The Thread of Vulnerability We’re Taught Not to Pull

The Mother’s Day Call

I still remember the call clearly. It was Mother’s Day, and my dad phoned to say he was sorry he hadn’t called earlier. He wasn’t being cold — I could hear in his voice that he was a little lost in his own thoughts. Maybe grieving my mom in his quiet way, maybe caught in his own memories of past Mother’s Days. He asked how mine was, and I cried. Because truthfully, it wasn’t great.

That Mother’s Day marked a turning point for me. I was on the edge of ending my marriage. I hadn’t hired a lawyer yet, but I was researching, weighing, planning. I’d been at home with the kids, financially dependent, and while Matt knew it was coming, I still felt the weight of secrecy. I told my dad: “I think my marriage is done.” This was the first pull on his thread of vulnerability.

He paused, then offered: “Do you think maybe it’s just stress?”

That one sentence felt like a punch to my chest — my solar plexus tightening. I knew in my bones it wasn’t stress. It was chronic avoidance. A patterned behavior. Something I couldn’t name with one word, because it was a whole tree of branches — escapism, shutdowns, refusals to connect. And in that moment, I realized my dad wasn’t just minimizing me. He was defending himself.

I could hear it underneath his words: This is me. This is my marriage too. This is who your mother lived with.

And with that realization, a whole new thread unraveled.

My Parents’ Marriage: Love and Silence

My parents were married for over 35 years. They loved each other — that much I know. They had affectionate rituals, long hugs in the kitchen, quick kisses, private jokes. They called each other “Poopsie.” I don’t even remember the origin of the nickname anymore, but I remember the warmth with which they said it.

But I also remember the silence. The avoidance. The emotional distance that ran beneath the surface.

I only ever overheard one argument, sometime around age 10 or 12. My dad was frustrated, telling my mom, “The kids never see you. They’re always asking where you are.” My mom was a workaholic, and from what I could see, she poured herself into her job until cancer forced her to stop. I often wonder now — was work her own form of escape?

Not long after, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought for more than 14 years before passing in 2015. And I can’t help but ask: did her illness become the glue that held their marriage together? Did the daily grind of treatments, appointments, and caretaking quiet the arguments that might have otherwise surfaced?

I’ll never know the full depth of their marriage. What I do know is this: they loved each other deeply, but neither had the tools — or maybe the willingness — to face the vulnerable questions out loud.

Emotional Avoidance and Authoritarian Upbringings

Both of my parents loved me. They did the best they could with what they knew. But they were emotionally avoidant, neglectful in ways that left me unsafe. My dad carried an authoritarian energy. In his world, control equaled respect, dominance equaled safety. And Matt, my husband, was raised with a similar model.

That’s why the Mother’s Day call hit me so hard. His words weren’t just about me — they were about the lineage of men in my life who never learned to sit with discomfort, who never learned to ask the harder questions. They learned to deflect, to minimize, to shut down what they couldn’t handle.

I see now that authoritarianism doesn’t always show up as overt dominance. Sometimes it shows up as covert narcissism, emotional unavailability, or chronic avoidance.

That’s why I created The Vulnerability Thread Journal Prompt Guide — 25+ prompts to help you safely unravel the patterns we’re taught to avoid.

The Gift of Knowing

This is where my gifts come in. Claircognizance. My Projector nature. That piercing kind of knowing that doesn’t need evidence, because the evidence lives in my body. The punch to the solar plexus was all I needed.

I saw my dad’s avoidance. I saw my mom’s silence. I saw my marriage mirrored back at me. And the grief of that realization was almost too much: my mom never challenged him in this way. And she never will now.

Sometimes intuition feels like a gift. Sometimes it feels like a burden. But in this case, it was clarity.

If Your Parents Can’t Ask the Questions

Maybe your story doesn’t look exactly like mine. Maybe your parents weren’t affectionate. Maybe they fought loudly. Maybe they stayed silent for decades. Maybe you’ve never heard them ask, “How are you, really?” — because that one question might unravel the whole thread.

What I want you to know is this: you’re not alone. There are thousands of us who grew up unseen, who were raised by parents who couldn’t hold vulnerability because they were never given permission to hold their own.

The lesson for me has been this: I don’t need to convince my dad to see it differently. I don’t need to make my husband’s avoidance into a story that explains away the pain. I just need to name it. And in naming it, I stop carrying the silence.

A Gentle Activation

So here’s my invitation for you:

What question in your family feels too dangerous to ask?
Where have you silenced your truth to protect someone else’s avoidance?
And what would it feel like to name it — even just in your own journal, your own voice, your own heart?

Maybe this isn’t the work your parents could do. But it can be the work you do.

Pulling on the thread of vulnerability takes courage. Reading about it is one thing—but sitting with your own patterns is where change begins. That’s why I created The Vulnerability Thread Journal Prompt Guide, a digital companion filled with prompts, grounding tools, and reflection practices to support you on this journey.

Core Takeaway

If you’ve felt unseen by your parents, if they’ve minimized, deflected, or avoided your pain — it isn’t proof that your pain isn’t real. It’s proof of the limits of what they could face in themselves.

And if your story fits inside mine, even in the smallest way, I hope it brings you comfort to know this: you are not alone.

Additional Resources:

Want both guided reflection and open space to write? Pair The Vulnerability Thread Journal Prompt Guide with the Healed & Aligned Journal.

Together, they create a complete toolkit for deep inner work — guiding you to name what was hidden, and giving you a safe space to write it through. 👉 Shop the Bundle Here

Mindfulness & Meditation:

Journals:

The Healed & Aligned Journal – if you want both guided reflection and open space, this is the perfect partner.
The Ashes Journal: Writing Your Way Through Collapse

Books:

Some days reading is hard — listening can be easier. You can try Audible FREE for 30 days and see if it works for you.
The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Explore More in:

ancestral healing tools, authoritarian parenting, breaking generational cycles, emotional avoidance, family silence and grief, healing authoritarian father wound, journaling prompts for healing, neurodivergent motherhood, Projector human design vulnerability, spiritual journaling practices, vulnerability healing

Golden threads unraveling and weaving back into a heart shape on soft fabric — a metaphor for vulnerability, healing family patterns, and finding clarity.

Cycle Breaking + Personal Growth

August 23, 2025