My relationship with my dad shaped everything — and nearly destroyed me before I learned to rewrite the story.
Growing up, to say my relationship with my dad was tumultuous would be a mild understatement. For the most part, it was highly volatile. I suffered a tremendous amount of mental and emotional abuse from him, as well as physical abuse on many occasions.
His energy was unstable and unpredictable.
Often I would try to make a joke of it, saying he was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde — you never knew which version of him would show up. And, man, could he shift between them without a moment’s notice, instantaneously.
He was a charmer, my dad. He had a big energy and he could light up a room. People gravitated to him. He was highly magnetic, at times, especially when in the company of others and attention was on him.
He definitely was not shy when it came to the attention he sought. I will get to that in just a moment … as, it’s actually part of his design and makeup.
He also could be scary. Like a switch would go off and he would rage. Of course, his drinking didn’t help matters. He is what I would refer to as a social alcoholic: he needed alcohol to boost his social interactions.
I don’t think I can remember a time my dad wasn’t lit up on some level when in social situations or in the company of his friends.
My dad also was a severe narcissist. So much so that he was actually diagnosed as clinically narcissistic from the U.S. Air Force (the pot calling the kettle black to some degree, but I digress).
So, as I mentioned, growing up with my dad was no picnic. It was chaotic, unsettling, and oftentimes, downright frightening. Walking on eggshells was only one tactic I used during those days.
The Defining Moment That Changed Everything
When we were stationed over in Italy (I was there from age 6 to age 10), things got even worse. At least for me.
You see, I am wired a lot like my dad. This was a huge source of my triggers and lack of confidence in myself for a long time. I thought because I was so much like him that I was going to end up like him.
I even had a moment at 8 years old when I found myself mimicking his horrible behaviors with one of my sister’s friends (she is 6 years younger than me) in an attempt to gain his attention and love.
It was only in the moment that I recognized the fear in that little girl’s eyes, that a new truth washed over me. It was like I was cracked open and the dam had burst. I didn’t want to be like my dad. Every cell, every fiber in me was adamant that I did not want to be like my dad … at all.
That particular moment broke me, and was truly one of my first prolific and defining moments that shaped the trajectory of my life. I was 8 years old. Yet, I remember it like it was yesterday.
In that moment, I made three promises to myself:
- I will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be like my dad.
- I will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever put that look on another human being’s face intentionally again.
- And, I will save the life of other kids … even if I have to adopt them all.
I honestly don’t know how many “evers” I threw out there in my very clear declarations, but they were a lot. It was like “never ever” times infinity.
That was the moment that I truly realized I hated my dad.
Years later, I would come to understand that much of what made our relationship combustible wasn’t really personal — it was actually energetic.
Human Design would later show me that.
What I didn’t know then — but now guide others to access in my Relationship Design Map work — is how much unresolved relational trauma lives in our energetic blueprints, and how we can heal those stories.
Living in Two Different Worlds
From that moment on, it was as if I became two entirely different people: one, who was insistent I wanted to change the world, to save the lives of other kids; and then the one, who hated my dad.
I was angry at my lot in life, at the world, and at God.
I started to fight back. At that time, I also had a bully at school who would chase me home every day. Fortunately, most days I was faster than her. My mom would even come to one of the two bus stops where I was dropped off to greet me so I could avoid the race home.
Inevitably, I would also choose the wrong bus stop. So, I would find myself racing home for cover so that she wouldn’t beat me up.
One morning, after my dad really set me off, something activated in me. I felt an urge to fight back. When my bully pushed me at the bus stop, I slugged her. Hard. Right in the stomach.
She flew backwards. My brother, who would wait with me and is 3 years younger than me, dropped his bag of cereal he was eating. Everyone went silent and all eyes were on me.
My bully slapped me. It stung. I then punched back. This time I caught her face. A mark that left one hell of a bruise.
The bus came and we went to school.
Later that afternoon, after the bus dropped us back off, my bully and her mom showed up at our front door. When she told my mom to see what I did, my mom calmly (and beautifully) responded, “Well, what goes around, comes around.” And, then she closed the door.
Looking back, I have so much gratitude for that moment my mom was truly able to stand up for me. Because, in reality, there weren’t many of those moments. My mom, like the rest of us, feared my dad greatly. She did everything she could, and she couldn’t protect me from.
That moment at the bus stop offered me a reflection on my own strength.
I wasn’t going to allow anyone to bully me. I would protect myself no matter what. And, wow, did that ever become a narrative I would have to unpack later (and, to be honest, still am unpacking today).
The Fighter in Me Was Born
In a single moment, I found my strength. I refused to let anyone push me around, whether by authority or physical presence. I would fight back, even if it meant I would get killed in the process.
So, fight I did.
Anyone and everything that got in my way, tried to tell me what to do, or pushed me around, literally or metaphorically, I fought back. I mouthed back, shared my opinions, dug my heels in, and even got in a few fights.
There was an inner resolve and strength that came over me. I also still was living in the dichotomy of wanting to change the world and hating my dad.
Let me just say, living in both worlds is extremely exhausting. I was out to prove myself with a vengeance. I was beyond a type A overachiever. I wanted out, and thought “success” was the only way.
On the outside, I looked like some prodigy child, some well-behaved, go-getter, high-performing, high-achiever who could do just about anything I set my mind to. If I wanted something, I would make it happen.
No one was going to tell me my limitations. And, my number goal was to leave my hometown, and get as far away as I possibly could from my family and life. If anyone got in my way, then the fight in me would come.
“Watch me,” I would say. “Eat my dust, and move out of my way,” I would exclaim. “You don’t get to tell me what to do or who I am.” I asserted.
This fight lasted well into my 20s and 30s, where I had additional defining moments that rocked my world and had me hit rock bottom, hard.
But even the fiercest fighters eventually burn out. And I did — hard.
My D-Day: The Moment I Took My Life Back
I was 22, and out in Philadelphia with my brother and sister. After cutting my dad out of my life throughout middle school and high school year (my parents divorced when I was 12, and I wanted nothing to do with my dad), I had attempted to have a relationship with him once again in college.
However, nothing had changed. And, in fact, they had gotten worse. He was now living with a women who was the female version of him, and had forced me to spend my Thanksgiving holiday out East, instead of using that time to make good money (which I needed).
So, I went out there already resentful, and then things escalated from there. My dad, who was notorious for his adult temper tantrums, threw one of his biggest tantrums to date. He lost it and the wheels came off rapidly.
Something inside me broke free. I was adamant I was going to shut it down. I took a stand. I told my father I was done. That from that moment on he was no longer a part of my life. I was ending our relationship for good.
We were up in his bedroom, my sister and brother standing behind me, both crying, in a stand off. And, I felt myself expand. I got bigger. I saw, for the first time, just how small my dad really was. As a kid I thought he was a giant … when, in reality, he was about 5'9" with a huge Napoleon complex.
I didn’t waiver. I didn’t budge.
I looked him directly in the eye, and in a voice that sounded much stronger than how I felt, I said “no” — no to all his bullshit. No to all the energy that was eating my alive. No to sacrificing my own integrity to appease his volatility. No to bending myself into a pretzel or to tip-toeing around him.
It was a clear “no” — and, I never looked back from that decision.
Moving Forward and Taking My Power Back
I never once regretted that decision I made that Thanksgiving week in Philadelphia, where I officially and fully removed my dad from my life.
He passed in June of 2010. Ironically enough, on Father’s Day weekend.
And, I didn’t speak another word to my father for the 15 years prior to his death. With the exception of the few words I had to say to him at my grandmother’s funeral as one of her executors, not a single word.
Even in his last hours, as he suffered with liver and pancreatic cancer, I chose not to be there. Again, I have no regret. But rather, extreme peace.
Because from that moment of me standing in my full power, I was able to take back my life. To take full ownership of my life.
And, after filing bankruptcy shortly after that, I was able to free myself entirely from my dad’s energy and the effects of his abuse on my psyche, my responsibilities, and my life.
I was able to begin to define my life on my own terms.
Unpacking It All and Rock Bottom Moments
Now, taking hold of one’s life also comes with some jarring and difficult realities you find yourself come face-to-face with, and that was no different for me. Unpacking the trauma and the abuse took a long time.
I even had to make peace with it when I found myself hitting rock bottom again during my corporate career when I feel asleep at the wheel and took our a guardrail because I was running myself ragged trying to prove all the things, and when I ended up in the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack … turns out I manifested a mass in my chest due to stress.
My need to prove myself and to defy the odds forced me to take a good, hard look in my own mirror to see that I had attracted more abusive situations in my positions in my career. I actually sought out spaces that had me positioned as a human punching bag.
Just more of the same cycles. Talk about a reckoning.
Finding Human Design & Alignment Along the Way
When I left my 20-year corporate career to start my own business (now, almost 12 years old), I also sought out new pathways for my own growth and development. I needed a more spiritual grounded roadmap.
I found my way back to God, to Source, to a knowing that I am enough.
I got cracked open in so many different ways, as one does when playing full out in the entrepreneurial space. It hasn’t always been any easy journey.
In coming back from a deep spiritual retreat that I attended in Vancouver, I felt raw, open, and awake. As is my nature, I tend to teach and share from where I am at in my own journey.
I came back from that weekend and shared with one of the mastermind groups I was running. I shared how I was beginning to feel into the energy of “expanding until there are no edges” as my teacher had taught me.
One of my students offered that I check out my Human Design.
Being that I was still very raw, I immediately resisted and protested, “I don’t need another spiritual woo-woo tool right now, I’m good.” But, in true Manifestor form, she activated something in me simply by her ask.
Days later I found myself running my chart. From there I started, what now has become almost a decade, jumping down rabbit holes. It took over me.
I found insights that offered me so much guidance, awareness, and understanding of how I was wired. I began to understand the nature of the Line 6 in my 6/2 profile, and the need for the trials and tribulations I had gone through in the first phase of my life, and continued to go through as I was “up on the roof” in my second phase.
I began to give myself permission for being “too much” and for all the power that lives in my design, and that as a Manifesting Generator, I am here to be big energy, to disrupt, and to compress time.
Oh, how it all started to make sense.
I started running my clients and mastermind participants charts, and we began to engage in deeper, richer, more insightful discussions.
Then, I ran my family’s charts: my mom, my sister, and my brother.
I hesitated for a long time to run my dad’s chart. I think I was afraid I might uncover something too revealing that would wind up being another trigger for me and open up Pandora’s Box.
Eventually, my curiosity … and, I would offer, something bigger than me, prompted me to run his Human Design chart.
It was like cracking open a secret code that had so much to reveal.
He was a Projector, with a defined ego center. I could see firsthand why our energy was so combative, why I threatened his sense of self, and how mis-aligned and unhealed he was in his own energy.
I remember crying one day as I felt the weight of the pain he must have contained in his body — for hurt people, hurt people. I felt a wave of overflowing compassion for his suffering.
No, I didn’t condone what he did. I was, however, able to understand with greater clarity, extend empathy, and forgive what needed to be forgiven.
I also recognize that I needed my journey with my dad to tell my story and to do the work I currently do.
I also had a coach offer that, perhaps, my dad needed me to show him how to love, even if after he passed away, so that his soul could heal and his energy could be transformed. I totally felt that, and received its truth.
If someone would have told me that Human Design would be the tool that hwould help me find my peace with my dad, I would have told them they were crazy. Yet, understanding both our energetic blueprints put so much into perspective and opened up both my curiosity and my heart.
Bringing It All Full Circle
I think back to that little girl of 8 years old, who made those three promises to herself, and I remember why I started my business, initially: to heal the relationships between fathers and daughters.
Or, with parents and the children, in general.
You Empowered Strong was created from a vision of healing a generational legacy of fear that we continue to hand down. I believed that finding the root of this narrative was key — how we lead and what we carry forward from our business feeds what we bring into our homes.
So that by raising and guiding emerging leaders, I also could create pathways for healing at home.
When I think about how relational leadership is, I also think about the resonance of the saying: “How we do one thing is how we do everything.”
There is no life/work balance or play. There is just you, and there is just me. We show up in all facets of our lives, the good, bad, and ugly. And, how we show up in one space affects how we show up in all others.
How we relate is how we lead.
And, how we lead becomes our Living Legacy — whether we’re leading a family, a vision, or a movement.
For me, Human Design is the invitation that provides a path forward.
A path that not only brings us back into alignment with ourselves, for ourselves … but, one that also can be the gateway to stronger, deeper, more meaningful, impactful, and healed relationships, as well.
Imagine how the dynamics of your relationships could change.
First, get curious about your own energetic blueprint and what it has to share with you. Access both your chart and a reading below. From there, we can explore your relationships dynamics at play.
As Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Isn’t it time to bring what lives in the darkness into the light?