn’t see “the jealous one.”

They saw their mom.

In some ways, my daughters saw me before I ever truly saw myself.

Little by little, they became the mirror I trusted more than my own.

They showed me I wasn’t unworthy — I was hurting.

They helped me start to rewrite my reflection.

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A candid photo on the Asbury Park boardwalk during one of the hardest years of my life. I’m holding my head in my hands, overwhelmed and exhausted. My oldest daughter stands quietly comforting me, my son is close on the other side, and my youngest is half-hidden behind me, leaning in with the instinct to comfort. It’s a raw moment of despair, but also a snapshot of how I survived those years with my kids beside me.

THE DAY JEALOUSY FINALLY ENDED

Healing didn’t come in one dramatic moment.

It came in hundreds of quiet ones:

- book therapy

-long walks

- reflection

- nervous system work

- naming old stories and rewriting them

- choosing honesty over silence

- catching myself in comparison and gently coming back

Over time, something inside of me shifted.

One day, I realized I hadn’t felt jealous in a long time.

Not in small situations.

Not in big ones.

Not even in the kinds of moments that used to send my body into a full panic.

It felt almost strange.

My reactions had changed because my worth had changed.

I didn’t see myself as “less than” anymore.

I didn’t see other women as threats anymore.

I didn’t see my partners as people who were always about to leave.

I started to see myself as whole.

Today, I can say this with complete honesty:

I am not jealous anymore. At all.

I don’t live in comparison.

I don’t obsess over where I stand.

I don’t tear myself apart in the mirror.

I love myself now — gently, steadily, and fully.

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WHAT FINALLY HEALED ME

The big solution wasn’t a trick, a mindset hack, or a new way to hide my jealousy.

The big solution was this:

Love yourself.

Search, Accept and Find a way to Really love yourself.

And do it gently, because if your wound is anything like mine was, you may have to unravel layers of shame before you can even see who you really are.

That’s what I had to do.

I had to meet the ten-year-old girl who walked into a new school and decided she was less than everyone else.

I had to sit with the teenager who watched partners cheat and believed it meant she wasn’t enough.

I had to forgive the young woman whose jealousy scared people away because she didn’t know how to explain her fear.

I had to choose to love every previous version of myself.

And somewhere in that process, jealousy lost its power.

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PARENT NOTE: WHY THIS MATTERS FOR EVERY PARENT

If you are a parent reading this, I want you to understand something important:

Children rarely form insecurities “out of nowhere.”

They form them at the exact age something emotionally significant happens.

For me, that age was ten — the year I was taken from my father, the year safety disappeared, and the year I learned to compare myself to every girl around me. I didn’t know it then, but that moment shaped my self-worth for decades.

This is what we often miss:

Jealousy in adulthood isn’t a character flaw.

It’s the echo of a childhood moment where worth was questioned or safety was disrupted.

My book walks through this in detail — the wounds, the patterns, the repair, and how healing yourself changes the way your children grow up.

If you want to understand why adults react the way they do, why kids internalize what they internalize, and how we break cycles for the next generation…

Read my book when it's released.

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TCP PARENT TAKEAWAY  

Helping Children Grow Up With a Clearer Self-Image

Teach: Speak about your own appearance with kindness. Kids learn how to talk to themselves by listening to how you talk about you.  

Coach: Praise effort, heart, and character more than looks or “being the best.” Confidence grows from what kids do, not just how they look.  

Parent: When your child is critical of themselves, get curious: “Where did that thought come from?” Then show them a mirror made of truth, not fear.