When you grow up in chaos, it’s hard to see the dysfunction for what it really is. It becomes your “normal,” the foundation upon which you build your understanding of the world. As a child, I didn’t know any different. I thought every family lived the way we did—filled with shame, fear, and hardship. It wasn’t until I started stepping outside my home, seeing glimpses of other families, that I began to realize: This isn’t how life is supposed to be.
I didn’t see my father as a bad man. He loved me—of that, I have no doubt. But looking back now, I see the weight he carried and the compromises he made, many of which deeply affected us as his children. My father was raising five of us on his own after my mother left. I think he felt trapped, like he couldn’t do it alone, and so he allowed things to happen that he shouldn’t have. He stayed in situations and with people who caused harm, all because he believed he had no other choice.
He wasn’t perfect, and he made mistakes—mistakes I know he sees now. He did things the wrong way, and it hurt all of us, including himself. But I believe his intentions were rooted in fear and love: fear of losing us, fear of being abandoned again, and love that, while flawed in its expression, was real. That’s a hard truth for me to reconcile even now.
My slow realization that our family life wasn’t “normal” didn’t come all at once. It was like piecing together a puzzle, one moment at a time. Summers at Bible school planted the first seeds of doubt. My sister and I attended every year, and for those few weeks, I got to see how other families interacted. I’d watch parents show kindness to their children in ways that seemed so foreign to me. There was a warmth in their smiles, a tenderness in their touch, that didn’t exist in my world.
Church members would pick us up on Sundays, taking us to services and then feeding us before bringing us back home. They didn’t know the heaviness we felt when stepping out of their cars to face the darkness waiting for us inside our house. But their kindness meant more than they’ll ever know. It was during those Sundays that I began to understand love didn’t have to come with fear or conditions.
Occasionally, I was allowed to stay with my step-sisters, which offered rare moments of reprieve. Those nights were few, but they gave me glimpses of what other families were like. I saw relationships that weren’t built on fear or obligation but on trust and care. Even those brief experiences were enough to show me how different life could be, though they also made returning home that much harder.
At home, things were different. Love wasn’t openly shared; it had to be earned. Mistakes brought anger and, often, physical consequences. There were expectations we didn’t understand and punishments that felt unfair. We grew up walking on eggshells, unsure of what might set someone off.
But the hardest truth to accept was this: my father didn’t protect us in the ways we needed. I don’t believe he was intentionally cruel, but his fear of being left alone and his dependence on others led him to make choices that harmed us. He allowed my stepmother’s rules to overshadow our needs, and he allowed us to endure things no child should ever face. Still, I see now that he felt stuck, as if he had no way out.
It’s a strange thing to hold love and resentment for someone at the same time. I loved my father deeply, and I still do. But I also carried anger for the times he didn’t stand up for us, for the pain he let happen under his roof. Over time, that anger has softened into understanding. He was a man who had been abandoned, who was terrified of failing, and who made the wrong choices while trying to keep us together.
These realizations didn’t come easily. As a child, you don’t question the way you’re raised—it’s just your life. But as I grew older, I began to see the cracks in the foundation. The warmth I saw in other families opened my eyes to what was missing in mine. The kindness of strangers at church or in my step-sisters’ homes taught me that love doesn’t have to hurt.
If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced something similar, know this: it’s okay to love someone who hurt you and still hold them accountable for their actions. It’s okay to grieve what you didn’t have, to acknowledge the ways your childhood shaped you, and to seek something better for yourself.
I’ve learned that healing isn’t about forgetting or excusing the past. It’s about understanding it, finding the lessons in the pain, and choosing to move forward with compassion—for others and for yourself. My father wasn’t a perfect man, but he loved me in the ways he knew how. And while I’ve had to heal from the wounds of my childhood, I carry his love with me, too.
Healing takes time, but it starts with truth. And the truth is this: I deserved better, and so did he.
Stay strong,
Healing Through Chaos
