Emma McNamee

The sorry came before I could finish a sentence.

I did not know I was doing it. I thought I was being polite. I thought I was being easy. I thought I was being the kind of woman who did not make a fuss.

I have spent a long time trying to understand where that started. Being the youngest of four, I think a lot of it began there. I learned early that the loudest needs got met first, and that the quietest way to be loved was to not need very much at all. To slot in. To not make it harder. To find my place in the spaces that were left over.

The truth is, somewhere underneath all of it, I had decided I did not really deserve to be there.

Not in the rooms I worked in. Not in the friendships I had. Not in the conversations I joined. Not in my own life.

So I apologised in advance. For my voice. For my needs. For the space I took up. For being there at all. Sorry to bother you. Sorry to ask. Sorry, I will not take much of your time. Every sorry was a small bowing, a small flinching, a small confirmation to myself that I should not have asked, should not have needed, should not have been there in the first place.

The worst part was not the apologies themselves. It was what they meant. That I had spent years believing my presence was something other people had to tolerate. That I had to keep proving I was worth the space I was in. That if I just stayed small enough, polite enough, quiet enough, undemanding enough, I might earn the right to remain.

No one ever told me I had to do this. I had told it to myself, somewhere so long ago I had stopped remembering it was a story I had made up.

I am still unlearning it. Some days are easier than others. There are still rooms I walk into and feel the old reflex rise, the apology forming before I have even spoken. But these days I catch it more often than I used to. I let the sentence finish without softening it. I let the need land without dressing it in guilt. I take up the space I was always meant to take up.

If you have spent your life apologising for things that were never wrong, I want you to know you are not the only one.

You were never a burden.
You never had to earn the right to be here.

Emma ❤️

There was a time sorry left my lips before I had finished a thought.

Sorry for asking. Sorry for needing. Sorry for taking up space in rooms I had every right to be in. Sorry for being there at all.

I called it being considerate.

It was not. It was a question I had been asking my whole life without knowing it. Am I allowed to be here.

I am still learning that the answer was always yes.

From 101 Honest Truths I Wish I Had Learned Sooner 📖

Emma ❤️

For everyone who still has their dad. For everyone who has lost him. For everyone whose relationship with their father is complicated, distant, broken, or beautiful. This is for all of you today ❤️

My dad was called Pat. Wee old Pat to anyone who knew him.

He was humble, chilled and laid back. He found the beauty in things most people walked past. He had time for everyone. He told the same stories more than once and somehow they got better each time. He was the kind of man you wanted in your corner because you knew, without ever having to ask, that he was already there.

He never made a fuss. About anything. Not about his health, not about his life, not about the things he had done that other men would have built a personality around. He just got on with it. Quietly. With grace. And he loved the people he loved with everything he had.

The one thing I would change, if I could, is how few photos I have of him. A handful. Not nearly enough.

It is the one thing I would say to anyone reading this today.

Take the photos. Sit beside them. Ask the questions. Listen to the stories more than once. Notice the small things, the way they laugh, the way they hold a cup, the way they put on their socks, the way they say your name. You will not remember as much as you think you will. And the photos you do not take will be the ones you ache for later.

If your dad is still here, tell him today how much he means to you. Even if it is hard. Even if it is small.

If he is not, I am with you. We carry them in everything.

And whatever your relationship with your dad looks like today, easy, hard, distant, broken, beautiful, I hope you find a quiet moment to think about him. The man he was, the man he was not, the man you needed him to be.

Thank you Dad ❤️

I built my whole life on being the one who needed nothing.

It was probably the loneliest thing I have ever done.

I learned to dim myself young. Youngest of four, the baby of the family, I learned early what that meant. To listen more than I spoke. To stay out of the way. To find my place in the gaps between everyone else’s bigger lives.

It impacted many areas of my life without me realising.

I had ideas in meetings I let someone else say. I watched my work be presented by a louder voice and called brilliant. I stayed quiet in rooms where I knew more than the person speaking, and told myself I was being respectful. I let promotions go to people who took up more space, and told myself my time would come.

It did not come. Not in the way I thought it would. Because the rooms I was waiting in were never going to choose me. I was making it too easy for them not to.

People called me strong. Independent. The one who just got on with it.

What they were really naming was the cost of all that editing. Almost no one ever met the real me. They met the version I had been trimming for their comfort, and I had been trimming for so long I had forgotten there was another one underneath.

The turning did not come in one moment. It came slowly. In the years I spent travelling alone. In the quiet of writing things down I had been too afraid to say. In the slow realisation that the woman I was when no one was watching was the one I actually liked.

I am not fully undimmed. I doubt I will ever be. But these days I catch it. I feel the moment I am about to make myself smaller and I make a different choice more often than I used to.

If you have been called strong, independent, the one who just gets on with it, and you know there is a version of you they have never met, I want you to know you are not the only one.

The brightness you have been hiding is not too much.
The rooms that needed you smaller were never your rooms ✨❤️💫

From 101 Honest Truths I Wish I Had Learned Sooner 📕

Emma ❤️

For years I made myself smaller without anyone asking me to.

I sat at tables holding back the things I most wanted to say. I smiled when I should have spoken. I let people who knew less than me speak first because something in me had decided their comfort mattered more than my truth.

I told myself it was kindness.

It was not. It was fear.

From 📚101 Honest Truths I Wish I Had Learned Sooner.

Emma ❤️

If they wanted to, they would call.

You know the phrase. You have probably said it to a friend. The harder part is saying it to yourself.

This was one of the first hard truths I learned, and it came in my early twenties.

The phrase belongs to relationships, but I learned it across all of them. Friends. Family. The people I thought would show up. Going through the hardest years of my life, I kept waiting. For a message. For a call. For someone, anyone, to reach out and ask how I was holding up.

Most of them did not.

It is a quiet ache, the silence from people you thought you mattered to. And the part that hurts the most is not the silence itself. It is the slow realisation that you have been writing a story around their absence to make it hurt less. They are busy. They do not know what to say. They will check in soon. You keep making excuses for the people who were never reaching for you in the first place.

The day I stopped waiting was the day everything changed. Not because the people came back. Because I stopped sitting in the pity of their absence and started showing up for myself in the way I had been waiting for them to.

It was the first real boundary I ever set. Not with them. With myself. That I would not spend another year of my life waiting for someone to choose me when I could choose myself instead.

If you are sitting in that silence tonight, I want you to know it does not mean you were too much, or not enough, or hard to love. It means they were never going to meet you where you stood. And the freedom on the other side of accepting that is something I wish I could have given my younger self sooner.

You were never hard to choose.
They just did not.

Truth 1 from 101 Honest Truths I Wish I Had Learned Sooner.

Some truths take years to learn.

This was one of mine.

If you’ve ever found yourself waiting for a message, a call, or a sign that someone feels the same way you do, this truth is for you.

The rest of it lives inside the book, alongside 100 more.

Emma ❤️

The book is here 📖💞

To celebrate the launch, the ebook is available on Apple Books at the introductory price of £0.99 until 7th June.

One hundred and one honest truths about love, loss, grief, forgiveness and learning to choose yourself. Written from lived experience. For anyone still finding their way.

Link in bio ⬆️ to get your copy ❤️🙏🙌🏻🫶🏻