Finding My Rhythm: Healing, Leading, Becoming

I didn’t realize it at the time.
Not fully.
Not enough.

I was so focused on surviving, on minimizing the explosions, on keeping the peace—that I didn’t see how deeply it was wounding my children. They weren’t just bystanders to the emotional abuse. They were in it with me. They were witnesses, yes—but also victims. And while I did everything I could to buffer them, to soften the blows, to absorb the tension—it was not enough. The damage still seeped through.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have left sooner. I ache when I say that. But it’s the truth.

It wasn’t until years later—after therapy, reading, reflection, and witnessing the aftershocks in my children’s lives—that I began to recognize the full reality: we had been living in an emotionally abusive environment shaped by patterns of control, gaslighting, and emotional volatility. A home shaped by a partner with many traits consistent with borderline personality disorder, including intense emotional dysregulation, black-and-white thinking, and chronic instability in relationships.

These dynamics don’t just harm spouses—they fragment entire families.

In families like ours, roles begin to form. Roles that children step into—not by choice, but by survival.

The Scapegoat.
My eldest.
Fierce. Brave. Honest to a fault. She didn’t know how to play small—and thank God for that. She refused to lie to keep the peace. She spoke the truth, even when it burned. And for that, she became the target. He couldn’t tolerate her strength—so he tried to break it. He criticized her constantly, picked fights, escalated with her. I see now that what he couldn’t control, he tried to crush. She fought back with her beautiful little soul, and he turned her resistance into justification for cruelty.
I didn’t know how to protect her.
I didn’t know that her resistance was healthy—and his rage was the illness.

The Golden Child.
Our middle daughter. Sweet, intuitive, eager to please. She quickly learned that the way to avoid conflict was to become who he wanted her to be. She became his favorite, his pedestal child. The one who could “do no wrong.” This wasn’t love—it was enmeshment. She learned to suppress her own needs in order to maintain the illusion of harmony. But that illusion came at a price. It created resentment and confusion.
And it drove a wedge between her and her older sister.
This is called splitting—a common dynamic in families with a borderline parent. One child is idealized while another is demonized. The result? Siblings are pitted against each other. Trust is eroded. Relationships fracture. And the parent remains at the center, unchallenged.

The Invisible Child.
Our third daughter. Sensitive, creative, deep-feeling. He didn’t know what to do with her, so he mostly ignored her. Said she was “too much,” “too emotional,” “too dramatic.” He’d hand her off to me and retreat. She remembers this. She remembers not being heard. Her wounds are quieter, but they are just as real. She still struggles to use her voice—to believe it matters. She learned early that the safest thing was to disappear.

The Compliant Child.
Our youngest, our only son. Quiet, careful, compliant. A boy who learned to read the room with incredible precision. He did everything he could to stay below the radar—to not upset the balance. He became invisible in a different way. He lost touch with his own preferences. At one point, he was too afraid to even say what he wanted for dinner, always deferring to whatever his father liked. He didn’t want to cause waves.
He learned that his wants weren’t welcome.

These roles—the scapegoat, the golden child, the invisible child, the compliant one—are not just labels.
They are defense mechanisms.
They are survival strategies that children unconsciously adopt when growing up in an emotionally abusive or chaotic environment, especially one shaped by a parent with borderline tendencies.

In these households:

• Love is conditional.
• Approval is given and withdrawn on a whim.
• Emotions are either punished or exploited.
• Reality is constantly distorted.
• And the parent becomes the sun around which everyone must orbit—or risk burning up.

Children learn to shrink, to perform, to silence themselves. They often carry these patterns into adulthood—into their relationships, their parenting, their careers, their sense of self.

And that’s the heartbreak I live with now.

Not only what I endured—but what they did. What they still carry. The guilt that creeps in when I think, I should have seen it. I should have stopped it. I should have left.

But this, too, is part of the healing.
To name it.
To tell the truth.
To shine light on what was once hidden.

So that my children—and others like them—can start to untangle themselves from the lies they were forced to believe.

They were never too much.
They were never not enough.
They were never the problem.

They were just children.
Trying to survive.