“I don't remember loving you. Not because it wasn't real.”
Those are the opening words of The Girl You Lost, and they describe something that took me much of my life to understand.
For a long time, I had feelings I couldn't explain, reactions I didn't understand, and a sense that something was wrong without knowing what that something was.
I didn't have a complete story to attach those feelings to. I didn't have the memories that would have helped me understand what I was experiencing.
I just knew something wasn't right.
And because I couldn't explain it, I often believed the problem was me.
When the Feelings Came Before the Memories
As a teenager, I struggled with depression, anxiety, guilt, and shame. I was diagnosed with PTSD, but having a diagnosis didn't suddenly make everything understandable.
I was experiencing emotions connected to things I couldn't consciously remember.
I didn't understand why I felt the way I did. I didn't understand where the shame came from or why certain feelings seemed so deeply rooted in me.
It was confusing to carry emotional pain without having a clear explanation for it.
The simplest way I've found to describe my experience is that my body remembered before my mind did.
That's how it felt to me.
I was living with the effects of experiences I couldn't yet put into words.
And when you're young, struggling with emotions you don't understand, it's easy to start believing there's something fundamentally wrong with you.
I didn't know then what I know now.
Those feelings weren't proof that I was defective. They were part of something I was still trying to understand.
Remembering Wasn't Like Finding a Missing Photograph
When memories eventually began returning, they didn't arrive as a complete story.
They came in pieces.
Incomplete flashes. Physical sensations. Fragments of experiences that didn't always connect neatly to one another.
And none of those early memories were good.
There wasn't some sudden moment when everything became clear. There wasn't a complete picture waiting for me to discover it.
There were pieces of painful experiences, and I had to work through what I was remembering while also learning how to live with the emotions surrounding them.
That process took time.
Healing wasn't about recovering every detail or finding a perfect explanation for everything that had happened.
It was about learning to understand myself, recognizing what I had been carrying, and gradually separating my identity from the experiences that had shaped so much of my emotional life.
For years, that was where my attention needed to be.
On understanding the trauma.
On learning to live beyond it.
On recognizing that shame and guilt weren't necessarily mine to carry simply because I had spent so long feeling them.
I wasn't looking for happy memories.
I was trying to heal from the painful ones.
Then Something Unexpected Happened
It wasn't until I was an adult, with children of my own, that I began remembering good moments with my father.
And that changed something.
Until then, so much of what I associated with that part of my childhood was painful, confusing, or simply absent from my conscious memory.
Then, gradually, there were glimpses of something different.
There had been love.
There had been a little girl who loved her dad.
And suddenly, the loss became something I could understand in a different way.
I wasn't simply looking back at someone who had hurt me.
I was recognizing that there had once been a relationship. A connection. A little girl who trusted someone and loved him.
That realization was complicated.
Not because I wanted to return to the past or because I was suddenly questioning the work I had done to heal.
But because those memories revealed something I hadn't been able to fully grieve before.
There was a relationship we could have had.
And we never got to have it.
Grieving What Could Have Been
One of the most important lines in this song is:
“That's what broke me. Knowing once... I really loved you.”
It wasn't about suddenly becoming angry.
It wasn't about wanting revenge or needing someone to suffer because I had suffered.
It was grief.
Not even primarily grief for myself as the woman I am today.
It was grief for the little girl who loved her father and whose trust was betrayed.
And for the relationship that might have existed if different choices had been made.
As an adult with children of my own, I could understand that loss from a perspective I hadn't had as a child.
I could recognize the significance of a child's trust and the love that exists before a child has the ability to understand the complicated choices adults make.
There had been a daughter who loved her father.
And there had been choices that changed that relationship.
I couldn't undo them.
I couldn't recover the years that were lost.
But I could finally recognize what those years represented.
Sometimes grief isn't about wanting something back.
Sometimes it's simply acknowledging that something meaningful was lost.
And allowing yourself to feel that without letting it consume the life you have now.
I'm Not Angry Anymore
The song contains anger because anger is part of the emotional truth expressed in the lyrics.
But I don't live in anger toward my father.
I'm not bitter.
I'm not spending my life waiting for an explanation that will make everything different.
What happened is part of my history. It affected me. It influenced how I understood myself and the world around me.
I can't pretend otherwise.
But I also don't believe that every painful experience has to remain an open wound forever.
I've spent years learning, healing, questioning, and growing.
I've made choices about the kind of person I want to be and the kind of life I want to build.
Those choices matter more to me than remaining emotionally attached to something I cannot change.
I can acknowledge what happened without allowing it to control who I am today.
And I can recognize the loss without making it the center of my life.
I Don't Owe My Strength to What Happened
There's something I've always felt strongly about when people talk about surviving difficult experiences.
Sometimes we hear that we should be grateful for what happened because it made us stronger.
I've never agreed with that.
I would never thank my father for the lessons I learned or the strength it took to become the woman I am today.
Those accomplishments belong to me.
I did the work.
I faced the emotions I didn't understand.
I learned to recognize the difference between what happened to me and who I wanted to become.
I made mistakes along the way. I had struggles. I had moments when I didn't know how to move forward.
But I kept learning.
And I made choices.
I know people can experience similar circumstances and respond in very different ways. I don't judge anyone else's journey, because healing and survival aren't competitions.
But for myself, I refused to allow what happened to determine the person I would become.
I didn't choose what happened in my childhood.
I did choose what I wanted to do with my life afterward, even when those choices were difficult.
My strength isn't a gift someone gave me through pain. It's something I developed through my own efforts to heal and grow.
And I'm proud of that.
The Girl He Lost, and the Woman I Found
When I wrote The Girl You Lost, I wanted to capture the complicated reality of remembering someone you once loved while also recognizing the damage associated with that relationship.
The song moves through confusion, shame, memory, grief, and eventually a sense of ownership.
It doesn't end with reconciliation.
It doesn't end with revenge.
It ends with a woman who knows that the guilt and shame she carried as a child were never hers to begin with.
And who recognizes that the person she became is her own accomplishment.
I can't change the little girl's experiences.
I can't give her the relationship she should have been able to trust.
But I can acknowledge her.
I can understand her with compassion rather than shame.
And I can appreciate the woman who grew from that little girl without suggesting that the suffering was necessary or deserved.
Today, I have a life that I genuinely love. I have children, people I care about, music, laughter, and experiences that belong to the present.
My past is part of me, but it isn't the only thing there is to know about me.
That's what I hope people understand when they hear this song.
You can remember without returning.
You can grieve without becoming bitter.
You can recognize what someone else's choices cost you without giving them credit for everything you've accomplished since.
And you can be proud of the person you've become, even when the path to getting there was difficult.
The final words of the song say:
“You lost the little girl who believed you'd always be there. I found the woman who never left her.”
For me, that's where the story belongs.
Not with what he lost.
But with what I found.
Myself.
With love,
Ashley Gail Miller 🖤💗