When Love Costs Life

When Love Costs Life:

Healing The Hidden Wound In Parenting And Leadership

My invitation:

This is not a piece to read with your mind alone.
It is a remembrance to be felt with your whole being.
Let your breath slow. Let your body listen.
Let what resonates rise, and what doesn’t fall away.

You are here to meet what is true for you – in your own time, in your own way.

It’s common to hear people say,
“I live for my children”.
“Everything I do is for them”.

While the devotion is beautiful, it reveals something deeper: a belief that love must come through sacrifice.
That to be a good parent, leader, or guide, one must give everything – even at the cost of oneself.

But is that truly love?
Or is it a pattern that keeps us from showing the next generation what life could really be?

Love is a word we often misplace.

Many actions driven by fear, control, guilt, obligation, or even unhealed trauma are wrapped in the label of “love”.

When the label is misplaced, it creates confusion.
It teaches children and adults that love equals control.
That love equals self-abandonment.
That love demands sacrifice.

But real love is different.

Real love fuels life.
It expands.
It liberates.
It honors sovereignty.

What is love, really?

Love is not just a feeling, though it can be felt.
Love is not just a presence, though it can be sensed.
Love is not just a choice, though it asks to be chosen.

Love is a frequency. A living current.
It flows naturally when the truth of your being is allowed to exist.
It is what you return to when nothing is forced, fixed, or feared.

Love is the natural state of what remains when fear is gone.
It is not manufactured.
It is revealed.

You know it is love when:

• You feel safe to be fully yourself.
• You are not asked to shrink, betray, or abandon yourself to belong.
• There is no game. No transaction.
• You are seen without being managed.
• You are honored even when you are different.
• You expand in their presence, not disappear.
• There is freedom in the bond, not fear of loss.

Love maybe messy and challenging, but it is clean.
It may bring up wounds, but it does not become the wound.
It invites healing, not reenactment.
It breathes truth, not distortion.

Love is not intensity.
Intensity can come from chaos, drama, or trauma.
Love – real love – is spacious.
It has depth without overwhelm.
Clarity without control.
Passion without possession.

Love is not just something we feel.
It is something we become.
When people become it, there is no need to prove it.

How can we tell when “love” is misplaced?

Here are a few simple self-check questions:

• Does this action come from expansion or contraction? (Love expands. Fear contracts.)
• Am I honoring my own truth, or abandoning myself to be accepted or needed?
• Am I trying to control an outcome because I’m afraid of loss or rejection?
• Would I still choose this if there were no guilt, fear, or expectation involved?
• Is this about truly seeing and supporting the other person or about fulfilling my own unhealed needs?

When we pause and ask ourselves these questions, we begin to see clearly.
True love does not diminish life. It breathes life into us.

True love says:
“I want to see you fully alive, even if that means you choose differently than I would”.

The high cost of smallness

When a parent erases themselves for their child, the child often grows up carrying invisible burdens:

• Feeling responsible for their parent’s happiness.
• Believing that thriving comes at the cost of someone else’s well-being.
• Learning that love equals self-abandonment.
• Shrinking themselves to stay safe or belong.

Very often, children unconsciously self-sabotage their own success, happiness, or authenticity out of loyalty to their parents’ patterns.
It becomes an unspoken contract: “If you couldn’t live fully, I won’t either”.
“If you stayed small for me, I’ll stay small for you”.

This misplaced loyalty is not love.
It is a distortion that keeps generation after generation trapped in cycles of limitation.

We must stop hiding behind our children as an excuse for our own smallness.

Choosing vitality, wholeness, and freedom is not selfish.

It is leadership. It is the breaking of an invisible chain.

This smallness is expensive.

It costs us mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

It robs us of vitality, joy, and true connection – not just individually, but across entire family lines.

The price is too high.

Authenticity is the real inheritance

The real wealth we can pass on is not financial security alone.
The real wealth is existence based on authenticity; living truths.

A parent (or leader, or mentor) who chooses to live fully – who says yes to their own truth, health, dreams, and beingness – is a living proof to their child (and their members):

• It’s safe to exist.
• It’s safe to be whole.
• It’s safe to thrive without guilt.

When we live authentically, we model a life where love and life are not in opposition.

We break the old contract that says “I must die inside so you can live”.
Instead, we birth a new one: “I will live fully, and in doing so, show you that you can too”.

An invitations to parents and to all of us

If you’re a parent, remember:
Your life is not a debt to be paid. Your life is a gift to be lived.

To the rest of us, remember:
You are still shaping the world the next generation will inherit.

The more you embody your authentic self, the more space you create for the next generation to do the same.

We don’t need more martyrs.
We need more living, breathing, sovereign souls who show that life itself is sacred.

When love costs our vitality, it is no longer love.
When love fuels our life, it becomes an endless source of freedom.

Reflection questions:

• Where have I inherited the belief that love must equal sacrifice or smallness?
• In what ways have I unconsciously stayed small out of loyalty to my parents’ or ancestors’ patterns?
• What has it already cost me – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually – to stay small?
• What would change if I declared my existence sacred and chose to live fully, without guilt?
• What true wealth could I create and pass forward if I embodied my authentic self now?

At the heart of our existence – beneath the work, the parenting, the choices, the longing – is the call to come home to love.
It is the one truth beneath all wars and all healing.

The absence of love fractures us.
The presence of love restores us.

When love is real and alive, it fuels more than money ever could, reaches further than status ever will, and heals deeper than power ever has.

This transmission is not a demand to believe, but an invitation to be received.
May you meet this transmission in a way that is true to you.
Let it speak to what is ready. Let it pass by what is not.

You may also receive this as an audio transmission – voiced in my own breath and rhythm, and infused with 528 Hz – the frequency of love, restoration, and remembrance.
Let this truth not only be read, but felt. Heard. Received by your body.

Listen on Spotify (no sign-in required) or here https://embodiment.upliftmylife.today/whenlovecostslife

This is a gift. You may receive it freely. If you feel moved to offer something in return, you’re welcome to make a donation in the amount that feels true for you here.

May the love you remember – and become – be the most powerful legacy you offer the world 💛💜

With love,
Astuti

“May the remembrance within you bloom in perfect time.”

P.S. Ready to live your true wealth? Explore Authentic Wealth Embodiment (AWE) here: https://embodiment.upliftmylife.today/the-authentic-wealth-embodiment-program

Click here for a free discovery call with Astuti: https://astuti-martosudirdjo.youcanbook.me/

Go here to find out more about her self-paced online programs: https://embodiment.upliftmylife.today/

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