Rooted in Securement: Aspiring to Relate in Healthy Attachments
- chelseaglover25
- Apr 26
- 3 min read
By: Chelsea Glover-Jordan, LCSW-C, LICSW
For much of my life, I thought love had to feel like chasing and seeking constant reassurance. I thought relationships meant proving myself — earning affection, overthinking texts, shrinking my needs to remain “enough.” I didn’t have the language back then, but what I was navigating was anxious attachment.
Anxious attachment is one of several attachment styles, patterns of how we relate to others, especially in close relationships, based on how our emotional needs were met (or unmet) in early life. People with anxious attachment often fear abandonment and crave reassurance, sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice.
My anxious attachment was born in childhood, shaped by my relationship with my mother, a woman who did the best with what she had but because she was not secure in her attachment with her own mother, she also bore the weight of her own trauma. She couldn’t always attune to my emotional needs, and I learned to perform for love instead of simply receiving it. This became my brand and lasted for a very long time.
Becoming a therapist helped me understand that in order to help heal others, I needed to first heal myself. Today, I like to think I embody what is known as secure attachment, the ability to trust, to be vulnerable, to give and receive love without fear as the foundation. Secure attachment is not perfection; it’s presence and the awareness of such. It’s knowing I am worthy, even when I’m not "doing” or performing. It’s relating to others from a place of wholeness, not “woundedness”.
This healing didn’t happen overnight. But as a Black woman, I now realize that learning secure attachment is more than personal, it’s cultural reclamation. It’s about rewriting narratives of survival and stepping into emotional freedom and in a sense…softness.
That journey is part of something bigger: self-actualization. Self-actualization is the process of fully becoming who you are meant to be, free of masks, fear, or shame. Psychologist Abraham Maslow described self-actualization as the highest human need, the unfolding of our full potential. For us, as Black women, it is also resistance, revolution, and rebirth. Now, this can be a difficult concept to grasp for such a high achieving, conforming to attain what is owed to us group of people.
Here are three ways I began shifting into secure attachment:
1. Give Yourself the Safety You Never Had- Instead of waiting for someone to validate your worth, begin validating yourself daily. Practice speaking to your inner child with compassion. Create routines, rituals, and boundaries that make you feel safe and seen. Healing begins when you become your own secure base. Journaling and mindfulness practices have helped me tremendously in this.
2. Name the Narrative. Then Rewrite It- So many of us internalized the idea that love must be earned, pain is normal, or strength means silence, especially Black women. These beliefs didn’t start with us, they’re generational. But awareness is power. When you identify the story, you can begin to choose a new one rooted in softness, reciprocity, truth, and dare I say it? Self-actualization.
3. Let Love Feel Easy- Secure attachment isn’t boring, it’s grounding, and it is supposed to feel steady. When you meet someone who meets you with calm, consistency, and clarity, don’t mistake it for lack of chemistry. Learn to lean into peace instead of drama. Love doesn’t have to hurt to be real.
Your capacity for secure attachment already lives within you. It’s not a privilege, it’s a birthright we all deserve to reclaim. When you do this work, you don’t just heal for yourself, you heal generations. You are not too much. You are just in the process of becoming more you than ever.
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