James Baldwin quote about facing truth overlaid on a minimalist image symbolizing emotional clarity, reflection, and the cost of acknowledgment.

The Limits of One-Sided Repair

Letting Go

Each day, I live with the ache that I may not see my children again. We may not have another real conversation or moment of closeness.

That may be the outcome when children grow in a system that teaches them to diminish me, and when they have no outside support to question that story.

I can see how neatly the story lands if I’m “too much,” or if I “opted out.” But I didn’t opt out of love. I opted out of interactions that diminished me, and out of being judged for the pain I carried in response to that.

When my older son stopped by this week to pick up some belongings, he said, “OK then, I guess I’ll just keep working on myself.” The tone was pure “seeyuh.” Calm. Clean. Detached. His dad would be impressed.

It wasn’t confrontation. It wasn’t repair. It was distance dressed up as resolution.

It created a sense of closure without anything actually being closed. His lack of genuine interest made it clear that the decision had already been made somewhere else.

When I imagine the worst‑case scenarios — illness, death, finality — I feel no guilt for what I’ve said or done. My choices have always reflected prioritizing them. I feel no shame.

I cannot bridge a gap that was created by design, by people frustrated with my lack of reverence and submission. And bridging that gap requires mutual engagement. The cycle begs to repeat.

I don’t feel I have amends to make. I continue working on myself because I am here to grow, heal, and love.

I know I have been truthful, kind, loyal, and wholesome as a mother. Not perfect, but great in the years before the triangulation that crushed me.

My greatest regret is how much exposure they had to my pain, and how my reactions shaped their experience of me. It robbed them of access to parts of me that existed outside suffering. But I didn’t choose the pain. I did the best I could while living inside it.

I am neither proud nor ashamed. I accept what was. I accept what is.

And I accept that we may not find our way back to each other in this lifetime.

As I once said to my family of origin: My first choice is to heal with you. My second is to just heal.

I never stopped trying. And- I no longer accept the old belief that I should be grateful for whatever version of connection I’m handed. I’m choosing peace that doesn’t require self‑erasure. No more entanglement with anyone of the mindset that their peace and comfort matter more than others.

Goat standing alone on a cliff symbolizing family scapegoating and avoidance of responsibility

The War They Wanted: A Story of Estrangement

My sons learned, by design, to have zero tolerance for their mother. Ordinary acts of parenting—direction, correction, consequences, even simple questions—were rejected and reframed as manipulation or control. I once read a message from their father telling them, “Disregard your mother.” And they did. Their dismissal was not only permitted but modeled, reinforced, and quietly supported by people who positioned themselves as adversaries.

During months of medical crisis—unmanaged pain, heavy medication, complications, emotional collapse—I was met with silence. I lost forty pounds. I couldn’t sit, stand, or lie down without pain. Without sleep, I struggled to function. My children showed little response, a kind of learned distance. My medical devastation wasn’t received as a call for care, but seemed to reinforce the narrative they had been taught to hold.

Soon after that year of collapse came two heart attacks—more data, more interpretation, more judgment. I can hold compassion for how my children were shaped without accepting mercilessness as something I choose to live near. My healing has required restraint, even when injustice invites engagement. Over time, my options narrowed to two: escalate or collapse. In that narrowing, the structure became clear. Conflict was the point. They wanted a war—because war produces a winner and a loser, and in war, restraint is a liability.

There is no framework of love or care in which it is acceptable to erase a parent. Participating in any activity that knowingly divides children from a parent is emotional violence.

I continue to learn about the generational dynamics of scapegoating and parental alienation. I recognize myself in the stories of others whose former partners aligned with extended families in campaigns framed as concern—please pray for her, we’re worried—while undermining, diminishing, and dividing.

Sponge bob to do list to include overthinking and missing someone he never had. Depression. Estrangement. Alienation. Black sheep. Scapegoat.

Minimalist graphic displaying the Set Aside Prayer about letting go of assumptions to allow openness, healing, and alignment

The Logic of Familiarity

Looking back, I notice how often I gravitated toward people who couldn’t tolerate my pain but expected the world to organize itself around their pleasure. When they were uncomfortable, everyone rushed to soothe them.

What’s especially painful is this: humanity was withdrawn from me when I was small and needed it most. There was a kind of protected harm at work. Each time I struggled, my sister’s standing rose, and my mother’s case against me grew. Anyone could see how that drove beliefs about worth and entitlement—how my suffering had been useful to my sister. She was not only pitied and comforted when I suffered, but rewarded for not being me.

It has been like this since my first breath. And I repeated this dynamic in which I consent to mattering less, in almost every relationship I chose.

There were exceptions. Sweet Greg. The love bomber, obviously. And the sweetheart I’m seeing now—kind, present, generous, not looking for a reason to deny my comfort or my reality.

Still, nothing replaces a family that shelters you—parents, a big sister, your own children. I remember when we moved here and my mother and sister swooned over how sweet my boys were, what a good mother I was. Even that disrupted the familiar roles. Me forming a family of my own threatened a long-standing narrative: one child – the problem, another elevated in contrast, and a mother sustained by sympathy for having such a difficult child. Looking back, it’s devastating to see how carefully that arrangement was preserved.

The measures I go to in order to heal, recover, and live, seems diametrically opposed to those to whom I’m genetically linked. I read this the other day: “The way is the goal.” It captures it perfectly.

It reminds me of the Set Aside Prayer—and of one of my favorite tattoos: the word –align– inside of an arrow.

A quote on a dark, stormy abstract background that reads: When it comes to abusive behavior, if they know to hide it, they know it's wrong. If they don't do it in front of other people, they know how to control it.

Beyond Conflict: Identifying the Patterns of Coercive Control in Family Dynamics

Coercive control is a strategic pattern of behavior used to dominate another person and strip away their sense of autonomy. It is not defined by a single violent event, but by a continuous web of intimidation, isolation, and micro-regulation of the victim’s life.

When applied to the family unit, this control is often maintained through three primary mechanisms:

1. Scapegoating

Scapegoating is the process of blaming one person for the family’s internal problems or the controller’s own failures.

The goal: To create a “common enemy.” By making one person—often a child or the other parent—the source of all conflict, the controller deflects accountability and keeps the rest of the family in a state of hyper-vigilance.

The result: The victim internalizes the shame, believing they are fundamentally “broken.”

2. Triangulation

Triangulation occurs when the controlling person refuses direct communication and instead pulls a third person into the dynamic to create friction or competition.

The goal: To divide and conquer. By telling different versions of a story to different people, the controller ensures loyalty while fostering suspicion between others.

The result: It prevents victims from forming a united front, leaving the controller as the sole source of “truth.”

3. Parental Alienation

In the context of coercive control, parental alienation is the ultimate extension of triangulation. It involves one parent using psychological manipulation to turn a child against the other targeted parent.

The goal: To sever the bond between the child and the other parent, effectively erasing that parent’s influence and presence.

The result: The child becomes a tool of the controller’s campaign, often resulting in long-term psychological trauma for both the child and the alienated parent.

How They Intersect

These are not isolated tactics, but interdependent components of a single power dynamic. Coercive control in a family setting operates through a calculated cycle of isolation and psychological pressure. It begins with scapegoating, reinforced through triangulation that manipulates communication and divides family members. These efforts culminate in parental alienation, where the scapegoated parent’s influence is erased, leaving the controller in command of the family’s reality.

Coercive control thrives in silence and isolation. Identifying scapegoating, triangulation, and alienation for what they are is essential for protecting your mental health.

The confusion you feel is a documented byproduct of the system, not a reflection of your worth as a parent or person.