The Moment I Stopped Waiting for My Dad to Say Sorry

I wanted him to hurt like I did. I learned that healing isn't revenge.

Disclaimer: This is not a blueprint for reconciliation, nor a suggestion that you should rebuild a relationship with you parent if you’re not ready-or ever want too. I’m not here to tell you what healing should look like for you. I’m simply sharing a lived experience, one that might offer a different lens, free a few hearts, or shed some light on the quiet ache many of us carry into adulthood when it comes to our parents. Take what you need.

Leave what doesn’t serve you. It’s okay.

Let me start by saying this: My dad wasn’t the worst. He wasn't vile or vicious. In fact, he’s the opposite. He’s always been the “too cool” parent, funny, charismatic, wicked smart. The kind of guy who randomly went viral on TikTok without trying. He wasn’t a part time dad; he was a single dad in fact trying-sometimes failing- to raise a little black girl in a world that didn’t hand either of us a manual. We most definitely had some fun times. Some really sweet memories, actually. However, there were also gaps. absences. Moments when I really needed him and he just…wasn’t there and soft truth I don’t think he ever wanted to be. He wasn’t ready to be a parent and it showed.

The harbored resentment he held towards me as a child bled into the shaping of our relationship.

When I started doing the real work- outside of therapy sessions, beyond the affirmations and insights that’s when the shift happened. From the angry journaling, cries that made my head hurt. Unfiltered moments where I had to be radically honest with myself about my hurt. That’s when the real work of healing from parental wounds began.

People in my circle would even ask, “how did you and your dad even try again?” To be brutally honest it was hard as hell. There were so many times I questioned if I should let him back into my life at all. Because opening your heart again? That’s no small ask. That’s the kind of risk of vulnerability that brings you face-to-face with chances of being hurt all over again. Especially when you’re not even sure if the other person has actually changed.

Cue the Beyonce music: I didn’t want to be the brokenhearted girl again. I didn’t want to play that role anymore

I still remember one night so clearly. (about three years or so) My best friend and I had just visited my grandparents, and my dad was there with us. As we drove away, she looked at me and asked, “Trin..are you sure your dad’s rekindling with you because he geuninely wants a relationship? Or is it because he’s at odds with your sister right now? (side note: my best friend didn’t ask that out of malice towards my dad, but rather protection of me. She a real one! Trust, she don’t play about your girl)

Whew. That question stung.

Yet still, that doubt planted a seed. It made me side eye the whole reconnection thing with him. questioning his motives. Sitting with a pain I couldn’t easily name. Because when someone has hurt you-especially a parent-it’s not about what they say now. It’s about everything they never said then.

I still get asked today from my inner circle, “How do you have a relationship with your dad after all you went through with him.?” And I wish I could say it was forgiveness. Just a clean, soft sweep of grace. But I would be lying.

It honestly took therapy.
It took years.

And it took setting boundaries I had never been brave enough to name before not just with him, but with myself. Hell, I didn’t even know what boundaries were until therapy.

Now? My dad and I are in a really beautiful place. I have the very thing I always wanted: a present father. Not a perfect one. But a dad who’s here. Trying.

I can’t say he’s done his own deep healing work. I honestly don’t know. But I do know the work I did within myself gave my heart a new shot-not to redo the past, but to make room for what could be different now.

He can’t go back in time and be the father I needed as a child. He can’t tuck little Trinity into bed or show up for every tear. But he can show up today. For grown Trinity. And that counts.

We didn't “get back” what was lost. We started over with what was possible.

And yes, it’s bittersweet because the truth is he missed that chapter. He can’t go back and father the little girl I used to be. That part’s mine to tend to now.

That’s reparenting.

It hurt to accept that. But the moment I did, I started to see something different in my father. Not just a man he was, but maybe the man he’s still becoming.

The Work That Set Me Free

Once I started to look within deeper I noticed a heaviness behind his eyes. I saw him not just as my father-but as a man.

This lingering quiet in the way he spoke. Something unresolved sitting just beneath his surface, like an echo of pain he never wanted to name. A man who may have carried his own regrets. I saw how he was carrying the shame. He was avoiding. How maybe-just maybe, he wasn’t just a man who hurt me, rather a man still hurting himself.

And that didn’t excuse anything. But it made the story bigger than just me.

There’s something about doing your inner work that shapes your spiritual eyesight. You stop needing everyone to be right or wrong, and you start seeing the wounds behind the roles.

My father wasn’t equipped. Not emotionally. Not mentally. Maybe not even spiritually. He didn’t know how to love me the way I needed. But a slow painful thought I realized is that he might have never been loved in the way he needed either. A man who never got a chance to grieve the version of himself he never became.

And truthfully? That changed everything.

Because here’s the thing, most of our parents don’t know (still don’t) know what the hell they’re doing. It’s their first time living just as much as it is ours. They’re figuring it out on the fly. No roadmap for how to show up for a child while still bleeding from their own childhood. No emotional language. Especially if they never had parents who taught them how to emotionally show up, set boundaries or even name their wounds. Not to mention my dad is a black man in America. So, unintentionally parents pass down silence to the next generation. Passing down anger and survival in a culture that never taught them how to feel, let alone heal.

It doesn’t make the pain okay.

But it does allow you to stop begging for what they never learned how to give. Let’s be for real, back in his time they didn’t have podcasts, therapy reels, or substack newsletters telling them to grieve their inner child and start healing.

But we do.

And while we can’t force them to evolve, our growth can be a mirror. Sometimes the inner work we do inspires the people around us to shift, even in small ways. But even if it doesn’t? That work is still ours to do.

Here’s something else I didn’t know until I started doing the work: healing doesn’t just shift you-it has the power to quietly ripple into the people around you. Just in case you wanted to know what that’s called, the psychology term is “trickle-down therapy.”

“"Trickle-down therapy" -is a concept often used to describe the idea that when one individual undergoes personal healing and growth, particularly through therapy or self-reflection, the positive effects can extend to those around them. It suggests that personal healing has the potential to "ripple" outwards, impacting the relationships and well-being of the people close to that individual.

Let’s Talk About Netflix Ginny & Georgia

If you’ve ever watched Ginny & Georgia, you know it’s more than just a mother-daughter drama. It’s a study in emotional confusion, unmet needs, and blurred roles.

(Side Note: Go watch it’s such a good show if you haven’t or don’t no pressure)

There’s this arc where Ginny (daughter) finally goes to therapy. It’s a turning point, a quiet act of rebellion against the emotional chaos she’s inherited from her mother, Georgia. For the first time, Ginny starts to untangle what parts of her pain actually belongs to her and what was projected onto her by someone who never got to heal their own.

And when Georgia finds out that Ginny’s dad had been secretly booking her therapy sessions, she pretty much explodes-masking her frustration with forced understanding. Yet, it’s clear she is not okay with it. Instead of offering support or asking what Ginny needs, she shows up uninvited to her daughter’s session completely disregarding the boundary of needing permission to be there.

She doesn’t come to listen.

She doesn’t come to hold space.

She comes to take it.

To make it about her.

As a viewer you knew that Georgia was uncomfortable with her daughter carving out space that doesn’t involve around her pain. She doesn’t see Ginny as a child navigating her own healing. She sees her as a peer. A secret keeper. A stand in-therapist. And in that moment, it’s painfully clear Georgia doesn’t know the difference between parenting and emotional enmeshment.

I saw parts of that dynamic in my own life. Not that my dad ever showed up to therapy with me-because that was never even an option when I was growing up. (Girl, therapy? Please. They looked at me like I lost my mind for even asking) In so many black families, therapy isn’t something you did unless something was seriously wrong. Wanting to talk to someone was treated like a red flag instead of a lifeline. And asking for that kind of help as a kid? You might as well have been speaking a different language.

For a long time, I carried his unresolved trauma like it was mine to hold. I internalized his absence. Took his silence personally. I made his avoidance a reflection of my worth. Still, reparenting doesn’t mean pretending your parents didn’t hurt you. It means letting go of the fantasy that one day they’ll become exactly who you need them to be.

It means grieving what wasn’t. Truly deciding on what still can be.

That’s what Ginny was doing in that therapist’s office declaring that she is no longer responsible for soothing her mother’s inner child. It was not her responsibility.

And that’s what I had to learn too.

Reparenting Isn’t About Rescuing the Past

Here’s the hardest truth pill to swallow:

Healing the wounds our parents created is our responsibility. I know it’s not fair, but it’s necessary. For YOU. Your growth. Your healing.

Reparenting means grieving the parent you didn’t get. Acceptance. It means sitting with the ache, rocking yourself like Dr. Anita Philips described in a podcast:

“There were times I had to hug myself and rock myself to regulate my nervous system..to bring myself back to safety.”

It’s about soothing your own inner child the way you wish someone else would’ve. “We’re safe now. I’ve got you.” Giving yourself permission to create safety.

And sometimes, that healing makes room for a new relationship with the same parent. Other times, it doesn’t. Both paths are valid.

But what I know for sure is you don’t need your parents to change for you to heal. You just need to choose not to carry what they never resolved.

The Unwind

Your healing doesn’t require their apology. And your peace doesn’t depend on their participation. Maybe it’s hugging yourself like Dr. Anita. Maybe it’s lighting a candle and speaking the truth out loud. Or even simply saying “I’m allowed to move on, even if they haven’t.” You get to choose something softer now. Something freer. This doesn’t cost you your joy to keep carrying someone else’s silence. You get to put the knife down. You get to build a home inside yourself. And the best part you get to walk forward not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve freedom.

Until Next Time,

-Trinty