Her death was my rebirth
His truth lit the match
I didn’t call him right away after my mother’s death because I needed space. Not just from her memory, but from everything that still felt entangled with her, including him.
Because even though I knew my father had also been her victim, I couldn’t help but see him through the lens of everything he didn’t do. His silence. His enabling. The times he looked away while I was drowning.
I didn’t yet comprehend that survival sometimes looks like compliance, but I would eventually understand during a channeling session with his spirit.
When I was ready, I called him. It was 19 days after her death.
The first phone call felt a little shaky. We talked logistics that surrounded what happened to her and how quickly it all unfolded. He walked me through the sequence of events like the engineer he was—cataloging data. Calm, factual, and meticulous.
But even inside his calm, I could hear the tiny bits of something finally coming to light.
Early morning coffees, finally talking
Three months before he died (about three months after my mother died) my husband and I went to visit him in Florida. We stayed for several days. Took him out for fresh air. Took him to have his favorite chocolate milkshake from Steak ’n Shake.
Every morning, my dad and I sat together with our strong, black coffee. Just the two of us. Just like we did when we lived in Florida as caregivers.
No distractions. No rushing. No fear of being overheard. Just silence and safety.
And for the first time in my life we really talked. Not about the weather. Not about Star Wars (he took me to see Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope in 1977 and we both developed a love for it). Not about college football or Formula 1 racing.
But about her.
About what we both lived through. What we both survived. The longer we talked, the safer it felt to say more.
He began opening up in ways I never thought possible.
He told the truth. Not all at once, but in fragments. In sentences. In long pauses and knowing looks that said more than words ever could.
PHOTO: My frail dad drinking his favorite chocolate milkshake.
It was taken the day we visited Steak ’n Shake, one of his favorite simple joys that he wasn’t allowed to have when his wife was alive. But that day, the milkshake disappointed him. Not because it tasted different, but because he no longer had the strength to pull it through the straw. He needed a spoon. I remember feeling confused, even a little mad, when I noticed he was still wearing his gold wedding band. There was something achingly symbolic in that moment: a milkshake too thick to drink, a man too worn down to enjoy it, a ring that never left his finger even after she was gone. Because some bonds don’t break clean. Some habits of loyalty run deeper than survival. Even freedom, when it finally comes, can feel too thick and heavy to hold.
He told me how she used to scream at him until 4 a.m. when she was fully intoxicated.
How she physically hurt him, squeezing his arms and legs when they were swollen with excruciating gout and he was too weak to stop her.
How she withheld food, withheld water, withheld rest, withheld basic care.
He told me about the anxiety that lived on his chest for almost six decades. The fear. The constant walking on eggshells inside their 59-year toxic AF marriage.
How she told him to kill himself multiple times.
It was so painful for both of us!
We finally understood each other
I took notes during our in-person time together and our weekly phone calls because I wanted to remember our conversations and document his new awarenesses. I felt like I could learn from him and apply his awarenesses to my newly developing own.
There was a sweetness and sacredness to our weekly calls now. Not just father and daughter, but two survivors who finally felt safe talking about their shared war.
He validated my experience.
He admitted his own.
He laughed more.
He even sounded younger somehow, like every part of him that had been held hostage was finally stretching its limbs.
Over the next several weeks, we talked more. Every conversation built trust and every shared story healed something.
For the first time ever, he acknowledged the truth out loud:
“She was cruel to you. You didn’t deserve any of that. I should’ve said something sooner.”
Here’s the thing—I didn’t need an apology. I needed a witness. I needed someone to stand beside the wreckage of what I’d endured and say, “Yes. That really happened. And it wasn’t your fault.”
Being believed really helped me, especially the part of me that had been gaslit into silence.
It helped quiet the internal chaos that still whispered, Maybe I made it all up. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe it wasn’t that bad.
When he said those words, it didn’t undo the damage, but it did give me a solid place to rest inside the truth. A place to stop bracing and a place to exhale. That kind of validation—especially from someone who had once been too afraid to speak—is one of the most healing forces I’ve known.
He told me he still struggled to sleep because his brain didn’t know what to do with the quiet.
“I couldn’t sleep for a week after she died,” he said. “My brain doesn’t know how to handle it.”
I wasn’t surprised because I was still struggling with with trying to handle it, too.
Sleep wasn’t safe for him.
Peace was foreign.
But now, little by little, he was learning that safety was possible.
Even if it came late.
Even if it didn’t last long.
His quiet joy and his final months
In those last few months, my dad finally got a taste of something he’d never truly had in 59 years of living with her: PEACE.
It was subtle at first. You could hear it in his voice—the lightness, the absence of fear. The way he lingered longer in conversation. The way he made jokes, or let silence be comfortable.
He began saying things like:
“I’m so damned relieved she can’t hurt me anymore.”
“My anxiety level has dropped through the floor.”
“I can buy whatever I want at the grocery store.”
“I feel liberated about money now. Her saying we were broke was a lie.”
“I’m not carrying the 400-pound elephant anymore.”
“I can sleep with freedom without worrying about what she’ll do to me when I nap or sleep during the night.”
He was thrilled to buy sushi at the grocery store on a Monday just because he felt like it, not because it was discounted or wife-approved. That tiny act of rebellion delighted him. A man in his 80s buying fish rolls and feeling free!
He started noticing the quiet in his home. Not just the absence of noise, but the absence of tension and terror.
He could leave the toaster out on the counter now. He could cut vegetables directly on the wooden cutting board she had always declared as decorative only.
He could nap without fear of being yelled at. He could fall asleep without worrying she’d scream at him, or hit him, or violently drop the back of his recliner while he rested.
He no longer needed permission to exist. He didn’t have to brace for punishment. He didn’t have to ask for freedom.
It wasn’t just relief.
It was liberation.
Watching him taste freedom for the first time in his eighties after a lifetime of walking on eggshells and swallowing his voice was beautiful in a bittersweet way because I got to see it. I got to witness him soften. I got to hear him laugh without fear in his throat. I got to know who he was without her.
And that was such a gift! A sacred glimpse of the man he was always meant to be before her control, before the fear, before the never ending war that lived inside their marriage.
It didn’t last long, but it was real and I’ll never stop being grateful I was there for it.
It gave me hope. Hope that it’s never too late to feel peace. Hope that freedom can find you, even in the final chapters. And hope that if he could experience it, so could I.
His death came softly
He passed six months after my mother did.
It was quieter and less shocking for me. But no less painful.
I learned later during a channeling session that he carried his strong desire for freedom and travel into his death experience. You’ll read about it in one of the channeling sessions.
Even though his life had been shaped by her cruelty, he made the most of those final months the best he could.
He watched his favorite movies and favorite college football teams uninterrupted. He ate what he wanted, when he wanted. He read. He rested. He finally exhaled.
And when he died, he left this world with something he hadn’t had in almost sixty years: dignity.
PHOTO: The final day of emptying his house, which took a full two weeks.
My mother’s death was my rebirth
Sixteen months after my dad passed, I began working with Demi, the professional psychic medium who would walk beside me spiritually as I finally opened the door I spent my entire life afraid to even acknowledge.
My experience with a traditional therapist was great, but she couldn’t go deep enough to find out why my mother abused me and my dad. I needed to know WHY because if life is supposed to be joyful and loving, then why wasn’t mine?!?
Anyway, by then both of my parents were gone, yet everything was just beginning.
It’s strange, isn’t it? How something can die and take you with it.
But, also how that same death can give you back to yourself in a way you never imagined.
When my mother died, I didn’t just grieve her, I grieved every part of me that had been built in response to her:
the cautious version of me
the pleasing version version of me
the worshipping-my-mother version of me
the version of me who flinched every time my mother raised her voice or sighed too loudly in the next room.
And in that strange, hollow space between her final breath and my first real one after the channeling sessions, something happened: I was reborn.
Not into joy or clarity or healing just yet. But into TRUTH.
I’ve learned that the truth + my awareness of the truth + my acceptance of that awareness is where my healing began.
And just like that, I learned why I was the way I was, just like spirit whispered to me before we left Ohio—a quiet prophecy spoken while I was packing boxes to move to Florida to care for my parents.
I thought I knew what it meant then, but boy, I had no idea!
This is where The Conversations We Never Had begins.
Not with peace and understanding, but with the devastation that came before them.
If you’re here reading this, maybe you know that devastation, too.
Maybe the grief you carry isn’t just for them, but for who you were because of them.
Maybe you’re still flinching, still questioning, still waiting for the war to end.
If so, I want you to know it’s okay if your freedom feels nothing like you thought it would.
Healing doesn’t always start with hope. Mine sure didn’t!
Sometimes, it starts with horror, heartbreak, and confusion.