Outgrowing the Father Wound: Why I Wrote the Book

I have read the books. Plenty of them. I have also written plenty about my father on this blog, in posts going back years, and for a long time I figured that was all I had to say on the subject.

Then I noticed that most of what is written about father wounds names the condition and stops. You read it, you feel described, and you close the book with a diagnosis and nothing to do the next day. I was that reader for a long time.

After twenty years of reading about it, writing about it, and living it, I decided I had something to say.

The slip

I set out to marry the opposite of my father. I knew the list of what I was avoiding, and I screened for it on purpose. I found Mr. Horrible, who matched it item for item.

When we argued, I called him Dad. Repeatedly, mid-sentence, for years. It enraged him, because he knew exactly who I meant. And in the middle of those arguments there were moments when I floated somewhere above the room, watching myself, thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? Then the moment passed, and I went back to the fight.

I could see it. Seeing it did not get me out. I had the whole diagnosis, and I stayed for fifteen years anyway. That gap is what the other books left me in, and it is why I built this one as a program, with something to do every day.

The line

I have not spoken to my father in twenty-three years. My mother still meets that with disbelief. My friends are surprised too; they can’t believe I drew a line in the sand and kept it.

I did, and it is still there.

I did the research. I did the hard work of putting two and two together, and I wanted to see whether what I had done in my own life held up on paper. It did. Writing it was cathartic, and it validated what I had already done.

What it is

Outgrowing the Father Wound is thirty days: ten chapters, three days each. Every day has the same three parts: understand what is happening, recognize it in your own life, practice something specific. Plan on fifteen to thirty minutes a day and a notebook.

You take a self-assessment on Day 1 and again on Day 30. There are boundary and communication scripts, pattern worksheets, weekly check-ins, and a Getting Help section with crisis lines.

No apology, forgiveness, or reconciliation required. The book will not ask you to forgive your father, reconcile, or make contact. Everything in it works without him.

It is written for any adult, any gender, whose father was absent, withholding, or unpredictable. It is not therapy and does not replace it.

If you are still paying for a father who didn’t show up, you are allowed to draw the line and keep it, and you do not owe anyone a convincing explanation.

Outgrowing the Father Wound is on Amazon as a Kindle ebook.

New · Kindle ebook · $5.99