Cracked Open: How Life’s Challenges Brought Me Back to My Self (Part 2)

We don’t just inherit our parents’ features - we inherit their wounds, their fears, their ways of seeing the world. Before we even realise it, their unspoken struggles become the blueprint for how we navigate life, shaping the way we love, the way we trust, the way we see ourselves. 

For me, this blueprint was laid in the silent spaces between my parents - between my mother’s quiet self-destruction and my father’s unreachable expectations. I grew up watching my mother reject herself - her body, her emotions, her needs - until there was almost nothing left of her. She spent her days pouring every ounce of energy into everyone else, running on empty, sacrificing herself until bitterness and exhaustion took over. Her resentment seeped into our home, into her words, into me. When I didn’t fit the mold of what she wanted, she made sure I knew - calling me names, withdrawing her love, giving me the silent treatment and making me feel like I had to earn my worth in her eyes. 

And then there was my father. A man weighed down by his own demons, struggling beneath the surface with a depression I wasn’t even aware of. All I saw was his sharp criticism, his impossible standards, his unrelenting expectations. No room for mistakes. No room for me to simply be. When he wasn’t shaming me for falling short, he was unloading onto me - pulling me into adult conversations I wasn’t ready for, blurring the lines between father and child until I felt like I was the one carrying him. 

I spent years trying to be enough for them. Trying to crack the code of their love. But the harder I tried, the more I realised - I was chasing something that was never mine to fix and could not be found outside of myself.  

As a child, I could never understand why my mum couldn’t see how beautiful she truly was. To me, she was everything - the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. But no matter how I looked at her, with all the innocent awe and love a child can hold, she just couldn’t see it. And because she couldn’t recognise her own light, she couldn’t reflect mine back to me either - not in the way I so deeply needed. 

I watched her carry this quiet, aching war with herself. Her relationship with food, her body, her emotions, her sexuality - it was complicated. It was painful. And unknowingly, I took all of that in. I absorbed it like a sponge, and now, all these years later, I’m still slowly, patiently working through those wounds that were never really mine to begin with. 

My mum had been programmed to believe she had to shrink herself, silence herself, and serve everyone before herself. She was always running on empty, trying to please everyone else, to the point where she lost sight of who she was. She was kind, giving, loving - no doubt. But when all that giving left her depleted, the frustration and anger she held inside had nowhere else to go… so it came out at home. 

That hurt. A lot. 

Because as a little girl, I watched her pour tenderness into strangers while I was left craving the same softness. The mixed signals confused me and cut deep, and somewhere along the way, I started to believe that maybe - just maybe - it was me. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe I was too much, or not enough, or just fundamentally broken. 

It’s taken me a long time to realise that her pain wasn’t my fault, and her patterns weren’t mine to carry. But they did leave a mark. And this journey - this deep, sometimes brutal path of healing - is about gently unlearning what I once thought was love… and slowly learning what love truly is. 

“When the family environment is filled with violence - emotional, physical, chemical or sexual - the child must focus solely on the outside. Over time, they lose the ability to generate self-esteem from within. Without a healthy inner life, one is exiled to trying to find fulfilment on the outside.” 
~ John Bradshaw, Homecoming 

There was an internal struggle living inside my mum - one so deep, so profound, that over time, it began to consume her from the inside out. Eventually, it showed up in the form of a devastating disease… Alzheimer’s. A cruel thief that slowly erases pieces of her - her memories, her sense of self, her very essence. 

And as I’ve sat with this, processed it, and explored my own path of healing, I’ve come to see things differently. I believe my mum carried an overwhelming amount of stuck, stagnant energy (emotions) in her body for years - energy that had nowhere to go. It built up like pressure behind a dam, until eventually, her body couldn’t hold it anymore. That unexpressed pain, the years of suppressing her emotions, of holding in the weight of what she never felt safe to release... it wore her down, and over time, made her sick. 

Through my own deep inner work, reflection, and learning, I’ve come to believe that so much of our physical illness - our pain, our disease - often stems from emotional roots. Suppressed trauma. Inherited wounds. Patterns passed down through generations. And most of all, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we deserve. 

Dr. Bruce Lipton speaks on this in his work on epigenetics - that our cells aren't controlled solely by our genes, but by our beliefs, our perceptions. He says, “Our thoughts and beliefs are like a switch that turns our genes on or off.” And that truth? It changed everything for me. Because it means we hold the power to rewrite the story. To choose different thoughts. To shift our inner world - and in doing so, transform our biology and our lives. 

Looking back, I can now see how my mum coped. She was obsessive - meticulous about her appearance, endlessly cleaning the house. But now I understand that wasn’t just habit - it was her way of distracting herself from everything she didn’t want to feel. The fears, the sadness, the pain she never voiced. 

My dad, too, had his own version of escape. He was always busy, always trying to fix and save others - like if he just helped everyone else, he wouldn’t have to sit with his own pain. But underneath that, I saw a man filled with resentment. He couldn’t see how he was part of the very patterns he blamed others for. His anger didn’t stay inside - it spilled out onto us. As a kid, I never knew what might set him off. The smallest thing could lead to a rage so intense, I felt emotionally unsafe… and sometimes, physically threatened. His slipper became a symbol of fear in our home. 

He battled depression, and because of that, he wasn’t really there; he wasn’t present. I don’t have many memories of him playing with us, laughing, or being present. What I remember most are the long hours of him lying on the couch - angry, withdrawn, asleep. Now, I understand that depression can be a mask for unprocessed rage. And while that awareness has given me empathy, it doesn’t excuse the impact it had on me… on all of us. 

And here’s the thing - these patterns don’t just vanish. I’ve caught myself repeating them. Falling into the same roles: playing the victim, blaming, people-pleasing, trying to fix others, holding onto resentment. But I see it now. And because I see it, I can choose differently. 

I’ve made a conscious decision: the cycle stops with me. For my future family. For the whole collective. I believe, with every part of me, that when one of us heals, we send ripples through time and space. We heal backwards. We heal forwards. And we heal together. 

That’s the power of doing this work. It’s not just personal. It’s universal. 

I know I’m here for a reason. To be the one who finally says: enough. The one who turns pain into purpose. Who looks at the generational wounds and says, “It ends here.” 

Looking back, it’s clear to me now that both my mum and dad were emotionally immature in so many ways throughout my childhood. I never saw them work through conflict in a healthy or constructive way. Instead, everything just got swept under the rug. Unspoken. Unacknowledged. And what that taught me, from a really young age, was that there were just certain things you don’t talk about - not if you wanted to feel safe, or accepted, or loved. 

Love in my family often felt like something I had to earn. It didn’t feel unconditional. I had to behave a certain way, meet certain expectations, suppress certain parts of myself - just to receive little crumbs of affection or validation. And those crumbs? I clung to them like they were the whole damn meal. 

That kind of upbringing set me up for a future filled with one-sided, codependent relationships - romantic and platonic. I found myself constantly working for love, trying to prove that I was worthy of someone staying. I mistook intensity for intimacy. I confused obsession with care. I believed control meant security. And I abandoned myself time and time again just to be accepted by people who couldn’t see the real me, because I wasn’t even letting her be seen. 

The sad truth is, I didn’t feel emotionally supported by anyone growing up. Not my parents, not anyone in my family. So, I became my own parent at a very young age. I taught myself how to survive emotionally, which often meant isolating myself whenever big emotions came up. Because I’d already learned - very early on - that showing vulnerability in my house only led to being shamed, dismissed, or outright rejected. 

Whether it was the bullying I endured in school - especially from groups of girls - or the constant grief of not feeling chosen in friendships, I had to face all of it on my own. I didn’t have the tools. I didn’t know how to regulate or soothe myself. No one taught me how. So, I suppressed it all - the sadness, the anger, the grief - and carried it with me for years, locked away in the depths of my body. 

And those friendship wounds? They cut deep. Over and over, I felt the pain of being passed over, replaced, or excluded. That grief turned into a belief: I’m not good enough. I must be fundamentally unlovable. And when you cling to a belief like that - when you hold it so tightly that it becomes part of your identity - you start recreating it everywhere. Different people, same story. Different faces, same rejection. I didn’t understand why I kept attracting the same painful dynamics until I finally started doing the inner work. Until I finally saw the pattern. 

And that’s when everything started to shift. 

My teenage years were… honestly, nothing short of traumatic. A whirlwind. A storm of chaos, confusion, and so much pain that I didn’t have the tools to make sense of at the time.

After feeling so tightly controlled throughout my childhood - like I had no room to breathe, no space to just be - something inside me snapped around the age of 13. That’s when I turned rebellious. And not just in a typical teenage way. I was trying to claw back some kind of freedom, some sense of self. I was desperate to find me beneath all the expectations and emotional suffocation.

I started lying to my parents constantly - where I was going, what I was doing. I needed to escape, to carve out an identity that wasn’t shaped by fear and silence. I’d sneak out at night, even when I was grounded, slipping into the darkness just for a taste of something that felt like freedom. I’d drink every weekend, go to parties where older guys hung around like vultures, and it all felt so dangerous... but also intoxicating, because it pulled me out of the numbness, if only for a little while.

I wanted to be seen. I needed to feel like I mattered. So I did whatever it took to fit in - I even stole from my parents to buy clothes, to look the part, to earn some kind of approval. That’s how lost I was. I would have done anything just to be accepted, to be liked, to feel wanted.

Looking back, I see now that I had abandoned my true self long before my teen years. I rejected her -silenced her - because in the world I grew up in, being my full, real self didn’t feel safe. I became who I thought I had to be in order to survive. I wore a mask I didn’t even know I was wearing. A version of me that was carefully constructed - layer by layer, moment by moment - out of fear, rejection, and deep emotional pain.

That false self got stronger the older I got, especially in my teen years. Every time I got bullied, every time a friendship turned toxic or left me shattered, that mask grew tighter. And underneath it all, I was just a young girl carrying too much… too much hurt, too much shame, and no idea how to let any of it go.

I can still remember it so clearly - sitting alone in the bathtub at thirteen, completely consumed by this heavy, aching sense of despair. It felt like I was drowning in emotions I didn’t understand, and I honestly just wanted the pain to stop. I didn’t have the language back then to name what I was going through - I just knew something inside me was breaking. And yet, in the midst of that darkness, there was this tiny, quiet voice inside me that told me to hold on. I didn’t know why at the time, but I listened.

Looking back now, I can see just how much I was carrying that year. It was around that time that I experienced deep betrayal and harm at the hands of older individuals - people who took advantage of my trust in ways I didn’t have the awareness to fully comprehend. I didn’t recognize it as abuse at the time; all I felt was this overwhelming shame that wrapped itself around me like a second skin. I blamed myself. I shut down. I buried it all so far beneath the surface, convinced that if I didn’t look at it, maybe it would stop hurting.

There was no one I felt safe enough to turn to - no one to help me face what I was going through - so I did what so many of us do: I distracted myself, avoided my inner world, and looked for connection outside of me in any form I could find. I sought validation in relationships that mirrored my unhealed wounds. I was drawn to people who, like me, were hurting - and though our pain looked different, it connected us in this strange, magnetic way.

What I didn’t realise then was that these relationships were rooted in something deeper - what I now understand to be trauma bonds. Emotional connections that form through repeated cycles of pain, comfort, confusion, and chaos. At the time, it felt like love. But really, it was two unhealed people clinging to each other, trying to feel whole.

One of the most defining relationships of my teenage years started when I was just 16. It was on-and-off for about five years - chaotic, confusing, and emotionally damaging in ways I couldn't fully grasp at the time. Being in it felt like I was trapped on a never-ending rollercoaster, holding on for dear life, never knowing what version of him - or myself - I was going to meet. It left me raw. Closed off. Wounded in places I hadn’t even known existed yet.

At the same time, another story was unfolding. My dad had made a new friend - an older man who, for a while, became a regular part of our lives. We’d visit him together every so often, and eventually, I began seeing him on my own. I trusted him. Deeply. I let my walls down and shared things I hadn’t shared with anyone else. He gave me attention that felt warm, comforting - like something I had long craved but never received at home. He cooked for me, bought me little things I needed, and made me feel seen in a way that mimicked what a father should offer.

At first, it felt innocent. But slowly, the energy shifted. What I once interpreted as care began to blur into something deeply uncomfortable. It took me time - and a lot of painful reflection - to realise I was being groomed. That the lines he crossed weren’t accidental or misunderstood. He knew what he was doing. And when I finally started to distance myself, especially after reconnecting with my ex, his response was volatile and disturbing. His mask fell off, and all the illusion of safety vanished with it.

The betrayal shook me. Not just because of what he did, but because I had trusted him so completely. I had clung to that connection like a lifeline, desperate for support, for stability, for love. And it turned out to be built on something false.

Even more painful was realising my sister had sensed it long before I had. She voiced her discomfort, warned me something felt off - but I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it. I was so disconnected from my own intuition back then, so consumed by survival, that I couldn’t hear what my own soul was whispering to me.

Looking back now, I can see just how vulnerable I was - and how clearly he saw that vulnerability too. I had no real support system. No safe space to land. So I gravitated to anyone who offered even a sliver of what I was starving for. And while it’s taken me years to understand the full weight of what happened, and even longer to start releasing the shame and guilt I carried because of it, I can say this: that chapter may have broken parts of me, but it didn’t break me.

In fact, something inside me never gave up. Even in the darkest moments, some quiet part of me still believed that healing was possible. That love - true, unconditional, healing love - was something I was worthy of.

And I still believe that.

As I close this chapter, I carry with me a deeper understanding of who I am, of what I’ve survived, and of the strength it took just to keep going. And now, I’m beginning to listen again - to my body, to my spirit, to that small voice inside that always knew the truth.

There’s a quote that’s carried me through some of the hardest moments, and I want to leave this part of my story with it:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” – Rumi

Because it’s true. Our wounds don’t define us - but when we face them with courage, they can become doorways to something far more sacred: wholeness, wisdom, and eventually… peace.