Because they're our parents.

But is that the whole story?

Jun 24, 2025

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Hi CARE friend,

How have you been? How did you celebrate the Summer solstice? What is one thing that your heart asked you on that day to devote even more attention to for this second part of the year?

And did your heart whisper—so much so that you might have missed it—or roar—so much so that something major immediately shifted if your outer world?

My heart definitely roared… and the manifestations definitely followed.

An unexpected plot twist

Now, there has been another plot twist this week, on the day before the solstice: I also had my first exchange with my mother in TEN years.

That morning, my father had gotten so agitated while on the phone with me that she rushed into his room to see what was going on, and there was no way for me to hang up at that moment obviously. To be honest, I was even glad she was there so that there could be physical touch involved as we tried to help him find his way back to a modicum of inner safety. He was whaling and shivering, and I needed all the help I could get to catch his heart’s attention so that the panic could subside.

Still, that was one of those before/after moments that we never feel prepared for.

The little girl inside is still so scared of that woman who not only tried to take her voice and her life, but also used to repeatedly stamp over her young heart until all that was left were tears, blood and bruises.

Yet, that little girl didn’t panic… and neither did I.

In fact, I felt stronger than I have ever been. I felt held by my spine and empowered by my inner fire—and that’s why that little girl knew she was safe! Because she knew she had me.

And the good news is that my mother, just like me, was focused on helping my dad, so we didn’t have space or time to go beyond the here and now, which allowed us to stay clear from our wounds and grounded into our humanity.

Or at least, I could! And the wounds that did seem activated within her were mostly ones that concerned my father and not me.

It was harder to watch that I could describe here… but it was also fascinating and, in a way, healing. Because another thing that I could grasp was the level of dysfunction between these two deeply traumatized beings.

Both in agony over the horror stories they seemed to have been telling themselves internally, they just projected their shame and fears on each other while I was trying to gently coax everyone back into sanity.

And I felt deep empathy for those two struggling adults for sure, but there was another reason why it burst my heart open:

I got to see as an adult what I had had to witness and navigate as a child… and my hard-won compassion for younger myself grew by a thousand fold.

A paradigm shift

I now see that little girl as a HEROINE!

I never liked the idea of being a victim of my parents—it just never helped me to look at it this way—but I did fear that I had been a failure as a daughter… However reliving this in the body of a 40 yo woman, I could hug my inner baby leo and not only swear to her that NONE of this was ever her responsibility—let alone her fault (!)—but that she did an absolute BRILLIANT job supporting them at the time and surviving them on top of that.

I have had many flashes since then of scenes between those two and I’m now realizing that I have been trying to calm them down since the day I learned how to talk.

My mother mentioned that it was the first time she was hearing my father cry... I wondered HOW?? I’ve seen him cry more often than I have heard myself cry in the last decade.

An older memory has also been very present since that call: in that one, I can’t be more than 4 years old (so just like in the above picture). My mother was sobbing in her bedroom and explaining to me that my dad hated her and that she had nowhere to go now… She was saying that her life was over, that there was no hope left on Earth. I can still feel the sense of determination that awakened my entire little body while I dragged her downstairs, sat her down on the sofa and went to get my father who was brooding in his office. I forced him into the living room and explained to them why and how they had to make up.

It is one of the very rare extra clear memories I have from those days… and I'm only now grasping how utterly crazy that scene would have looked to anyone watching.

But why am I telling you all of this today?

Because it brought to the forefront a question I’ve been pondering for many many years: What makes our parents different from everybody else?

How much more slacks are we meant to cut them in comparison to anybody else we love? And why do they get away with behaviors we would never tolerate even from our closest friends?

Having been estranged from my birth mother since I was 19—or at least having tried to, because choosing to stay in touch with my dad entailed that she was still a huge part of my life, which meant facing all the consequences of my choices with only half of the “reward”—I often wonder why estrangement had been the absolute right choice for me in my relationship with my mother and why I was making a different choice in the case of my father.

After all, I knew I was not staying in touch with my dad because I believed you HAVE to be in contact with your parents! I don’t.

I believe relationships can only work when founded on love, not on obligations…

I also believe that parenthood is a choice and a commitment that one makes, and that it has very little to do with your DNA being part of your child’s genetic bank or not. To me, one is not a parent by default—it’s both a privilege they have to earn and a vocation they get to be willing to embrace (or not).

Finally, I observe that there are people that feel like family to my heart and that none of those are people I am related to by blood.

So no, it has nothing to do with dogma.

Also, as anyone who comes to terms with the dysfunctional patterns in her relationship with one of her outbringers later in life, I’ve unconsciously entered many relationships because they mirrored to me what was off with my dad. And I did cut those people off!

Plus, my dad is giving me very regular refreshers of his ability to put salts on wounds I’m struggling to heal. Unfortunately, our interactions are rarely a pleasant experience anymore (even if I will never give up the hope that we can change that) and they tend to throw my body into survival mode which in turn hinders my ability to sing. They throw me back into the past and cut me from the present and my manifesting energy.

So why is it so obvious to me that cutting ties with my mother was the right choice then, and that staying in contact with my dad is the right now?

I believe relationships can only work when founded on love,

not on obligations.

It has nothing to do with them

Simple. It has nothing to do with them…

It’s because I am so much stronger now. I’m not a kid anymore! And more importantly, I am now on my own side.

I’m staying in touch with my dad for the same reason that I stayed on the phone when my mother entered and why I didn’t only talked to her but offered her support, care and compassion even though nothing has changed on her end: she still denies having ever done anything to me, she still claims to be a victim of her selfish and Hitlery daughter and she obviously never apologized.

I’m staying BECAUSE I CAN.

I finally know that what I see and feel is what matters—not what they say.

I listen to their words and even give grace and gratitude for the well-meaning intentions that, at times, cut through the armor of trauma that they wear! But I look at their actions, I take in the impact, and I let my heart tell me if Love wants me to move closer or further away.

I am able now to let my inner knowing drive me and to keep myself free from any narrow-minded ideas of right and wrong, of good or bad, of being “the good daughter”, of needing to defend myself or to forgive unconditionally.

I have learned how to let myself be. I have learned how to let my Self lead…

If I had been 19 when I realized how wounded, manipulative and fragmented my father’s psyche is, I would have cut ties with him. If I had been in my thirties when I realized how wounded, violent and fragmented my mother psyche is, I would have reshaped our relationship’s framework instead of exiting it.

And that is why I can let her enter back into the periphery of my life now, because I don’t live there anymore, desperately trying to blend in with anyone who could love, save or absolve me!

I now live at the center of me, in my inner sanctuary in which only few can enter and even fewer are allowed to stay.

I don’t subscribe to transactional love anymore, I only follow unconditional Love—and unconditional Love taught us through Prentis Hemphill that we have boundaries to rely on, so that our wholeness can be protected and so that our heart can stay open organically.

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously” — Prentis Hemphill

And side note: Isn’t it funny how those who judge us for leaving—and thus for making the hardest decision a child could ever make in regards to their parents—are usually those who could have helped us make it safe enough to stay? But I digress…

I now live at the center of me.

It’s not about blood

Finally here’s one last thing I have realized about our parents that differentiate them from anyone else. And it’s not blood…

…it’s the ancestral trauma we all inherited.

I know the pain that lives in the marrow of my father’s bones because any generational wound that one doesn’t know how to feel and heal, one unconsciously transmits to the children they’re raising.

So I couldn’t care less about the fact that my parents and I “share the same blood”—which is not even literally true. But there is one thing that I know intimately about them that no one can know as intuitively. I know their pain.

I know the pain that drives them, because I carry it within me.

And when I was too young to carry this pain effectively, I needed to move away from my mother so that I could learn how to swim and how to find the shore before considering whether or not I could go back to share what I have learned with her. Staying in the deep water with her would just have meant drowning with her. It would have made things even more tragic and not even a little bit better.

But I have been on this healing journey for many many months now and I might not have enlightened every corner of my inner dark forest, but I have found the source of my light and I have made peace with the darkness. I have learned that there is nothing to fear because even Fear is ultimately only and always looking for Love.

I have learned that I am safe even when trapped in the most violent storm—I have learned that there is a shelter to be found even if only by finding the eye of the storm.

And so I am willing to stay and let them put salts on the wounds that they bestowed upon me… first of all because it allows me to spot them and tend to them and grieve! But also because I remember what it means to live with so much unexamined pain ruling over my life.

I see their innocence and helplessness AND I see their untapped agency. I see the confusion in their eyes and the complete lack of grounding accessible into their own beings. I see the power they don’t know how to embody.

I see their struggle and that allows me to not take any of it personally! I see their unvoiced yearning for a savior, for absolution, for peace. And that allows me to remember that none of this can come from me.

I have been where they are… and I understand that, just like me, they were born with wounds that they inherited and so this pain doesn’t belong to them more than it belongs to me.

I love the idea to stop trying to break cycles and choosing instead to complete them into healing.

I don’t believe we HAVE to go back to our origins; and I believe that it can be self-destructive to do so if we’re not ready. That is if we haven’t yet fully reanchored into our hearts and found the support we need in the here and now to ensure that we will find our way back, even if the reawakened pain blinds us for a few weeks.

AND I believe that there is a point in our healing journeys that demands that we circle back to where we started… so that we can rewrite the stories we inherited into the inspiring tales we came down here to embody.

This is not about proving anything to ourselves or to anyone else. This is about healing, which means that this is about Love. And Love doesn’t force or judge. Love inquires, witnesses and reveals.

It's different with our parents than with anybody else because, no matter who they were or if they were even here, they are parts of our origin story. Because there is no us without them, and I’m not saying that as in “we owe them everything” (They had sex! They got the reward. Nature did the rest.) What I mean is that we carry them in our DNA and there is no escaping their impact in the fabric of our beings, so we might as well look into the mirror they provide so that we can understand ourselves and heal.

It’s not different with our parents because of our parents. There comes a time when we realize that they are no more or less special than any other beings. They might be human beings we adore or they might be human beings we wish we didn’t have to interact with (or anything in between) but that doesn’t change the fact that they are just that: fellow human beings.

It’s not different because it is about our parents, it’s different because it’s about what we need to truly know ourselves and heal. It’s not about blaming them, it’s not about celebrating them, it’s not for or against them. It’s about a reclamation of OUR truth and authenticity, a process that can be supported and hastened by learning about them.

So I’m learning that our parents bless us with their healing for sure, but they can also unconsciously help us heal what they couldn’t… by allowing us to witness their pain.

And I also now believe that the way we honor our parents is not by surrendering to their will, meeting their expectations or tending to their needs…

We honor our parents through our own healing.

I have learned that there is nothing to fear

because even Fear is ultimately only and always

looking for Love.

Sending you kindness, love and warmth—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not fear anymore.

leo