The Fire That Burned It All Down There’s a cost to silence

I didn’t want it to be true.

That it was him my father.

Even now, the truth sits heavy in my chest.

I didn’t want to remember.

Because once you remember, everything changes.

And I knew it would.

For years, I buried it.

Under the weight of responsibility, motherhood, and survival.

I shaped myself into the one who held it all.

But inside, a younger part of me was still frozen in the moment it began.

And eventually, she rose.

The body remembers.

The soul does not forget.

And truth once ready will not be silenced.

May 18th. I spoke it aloud.

June 10th. He was gone.

And I was left inside a silence louder than anything I’d ever known.

Holding the truth like a glowing ember too hot to touch, too sacred to release.

People had questions.

Judgments.

They couldn’t understand how the story they had clung to was never mine to begin with.

They didn’t see what trauma does to love.

How the child learns to stay loyal to what harms her.

Because the alternative is even more terrifying.

After speaking the truth, I collapsed.

I shook. I sobbed. I stopped sleeping.

A part of me truly believed she wouldn’t survive.

And in many ways, she didn’t.

The version of me who stayed silent to protect the image of family

She died that day.

And I mourned her too.

But here is what I know now:

Truth does not set you free it dismantles what was never real.

And freedom doesn’t arrive all at once.

It rises, slowly, from the ashes.

With grief. With breath. With rage. With time.

When he died,

I stood in that liminal space where nothing made sense and everything became clear.

I carried the ceremony, the sorrow, and the reckoning.

But I did not carry hatred.

Not because I condoned what had happened

But because I refused to pass the poison on to my children.

In systemic work, we learn:

Acceptance is not agreement.

It is the act of placing what was never ours back where it belongs.

And I knew I had to do just that.

So I said: “This is where it ends.”

And something in me let go.

Not just of him, but of what he had taken.

And what I had carried for far too long.

From that scorched earth…

Phoenix was conceived. Three months later.

Her chapter is its own.

Because nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

And that—that—was the fire that truly changed me.

Systemic Teaching: On Loyalty, Love, and Letting Go

In systemic therapy, we speak of the Orders of Love natural laws that govern belonging, hierarchy, and balance within a family system. When these orders are disrupted, pain ripples silently across generations.

One of the most profound orders is this: everyone belongs.

Even the ones who caused harm.

Even the ones we wish we could erase.

Because when we exclude someone from the system whether out of rage, silence, or shame the system compensates.

And someone in the next generation carries what has not been faced.

This is not to say we keep them close.

It means we acknowledge them in their rightful place, so we no longer carry their fate.

We also recognise the deep and unconscious loyalty children have to their parents even abusive ones.

The child says:

“If I carry your pain, will you love me?”

“If I suffer too, will I belong?”

“If I stay silent, will you stay?”

Breaking that loyalty is an act of love but not the kind most people understand.

It is love for the future.

Love for our children.

Love for what comes after us.

When we say, “This pain ends here,”

we are not dishonouring the past we are setting it down

so something else can begin.

That is the work of the truth-teller.

Not to destroy the system,

but to reorder it.

Reflection from the Field

Unspoken truths do not disappear.

They migrate through bodies, behaviours, relationships, and lineages.

When we face what has been buried without collapse, and without vengeance we begin to restore right order.

We do not need to forgive forget, or fix the past.

We need only face it, feel it, and honour what is true.

That is where real healing begins.