PROLOGUE
Growing up with a single mother carves a permanent scar into a little girl. They teach you strength along with independence, but the kind that comes with calloused hands and a locked jaw. They show you how to bury your emotions so deep you almost forget where you put them, until they claw their way back out when you least expect it.
Independence becomes less of a choice and more of a survival skill. Love, softness and nurturing—are foreign currencies in our house, never exchanged and never spoken. Some girls grow from that. For me, it almost broke me.
Almost.
My mother works as an accountant for a gas company in a town where the oil rigs cast shadows longer than the buildings. She wears her achievements like armor, reminding anyone who would listen to how hard she had to fight to get there. Being a Black woman in a world that expected her to disappear, she forced her way into rooms, slamming the door behind her, so no one could forget her name.
That kind of resilience has always been admirable—terrifying even—but it came at a price.
What I don’t think she realized is that I learned just as much from her silence as from her success. I learned how to stand alone, how to sharpen myself into something untouchable. She says she wants me to believe I can do anything I put my mind to, but what I really learned was that tenderness makes you weak, and weakness gets you hurt.
By the time I was twelve, I already taught myself to swallow my emotions and numb feelings to the sharp words that still leaves bruises no one can see. I thought the heaviness in my heart was just a part of being a daughter.
I thought mothers and daughters weren’t supposed to be soft with each other—that our love was supposed to sting. It wasn’t until I started watching other girls hugging their moms, whispering secrets that ended in laughter, and smiles so wide they looked painful—but the good kind—that something was off. Something between us is broken.
The realization didn’t come all at once—it crept in slow, like poison flowing through my veins.
But underneath it all, was the guilt. The questions that continue to claw at me in the dark.
What did I do to make her hate me so much? Why can't she look at me the way those mothers looked at their daughters, with sparkles in her eyes, and softness?
Am I too loud? Too different? Too much of my father?
Or am I just…thatunlovable?
She never lets me forget how much I look like my father—how I carry his face, his smirks, even the scattered freckles and moles that mark me as his.
She says my lies carry his echo, and my words cut the same, sharp and thoughtless. It’s as if every time she looks at me, she isn’t seeingmeat all—just him, haunting her through my skin. The weight of her hatred, and the memories she can’t seem to escape, press down on me like chains I didn’t ask for.
I’m the living reminder of everything he ever did wrong. As ifhissins run throughmyveins.
But how the hell is that my fault? How can I pay for mistakes that were never mine to begin with? How can I help being born with his face, his habits, his shadows stitched into my skin?
I never asked for them, but she makes me wear them like a punishment.
What did I do that was so wrong?
Why am I never enough?
Why does she see him instead of me?
She never gives me answers, so I write them myself. And in every version, I’m the problem. I carry that blame like a second heartbeat, letting it fester into something I know I’ll have to deal with later.
Until resentment rots into something heavier—shame. Shame that hollows me out, piece by piece, until I can’t tell where she ends and I began.
It takes me years to see her clearly—not just as my mother, but as a broken, unloved girl who’s been starved of softness since she was nine.
Trauma has been her only inheritance, and without even realizing, she's passed it down to me like a curse.
And maybe that’s the cruelest part—understanding her doesn’t set me free. It only binds me tighter. Because how do you forgive wounds that still haven’t stopped bleeding?
Now I understand how trauma doesn’t just live inside you—it seeps into everything.
The way you speak.
The way you love.
