Burn The Ships

An open letter to the women standing at the edge of their old life.

There’s an old military story often associated with Viking invasions and later repeated through multiple civilizations and war campaigns: upon landing on foreign shores, commanders would burn or destroy the ships that carried them there. The logic was brutally simple: remove the possibility of retreat. No psychological escape hatch. No halfway commitment. No romantic fantasy about returning comfortably to what existed before. Forward became the only available direction. Whether through literal fire, dismantling vessels for resources, or strategic destruction to prevent retreat, the psychological principle remained the same: humans fight differently once returning is no longer an option. And perhaps that is exactly why so many women struggle to leave systems that are clearly harming them. The nervous system keeps searching for the ships. Back to the marriage. Back to the religion. Back to the family system. Back to the community. Back to the role. Back to the familiar identity. Back to the fantasy that maybe if they become smaller, calmer, softer, quieter, easier — the system will finally stop hurting them.

Today I sat with my boyfriend’s co-parent while he bounced between three children at every parent’s nightmare: a trampoline park. We poured our hearts out over strangely similar wounds. Three years ago, our meeting was tense. Protective. Uncomfortable. Sparse interactions. Strong boundaries. Very little trust. We were two women connected through circumstance more than relationship, each trying to protect our own nervous systems, our own children, our own version of reality. And honestly, given the dynamics at the time, that distance was probably appropriate. But today something shifted. For two hours we spoke nonstop while life carried on loudly in the background. Somewhere between stories, nervous laughter, holding gazes to assess mutual recognition, I realized something profound: If you choose yourself honestly enough, life eventually places the exact people, places, mirrors, and lessons you need directly in front of you. The house always wins. Not the ego. Not the performance. Not the carefully managed identity.

Truth. Truth eventually reorganizes the room. And what lingered with me afterward wasn’t the conversation itself. It was the silence I carried home with me. As I replayed the interaction during the drive back, I felt unexpectedly frustrated by how much I had held back. At first I framed it as caution — respecting the newness of our connection, respecting timing, respecting boundaries, respecting the fragility of someone standing at the edge of unraveling an entire life. But if I’m honest, part of me also knew exactly how terrifying the truth sounds when someone is standing at the precipice of finally leaving. I have stood there myself.

Perhaps the cruelest part of abusive systems is that by the time someone is finally ready to leave, they are usually psychologically, financially, spiritually, socially, and biologically exhausted enough that the free fall itself feels impossible to survive. That is the part no one explains. People speak about leaving as though it is a single courageous decision. As though freedom arrives immediately after the choice is made. It doesn’t. Leaving is usually the beginning of the collapse, not the end of it. The nervous system does not experience liberation immediately — it experiences destabilization. Especially for women. Especially mothers. Especially women whose survival has depended on maintaining proximity to systems that simultaneously harmed and sustained them. And what I wanted to tell her — what I perhaps wasn’t fully brave enough to articulate yet — is that you cannot partially leave systems built on dependency. Not emotionally. Not psychologically. Not spiritually. The old operating system will continue trying to recruit you back through every familiar doorway available. Sometimes through guilt. Sometimes through religion. Sometimes through family systems. Sometimes through community. Sometimes through professional identity. Sometimes through the fantasy that everyone can remain emotionally healthy enough to co-parent peacefully simply because that sounds evolved and mature. But survival systems rarely collapse politely.

And to be clear, I am saying that any environment can become psychologically dangerous once it organizes itself around protecting dysfunction instead of confronting it. Once belonging becomes conditional upon silence. Once women are taught to override intuition in exchange for approval. Once community requires self-abandonment. Once enabling becomes confused with compassion. The environment stops functioning as support and becomes containment.

That is the real deprogramming no one talks about: leaving one unhealthy relationship while remaining psychologically fused to every surrounding system that normalized the relationship often just recreates the same patterns wearing different optics.

Perhaps this is why so many women leave physically but never fully emotionally escape. The nervous system remains loyal to familiarity long after the intellect recognizes danger. That is not weakness. That is biology. Humans bond through repetition, not logic. Especially women conditioned toward: appeasement, emotional labor, conflict reduction, caregiving, and relational preservation at all costs. So many women are not actually addicted to the abusive person. They are addicted to maintaining stability inside instability. Which is an entirely different thing. And perhaps the hardest truth of all is this: Wanting to leave is not the same thing as being ready to lose the identity built around surviving. Eventually the paperwork comes. The financial fear arrives. The custody systems begin. The lawyers enter. The children ask questions. The mutual friends split. The family systems activate. The nervous system panics. The loneliness arrives. And suddenly the woman realizes: “Oh. I am not just leaving a man. I am dismantling an entire ecosystem.”

That is the after gravity phase. The part where your old life still has emotional gravitational pull even after you intellectually know you cannot survive inside it long term. And if children are involved, the complexity multiplies exponentially. Now you are not simply leaving. You are co-existing. Parallel parenting. Managing access. Documenting behavior. Maintaining composure at soccer games. Answering emails from someone your nervous system still experiences as unsafe. Attempting to regulate children while privately trying to regulate yourself. The world calls this freedom. But many women know the truth: sometimes it feels more like supervised survival with better branding. 

And yet… despite all of that… I still believe women deserve the chance to leave. Every single one of them. Not because leaving magically fixes everything. Not because the courts suddenly protect nervous systems. Not because financial realities disappear. Not because the grief won’t nearly swallow you whole at times. But because there is something profoundly sacred about finally becoming honest enough to stop abandoning yourself in order to maintain systems that were slowly killing you. The Vikings understood something psychologically profound: if the ships remain behind you, part of the nervous system will always remain committed to retreat. Some systems cannot simply be “managed better.” Some identities cannot be negotiated with peacefully. Some survival patterns require total severance before the organism can finally reorganize around truth instead of fear.

Which is why eventually the ships must burn. Not because the future feels safe. But because returning guarantees the repetition of the past. And maybe that is the deeper lesson life was placing in front of me today. Not reconciliation. Not performance. Not female competition. Not blame. Recognition. Two women sitting beside each other realizing: survival taught us many of the same lies. And maybe healing begins the moment someone finally says: “You are not crazy. I see it too.”