SACRIFICE IS NOT LOVE
- Madhukar Dama
- 4 days ago
- 10 min read
How we confuse pain with devotion, and why it destroys us
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I. THE LIE WE’RE FED
From childhood, we are told a story:
That to love is to give.
That the more you give, the more you prove your love.
And the greatest love of all? The one that suffers.
So we learn to associate love with sacrifice.
To give up your food, your time, your desires.
To carry others when you’re collapsing.
To smile through exhaustion.
To forgive endlessly.
To bleed quietly.
This story is not noble.
It is a weapon.
Used to control, manipulate, and enslave — especially women, caregivers, children, and sensitive souls.
And the cost is devastating.
Because sacrifice is not love.
Sacrifice is what’s left when your love is not returned, but you keep trying.
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II. HOW WE CONFUSE LOVE WITH SACRIFICE
We live in cultures that romanticize sacrifice:
A mother who “gave up everything” for her kids.
A husband who “worked himself to death” for the family.
A child who “never asked for anything.”
We wear suffering like medals.
We whisper proudly: “I never think about myself.”
But sacrifice is not love.
Sacrifice is the absence of balance.
It is love, contaminated with guilt, fear, or desperation.
True love thrives in mutual nourishment.
In giving without erasing yourself.
In helping without becoming the help.
If your love constantly costs you your health, identity, sleep, peace, or truth —
it is not love.
It is spiritual slavery.
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III. THE SIGNS YOU'RE SACRIFICING, NOT LOVING
1. You give more than you can afford — emotionally or physically.
But feel guilty if you stop.
2. You stay in relationships that don’t feed you.
But convince yourself it’s loyalty.
3. You silence your truth to keep peace.
But the silence grows into resentment.
4. You keep fixing others.
Even when they don’t ask. Even when it drains you.
5. You’re applauded for being strong.
But no one ever checks if you’re okay.
6. You equate love with suffering.
And mistrust ease, rest, or space.
This is not love.
This is learned abandonment of self.
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IV. WHO BENEFITS FROM THIS CONFUSION?
Let’s be brutally honest.
Who benefits when you believe sacrifice is love?
Parents who can guilt you into obedience.
Partners who avoid accountability.
Employers who exploit your loyalty.
Children who learn to take without gratitude.
Religious and cultural systems that fear self-respecting individuals.
The more you suffer quietly, the more the system runs smoothly.
Your collapse is their convenience.
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V. WHAT REAL LOVE LOOKS LIKE
Real love is not sacrifice.
Real love says:
“Take care of yourself too.”
“I don’t want you burnt out for me.”
“Let’s find a way that works for both of us.”
“You are not responsible for fixing me.”
“You can say no and still be good.”
Real love creates space, not pressure.
It asks, it doesn’t demand.
It respects, it doesn’t invade.
It nourishes, it doesn’t drain.
And most of all —
Real love survives your boundaries.
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VI. WHY WE STRUGGLE TO BELIEVE THIS
Because we’ve been taught the opposite for decades:
That love means obedience.
That pain proves value.
That tiredness means you’re doing it right.
That devotion means self-destruction.
And worst of all —
We fear that if we stop sacrificing, we’ll be unloved.
This fear is not irrational.
It’s real.
Because many relationships in your life only exist because you keep sacrificing.
But that doesn’t make them real.
It makes them transactions.
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VII. HOW TO STOP SACRIFICING AND START LOVING
1. Audit your love life.
Are you being fed or just bled?
2. Separate love from role.
Being a parent, child, spouse, friend — is not a license for others to demand your suffering.
3. Start saying no.
Even if you shake, even if you lose people.
4. Don’t perform pain to prove loyalty.
You don’t owe your exhaustion to anyone.
5. Stop calling it love if it kills you.
Call it what it is: fear, guilt, control, habit, martyrdom — but not love.
6. Choose conscious boundaries.
Say: “I love you, but I cannot give that right now.”
7. Let go of those who only stayed for your sacrifice.
They were never with you. They were with what you gave them.
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VIII. THE FINAL RECOGNITION
Sacrifice often comes from trauma, not strength.
From childhood wounds. From scarcity. From fear of rejection.
Not from spiritual power.
You are not meant to be drained.
You are not meant to die proving your love.
You are meant to grow, rest, speak, breathe, and be free.
Even in love.
Especially in love.
Let the world call you selfish.
Let them leave.
Let the old myths burn.
Love is not a bloodletting ritual.
It is a space where you don’t have to bleed to be seen.
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Here is the **first healing dialogue** (before the follow-up) in **plain text**, using **capitalization only for emphasis**—no bold or markdown formatting.
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**“We Gave Everything… Why Does It Feel Like Nothing?”**
A healing dialogue between Madhukar and an aging couple with four children and twelve grandchildren, set at his forest home near Yelmadagi.
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Characters:
Thimmappa (72): Retired government school teacher. Believes in duty. Mild diabetes.
Seethamma (69): Homemaker. Chronic knee pain. Lived entirely for others.
Their children: Aged 48, 46, 43, and 38 — all settled, busy, and mostly absent.
Grandchildren: 12 in total. Barely visit.
---
Scene:
The old couple sits on a charpoy outside Madhukar's tiny off-grid home, two kilometers into the forest near Yelmadagi. Guava trees rustle. Madhukar slices fresh guavas and offers them.
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Thimmappa:
We heard you help people heal.
But what can you heal for us?
We gave up everything for our children.
We're not angry…
But yes, we are disappointed.
Sometimes we feel… invisible.
Seethamma:
We didn’t think of ourselves even once.
Raised four children, fed twelve grandchildren.
Now when we call… they say they’re “busy.”
They send clothes… not time.
They give gifts… not warmth.
We are alone in old age.
Madhukar:
Do you believe love is something we earn through sacrifice?
Thimmappa:
Isn’t that how it works?
We gave up health, pleasures, dreams — isn’t that love?
Madhukar:
Or is that a bargain disguised as virtue?
“I give everything… so you must give everything later.”
Isn’t that hidden expectation the real source of your pain?
Seethamma:
Then what were we supposed to do?
Let them struggle? Let them fail?
Madhukar:
What if you had let them feel the edge of life earlier?
What if you had said,
“I will guide you, not carry you.”
“I will love you, not erase myself for you.”
Wouldn’t that have made them stronger — and maybe more grateful?
Thimmappa:
But in our time… sacrifice was respect.
Parents gave. Children obeyed.
Madhukar:
True.
But the obedience was fear.
The giving was self-erasure.
The bond? A rope of silent guilt.
Now that the rope has loosened, you feel abandoned.
But were you ever truly seen?
Seethamma:
Sometimes I don’t know who I am without them.
Even now I cook extra. I wait for a call.
But they don’t come.
Madhukar:
That’s the cost of confusing sacrifice with love.
Sacrifice says: “Forget me, but remember what I did for you.”
Love says: “I am whole, and I want you to be whole too.”
One creates dependence.
The other creates presence.
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Madhukar:
Tell me honestly…
When your eldest son left for Dubai, did you ask for his time, or only his success?
Thimmappa:
We asked him to focus. Not to get distracted by emotions.
Madhukar:
And now you crave the very emotion you trained him to suppress.
Seethamma:
When our daughter married, I told her — “Your husband’s house is your world now.”
I swallowed my pain.
But now when she doesn’t visit… it hurts.
Madhukar:
That was not humility.
That was invisible self-sacrifice.
And now, the silence you offered has returned.
---
Thimmappa:
Are we wrong to feel this pain?
Madhukar:
No.
But the pain is asking you to see the truth — not just the emotion.
You are not wrong.
But your story is outdated.
You lived for them instead of with them.
Now they live without you — not against you.
Seethamma:
Then what do we do now?
We feel discarded… like furniture.
Madhukar:
Then become firewood.
Warm yourselves.
Warm each other.
Warm strangers.
But don’t wait to be worshipped by those who never learned how to kneel.
---
Madhukar:
Start with this:
1. Stop calling them every day. Call once a week.
2. Stop feeding their guilt with reminders. Feed your health instead.
3. Take daily walks. Hand-in-hand.
4. Cook for yourselves. Not for ghosts of the past.
5. Begin one small garden — even if on a window sill.
6. Write letters — not complaints — but your stories.
7. Invite a neighbor child. Share wisdom — not wounds.
8. Delete every sentence that begins with “I did everything for…”
9. Laugh at your old selves.
10. Forgive your children. And yourselves.
Seethamma:
Is this still love?
Madhukar:
It is finally love.
For them — yes.
But for yourselves — definitely.
Real love doesn’t demand repayment.
It fills you up when it flows out of you.
---
Thimmappa:
We thought we came here for answers.
Seems like we came to bury some old expectations.
Seethamma:
I think I’ll plant methi again.
Not for them.
Just for the green.
Madhukar:
That’s it.
Life is not about who eats the food.
It’s about the joy of sowing — with no fear of being forgotten.
---
FOLLOW-UP: ONE YEAR LATER — FINAL SCENE OF HEALING
Thimmappa and Seethamma return to Madhukar’s forest home near Yelmadagi. But this time, they are not broken. They are steady. Softer. Quietly full.
---
(The guava trees are heavier this season. The forest smells of lemongrass. Anju is collecting fallen jackfruit leaves. Madhukar is trimming a curry leaf bush. He notices two familiar figures walking up the path.)
Madhukar:
You found your way back.
Thimmappa (smiling):
No.
We found our way INWARD.
And then the path to you appeared on its own.
Seethamma:
We stopped waiting.
Stopped offering our PAIN like prasadam.
We started making pickles.
Started sitting in the sun again.
We even told stories at the local school.
Not to OUR grandchildren.
Just... children.
Madhukar:
That’s a kind of REBIRTH.
Without womb. Without blood.
Only truth.
Thimmappa:
We don’t call our sons every Sunday now.
And strangely… they started calling us on their own.
Seethamma (smiling):
One of our granddaughters is visiting next month.
She said she wants to learn gardening.
I told her, “Don’t come to VISIT us. Come to KNOW the soil.”
Madhukar (laughing):
Ah, the SILENCE you cultivated… has begun to sing.
---
Thimmappa:
You know what I’ve realized?
The problem wasn’t that they didn’t love us.
The problem was… we didn’t know how to be LOVED
without needing something in return.
Madhukar:
LOVE WITHOUT NEED is the purest form of PRESENCE.
And SACRIFICE without clarity is just emotional taxation.
Seethamma:
I used to think that my cooking PROVED love.
Now I understand…
LOVE is also RESTING while someone else cooks.
LOVE is not being the ONLY one holding the spoon.
Thimmappa:
These days I just sit under the jamun tree sometimes.
Earlier, I would’ve called that waste.
Now, I call it WISDOM.
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Madhukar:
So… what remains now?
Seethamma:
Not regret. Not hope.
Just the present.
And the scent of tulsi drying in the sun.
Thimmappa:
And maybe a few more years of PEACE.
Not earned through SACRIFICE.
But received through ACCEPTANCE.
Madhukar (quietly):
That is what LOVE becomes…
When it is no longer a BARGAIN.
When it is no longer a BURDEN.
When it simply… IS.
---
(Adhya walks by humming. Anju pets a mongoose sniffing around the compost pit. The old couple sips guava leaf tea. No one speaks. No one needs to. In the forest, truth does not need witnesses—it only needs time.)
THE END
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For Thimmappa and Seethamma, for every Indian parent who gave and gave and now doesn’t know where it all went.
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THEY SAID GIVE
they said give
and never asked if you had anything left.
they said serve
like your hands weren’t bones
and your spine wasn’t splintering
from carrying the ungrateful.
they said “good mother”
and meant silent, invisible, sacrificial goat.
they said “ideal father”
and meant unpaid laborer of legacy.
you gave up meat.
you gave up dreams.
you gave up afternoon naps.
you gave up two inches of rice on your plate
so your son could become
an NRI with a half-smile and a pending callback.
you gave up silk sarees
you gave up hair oil
you gave up dancing
you gave up opinions
you gave up sleep, shoes, money, teeth,
lungs, backbone, knees,
love.
you saved everyone—
except yourselves.
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you taught your daughter to obey her husband.
and now she obeys him so much
she doesn’t visit you.
you told your son,
“don’t waste time with feelings.”
now he doesn’t waste time on you.
you built four houses with your blood.
they made them hotels.
you held your tongue at weddings,
at births,
at funerals.
now no one listens even when you speak.
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you sat in the kitchen while the party raged.
you cleaned the glasses
you folded the sheets
you carried your family
like a body carries tumors.
you thought love was giving.
but you gave past love.
you gave past dignity.
you gave past the point
where there was anything left to give
but salt.
and now you’re old
and the house echoes
with aluminum gifts
and shallow WhatsApp messages.
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what did you expect?
a standing ovation?
a “thank you” speech at your funeral?
a return on your emotional investments?
no.
you gave because you were too scared to say no.
too programmed to pause.
too praised for being a ghost.
---
and now you sit on the porch
bones brittle,
eyes tired,
heart heavy,
waiting for someone to remember
that you once
meant
everything.
but here’s the joke:
they never saw you.
they only saw
what you did
for them.
and what you did
was disappear.
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you thought you were planting banyan trees
but you were just feeding parasites.
you thought you were growing futures
but you were slowly burying yourself alive.
and still—
you whisper,
“I did it out of love.”
no,
you did it out of fear.
---
but
there is time.
time to walk barefoot on dry mud.
time to eat without guilt.
time to say
“I matter.”
time to sleep
when you’re tired.
time to stop explaining.
time to stop serving.
time to grow tulsi
just because
you like the smell.
---
love isn’t a temple.
love is a forest.
and now that you’ve left the priesthood,
you can finally
BREATHE.
so throw the garland in the fire.
break the steel plates.
let your children live their lives.
you—
go find your own.
you’ve earned it.
not because you gave.
but because
you finally
stopped.
