There is a pain deeper than almost anything else you’ll ever feel—
It’s the pain of being called your child’s abuser.
Not by someone online, not by a therapist’s distant observation.
By your child.
By the one you carried, raised, loved—imperfectly, yes, but with everything you had.
What do you do when your child takes the raw, unhealed versions of you from a decade ago or more, the survival-mode parenting, the mistakes you’ve owned a hundred times—and turns them into evidence of willful abuse?
What do you do when your deepest shame becomes the story they tell about who you are?
You want to defend yourself, but you also know there were things you didn’t do right.
You want to say, “That wasn’t abuse,” because you know the intent was never there – but what do you call it when love is tangled in trauma, when your best was broken and your presence was laced with pain?
What if they’re not wrong?
What if you don’t even know where the line was?
Maybe you screamed when you should’ve soothed.
Maybe you froze when they needed warmth.
Maybe you walked on eggshells in your own marriage and passed down the quiet terror to your kids.
Maybe you were also dealing with uncontrollable physical health issues that left you in physical pain all of the time.
Maybe you stayed too long, shut down too often, or gave your child a front-row seat to the chaos you were barely surviving yourself.
And now, after all the healing, the therapy, the apologies, the changed behaviors, the endless effort in the name of self improvement?
They don’t see it.
They don’t care.
They call it abuse.
And you feel like you’re being sentenced to life for a crime you committed in a blackout.
Not because you were drunk or careless,
But because your trauma took over.
Because no one taught you how to love safely.
Because no one showed you what emotional regulation looked like in a home.
Because you were raised to survive, not to nurture.
But here’s the most unbearable part—
You still love them.
Even when they say they don’t want anything to do with you.
Even when they tell you that your love is the problem.
Even when they cut you out and call it healing.
It feels like your heart is being extracted, piece by piece, with no anesthesia.
Because no matter what anyone says, your child calling you toxic feels like the end of the world.
But it’s not.
It’s a beginning—
A horrifying, humbling beginning where you learn that your healing cannot be dependent on their forgiveness.
Where you realize that you may never be invited into their healing,
But you can still choose yours.
It doesn’t mean you excuse what happened.
It doesn’t mean you say, “It wasn’t that bad.”
It means you hold the truth:
You were hurt.
You hurt others.
You changed.
And if they choose to stay frozen in a story where you are only the villain,
That’s their process.
That’s their healing timeline.
That’s their nervous system protecting them from pain too big to hold.
You don’t need to justify your growth.
You don’t need to beg to be seen differently.
You don’t need to carry their punishment like a badge.
You need to keep going.
Keep healing.
Keep softening.
Keep showing up for yourself with the love you wished you could have given them back then.
Because the truth is—
No one can change the past.
But you did something even harder.
You changed yourself.
And that matters.
Even if they never say it.
Even if they never come back.
Even if the only place your growth is ever fully seen is inside your own soul.
You still get to be proud of it.
You still get to be free.