Breaking the Cycle

A Daughter’s Truth About Psychological Abuse

From childhood trauma to generational healing. How I survived, how I still carry it, and how I see its patterns repeating in others and in our world

Today, I sit with a heavy heart, thinking about the words I finally wrote to the person I once swore I’d never speak to again.What I felt wasn’t just sadness. It was the voice of a little girl still sitting in the corner of an empty room, looking up at a man in uniform with military pins and rank, just waiting for empathy. Waiting for love. Waiting for a father.

I’ve talked about my biological father a few times this year. Little by little, I’ve started opening up about it more publicly. But it’s still incredibly hard to talk about him, because I know the kind of man he is. If he ever hears about this... to be honest, I don’t even want to imagine the backlash.

We joke about that, I’ve already been written out of his will. Last year I had to personally cut him out because the abuse was not stopping, after I told him, “I refuse to call you Dad,” and, “If you see me, you can walk the other way.” Hence, we find dark humor with me really being written out of his last will and testimonial.

In all seriousness, last year was the moment I had to cut him off completely.

And I did.

Sometimes, I joke in dark humor that he probably has a little black book tucked away, documenting everything his daughters have ever done wrong in his eyes. One day, a lawyer will read it to us like a posthumous performance. Who knows. That’s the man I’m dealing with.

But still, something in me knew it was time to write him.

After years of healing, I’ve learned how to forgive myself for not knowing better. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a sliver of space left to see if we can have some kind of dialogue before he’s gone.

How do you heal from past generations? Do you ever truly let someone like that back in?

Yesterday, when I finally finished writing the letter, I realized it was time to explore those questions. Maybe it’s beating a dead horse. Maybe it won’t lead anywhere. But I read something recently that talked about creating a new wheel instead of trying to fix the broken one. I think that’s what I was trying to do when I wrote to him. I’ve tried this before with no success, but this time felt different.

That’s the million-dollar question I’m sitting with.I wrote the letter yesterday. It was short. Emotionally heavy. But necessary.I had just driven through Gettysburg on my way to New York for Bikers Across The Nation, and it hit me like a wave.

It was time.

Relationships are complicated. I think we can all agree on that.

My biological father always cared more about his money, rank, military reputation, and personal achievements than he did about his daughters’ emotional well-being. He was the root of so many of our struggles. But instead of acknowledging the damage he caused, he projects it onto everyone else.

He has no empathy. None. I used to wonder if he was on the autism spectrum because of how deeply he fixates on certain topics and how rigid his thinking is. I see some of those traits in myself too, particularly in how I hyperfocus. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, not autism, but I’ve spent years trying to understand these tendencies in all of us.

I never liked how he tried to diagnose me without consent, without training, and without love. I try not to do that to others. But if I’m being honest, I do think he exhibits traits of someone on the spectrum, specifically in how he fixates and lacks emotional awareness. My father is a brilliant man. He’s exceptionally intelligent. But that intelligence became obsession, and that obsession became control. I’ve seen similar patterns in his mother. And in myself. The mind is a powerful thing. A psychologist will tell you that we all carry unique psychological markers. I’ll write more on that another time.

It’s fascinating how childhood trauma can follow us into adulthood. It doesn’t just stay in the past. It shows up in our relationships, our choices, our reactions. It’s up to us to recognize the signs, to choose differently, and to stop repeating the cycle—whether with our parents, our partners, or our peers.

The memories I carry of him aren’t comforting. They’re fragmented, emotional, and often blank. I blocked many of them out just to survive. My father didn’t raise me with love. He raised me with silence, intimidation, and control. He raised me through psychological abuse. And for years, I didn’t even have the language to name it. Even now, it’s hard to say out loud.

That doesn’t mean there were no good moments. Life is complicated. Family is complicated. And societal expectations often tell us to hold our pain quietly.

I am, by nature, a positive and life-filled person. But for a long time, I felt completely hollow inside. I believed that emptiness was just part of who I was. That I had been born broken. That I deserved what I got.

It took me years to understand: I wasn’t the problem.I was a child.And children are never to blame for the abuse they endure.

Psychological abuse doesn’t always leave bruises. It lingers in how you speak, how you love, how you trust, and how you doubt yourself. It plants seeds of silence. It teaches you that your feelings are too much. That your voice is too loud. That your joy is inconvenient. That your needs are unworthy.

And that is why I speak now.

Here are just some of the psychological abuses I now recognize:

Gaslighting. Making me question my memories, my reactions, and my emotional sanity. 

Scapegoating. Blaming me for family problems or labeling me as the issue. 

Withholding. Love, affection, and validation were earned, not freely given. 

Projection. Blaming me for the things he refused to confront in himself. 

Constant criticism. Picking apart how I spoke, how I thought, and who I was. 

Control. Using money, career, and rank to manipulate or overshadow my emotional needs. 

Parentification. Forcing me to be emotionally mature before my time. 

Triangulation. Turning people against me or comparing me to others.

 Fear and intimidation. Walking into rooms and making everyone small without saying a word. 

Minimizing. Telling me I was overreacting, dramatic, or mentally unstable when I cried or stood up for myself.

That kind of abuse rewires you. It stays buried until you’re ready to unearth it. For me, that moment came when I became a mother. I looked at my son and made a vow: this ends with me. He will never have to wonder if he is loved. He will never mistake criticism for connection. I will protect him the way I should have been protected.

There were times as a little girl I would run to the phone whenever he called. I’d get such bad anxiety I would forget my thoughts while talking. His response wasn’t patience or love. It was, “You must be bipolar", or "something wrong with you. No one should be talking this fast.” He was telling this to me since I was little little. That is what psychological abuse sounds like. It isn’t always loud. It’s subtle. It hides behind status. It hides behind the mask of authority and “concern.”

I used to idolize him. I wanted that “dad” moment that I thought every little girl deserved. I’d imagine him as a hero because I needed to believe someone could love me like that. But the truth is, he wasn’t showing up for me emotionally. He was showing up for himself; to maintain control, to save face, to preserve his image.

I remember the time he came to my 3rd grade class. He wore his military uniform and sat in the corner of the room like a judge, not a father. He didn’t ask about my friends or what I loved to learn. He came to observe, to evaluate, to intimidate. He didn’t see me. He saw a checklist. And when he didn’t approve, he threatened custody. Not out of care, but out of control.

He had “#1 Dad” on his license plate. But where was he? Why was he so abusive even from a far? He never once came to any of my concerts, or school events. He never once showed up to be there on a dad level to walk beside me as I went through life trials. He was all about himself, his goals in life, his military ambitions, and generational remembrance of the importance of the family. As a little girl who did not know better. I gave him too much power. Even when he was not anywhere near me, but his phone calls, and dictator voice was like he was physically in the room with me. That is where I had to learn to forgive myself because I did not know better.

The visits I do remember were brief moments in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. I felt more like inspections than parenting. Alabama or Pennsylvania, in particular, was terrifying. Spilling a juice box, and him yelling at me. (Again, I blocked this out. My older sister remembers more than I do. We have story after story. I could go on, and on. Little at a time I will talk about it).

I was still so little. What I remember most isn’t the events, but the emotions. Sadness. Fear. Anxiety. Silence. That’s what abuse does. It dims your light until you forget you had one at all. Sometimes you are so in the psychological abuse you do not know what the difference is to have a normal say in things, or even boundaries. Your voice most of all is silenced. You do not even know how to use your voice. I still have issues to this day in communication that stemmed from this man and how he treated me.

As I stated earlier,my sister remembers things more than I do. She has thicker skin. She dealt with it differently. She still had emotions towards it, but she worked hard on it as she became an adult. I adore her for her strength, and the work she has done to place boundaries up, and learn how to not control the emotions, but boundaries her emotions with this person. But I always wondered, even as a kid, “Why doesn’t she want a dad like I do?” I didn’t understand then. Her actions wasn't that she never wanted him, but she knew who he was. I do now understand. I started understanding as I was becoming an adult. You mix adolescence, mental growth, and our emotions that we do not yet understand. It is a tough pill to swallow when it comes to growing up and being placed in an environment that you never chose to even have.

Back then, the idea of divorce and abuse was taboo. My mom had to leave him when I was just a baby. She was isolated, silenced, and even shunned by my grandfather (her father) for three years because divorce was not heard of back than. You stayed as a woman in the abuse.

But she saved us. And while she hid things to protect us, she also raised us with openness and deep thought. Philosophy mattered. Conversation mattered. Understanding mattered. She also had issues herself that I had to heal from as well. It was like a balance rope of her healing herself to having to raise us as she was trying to heal. She had traits that were toxic as well that grew. My mom is my mom. I love her, but she also didn't always handle things well. We have not had a discussion about that in person. I don't think I ever will. I do love her beyond words. I have written letters to her in one day in hope to give it to her, but as she is getting older. I am at the point of just loving her for her, and maybe never getting closure of that validation

And yet, I still craved what I thought a father should be. I craved that validation, that emotional safety. It never came. Not from him.

Now I am a woman, and I still carry that little girl inside me. But I’ve learned that healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It means acknowledging the truth and no longer carrying the weight of someone else’s brokenness as your burden.

I’ve been holding on to this for so many years.

Somewhere deep inside, I always knew I would one day write this. Whether it would be a book, a blog, or even just words on a page for myself. I knew I needed to speak up about psychological abuse, generational trauma, and how we begin to break the cycle for those who come after us. Because this didn’t start with me. But it can end with me.

There were so many moments. So many layers of silence, of confusion, of pain that I tucked away to survive. I remember once, at a hotel, I was fake-sleeping when I overheard my father and stepmother whispering about taking custody of my older sister. They were trying to figure out how to legally remove her from my mother’s care. I was maybe eight or nine. My sister didn’t want anything to do with him, and instead of asking why or showing concern, he chose control. He treated love like a legal strategy. And therapy like an after thought.

Every year, it got worse. The emotional pressure. The expectations. The silence. I was forced to call him “Dad,” or I’d be punished. I was made to visit old Civil War battlefields with him where he’d lecture me—not teach me, not share stories with me—but lecture. It wasn’t about connecting through history. It was about indoctrinating me into his version of family, of pride, of authority. Over and over, he told me how “important generational legacy” was. That “family matters.” That “blood is blood.”

But where was that love when we needed it?

Even now, there are moments when I want to scream to the sky, “Fuck you, past generations.” Not because they don’t deserve understanding, but because they never stopped to ask if we were okay. They built legacies while leaving their children in emotional ruins. They passed down trauma disguised as tradition. And we’re left picking up the pieces.

The abuse didn’t stop just because I got older. It changed forms.

He continued to pick me apart, using money as a way to control instead of a guide emotionally with how to finance. There were no healthy conversations. No space for “yes,” “no,” or even “let’s talk about it.” Just unreasonable expectations like, “You have to do this, or I won’t help you at all.”

He criticized how I spoke, how I thought, and how I carried myself. My anxiety worsened. I developed disordered eating habits. I didn’t know how to process emotions, and I struggled to trust anyone who tried to help me. Especially when it came to money or affection. I had learned to associate support with strings attached. If someone helped me, I believed it would cost me more than I could give.

There is a healthy middle. Boundaries with money are important, and parents have every right to say no. But when support is used as leverage, when help becomes a tool for control, it stops being love. It becomes manipulation.

I know now it’s not just what we do. It is how we do it that matters. The way he acted, the tone he used, and the demands he placed on us were not grounded in love or care. They were controlling. They were abusive. No one, child or adult, should be taken advantage of.

If a parent wants to help, then help with intention and understanding. If a child says, “Can you help me pay for school?” the response should not be, “You need to change your major.” That is not support. That is coercion.

Instead, have a conversation. Ask questions. Set boundaries with empathy. As parents, we are meant to guide our children, not control them. If you make everything about money, constantly complain about it, and then accuse your child of only caring because of it, when they are asking for connection and guidance, not a transaction, that is not love. That is projection.

And that is your issue to heal, not your daughter’s burden to carry.

It took years for me to even begin to heal.

And I want to be honest here: I hold my mother responsible for some things too. I know she did her best, and I know she loved us. But I wish she had done some things differently. I wish she had seen what was happening more clearly. I wish she hadn’t hidden so much in order to protect us, because in doing so, it left us unprepared for the emotional storms that were brewing inside our home and inside ourselves.

But I also know this: our mothers were raised by women who were silenced too. They were taught to survive, not to heal. And that’s where we come in.

Maybe writing this tonight is a way for me to heal. Maybe it's the first step in explaining why I see the world through a psychological lens. Why I break things down—not to deflect, but to understand. I don’t want to be stuck in a cycle of reflecting pain outward or burying it inside. I want to understand how it began and how to end it.

Growing up, I always paid attention. In every history class, in every museum, I listened closely when they said, “History repeats itself if we do not learn from it.” That truth has stuck with me. And it’s why, when I see the signs. When I feel them again in my bones,I speak up.

When Trump first ran for president, something inside me was triggered. I was already doing the emotional labor of breaking the cycle of abuse in my personal life. I was fighting to protect my son from the trauma I had lived. And suddenly, all around me, I saw patterns I recognized. Patterns I have seen first hand.

The gaslighting. The emotional manipulation. The denial of responsibility. The blind loyalty. The need for control over truth. The mocking of those who cry out for help. The distortion of reality.

It looked familiar. Too familiar.

I started having PTSD, memories, flashbacks, emotional spirals, not just from my past, but from what I saw unfolding in my country. It wasn’t just a political disagreement. It was a psychological crisis. And what hurt the most wasn’t even the man at the center of it all. It was the enablers. The people who made excuses. The ones who turned their backs on empathy. The ones who were gaslit and didn’t even know it. And the media that helped them feel validated in their delusion.

I still sit here, years later,heartbroken by my fellow citizens. Not because they disagree with me. But because they refuse to see what harm looks like. Because they cheer for it. Because some of them became it. They are it.

It devastates me, and worries me. It shows how lack of educated we are on psychological abuse traits. I pray one day I can help with education of it. I pray I can help.

Psychological abuse is one of the hardest abuses you can prove in court rooms. It is underestimated, and covered up for ranks, smiles, charisma, and so much more. It influences, and they get enablers; those are just as much abusers as the direct person who is manipulating the entire thing. It does not have to be 1 person being this psychological abusive.

No, I don’t have a PhD in psychology. But I have something else. I have lived experience. I have walked through the emotional fire and made it out the other side, dragging pieces of myself behind me. Since I was little, I’ve known what psychological abuse feels like. It has taken my years of therapy to learn all these things that come with psychological abuse. I didn’t have the language for it then. Not until therapy. Not until I was married and finally started facing the patterns head-on because I saw it in my partner as well who refused to also look in the mirror, and heal from his past stuff. He took on traits, and had chemical DNA as well that was similar.

Patterns we see with how we are raised to who we are, and what makes us up.

Now, I do. And I speak up not because I want attention, but because I want change. I want to be part of healing. I want my pain to have purpose.

It does not because I make it so. I help others. I am honored I can.I am honored I survived this to help others, and build something to help them help others.

Make this world a little nicer, and educated.

I pray that in telling my story, others will learn from it. I pray that the little time I have on this Earth will be enough to spark change in someone else’s heart.

I pray that my son grows up in a home and a country that is safe—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. That he never has to shrink to be accepted. That he never confuses control with love. That he knows he has the right to his voice, his truth, and his feelings.

I want him to inherit a version of America where the Constitution is upheld by people who understand why it was written. Not by those who weaponize it. I want him to live among people who take responsibility for their actions. Who can look in the mirror. Who choose empathy. Who feel again.

And I want him to know that his mother fought for that world. With words. With truth. With love.

Because healing isn’t passive. It’s work. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s also freedom.

And I will never stop reaching for it; not for me, and not for him.

It starts with me directly first to stop the wheel.

I pray I am doing an OK job working on stopping it.