I say I want to talk about my parents.
But I don’t.
Not really.
Not today.
Not ever, if I’m honest.

But I have to.

Because if you’re going to read this blog—if you’re going to walk with me through healing and history—you need to know what I’m healing from.

And it starts there.
With them.
With that.

Not because I’m trying to rehash old shit.
Not because I’m stuck.
But because that chaos made me.
And because it’s still shaping the woman I’m becoming.

A Bar, A Bold Line, A Broken Beginning

My mother says she met my father in a bar, looked him in the eyes, and told him, “I think I’m in love with you.” Several years later, they had me. And 3 years after that, my one and only sibling, a sister.

But even in the telling, there’s a shadow.
They were doomed from the jump.

My dad’s people were sugarcane farmers.
Salt-of-the-earth, southern Louisiana folks.
But the stories I’ve been told—mostly by my mama—are filled with dysfunction.
Money disappearing. Tension boiling. A paycheck bouncing between hands like a ping-pong ball.

It never got better.
We lost the farm.
And from there, it only unraveled more.

Sugarcane to Oilfield

My daddy worked hard.
He had to.
Two girls to raise, a family to feed.

He found work offshore like so many men do down here.
Gone for weeks at a time.
Gone for a lot more than that, if I’m being real.

And still—those early years?
They were magic.
We lived near his people. Grandparents. Great-grandparents. Aunts.
All on family land.

We built forts out of scrap wood.
We rode bikes till our legs gave out.
We were wild and free and so damn lucky.

I remember being happy.
I remember being loved.

The Idol and the Ice

I idolized my father.
Big hands that swallowed mine.
Strong. Brave. Always bringing something home just for us.

And I loved my mother, too.
She was beautiful—blue eyes, straight hair, that contagious laugh.
But she was angry. Always angry.
There was a bitterness in her bones I didn’t understand then.

Later, I realized:
Somewhere along the way, someone broke her.
And she never found her way back.

She blamed everyone.
My father. Her friends. Even my grandparents—especially his mama.
And the older I got, the clearer it became.

They were never okay.
And neither were we.

The Collapse

By 11 or 12, I couldn’t do it anymore.
Couldn’t keep being the adult.
Couldn’t keep lying for her. Covering for her. Watching her drown in her own vices.

She bribed us.
Promised things in exchange for silence.
And we were kids—we said yes.

But inside?
We were drowning too.

My dad? He used her addiction as a weapon.
Threw it in her face every chance he got.
He was calculated. Image-obsessed. Controlled every detail like he was trying to win a game only he understood.

They didn’t divorce until I was 19.
Pregnant with my first baby.

Yes, I was a teen mom.
Direct result of the chaos I was raised in.

But that’s another story.
Another layer.
Another time.

What Stays

It’s wild how memory works.
How the beautiful things—those sweet, small snapshots—fade.

And the awful ones?
They cling like smoke.
You can’t scrub them out.

That’s what hurts the most, maybe.
Not who they were.
But who they could have been.

What I Know Now

I’m a mama now.
I have daughters. A son.
And I will never understand how they couldn’t heal for us.

I forgive them. I do.
I can empathize with their pain.
But I will never understand how they stayed stuck in it—how even now, they’re still so wrapped up in themselves, holding no space for accountability.

I held space for both of them for so long.
So much that it broke me—more as an adult than it ever did as a child.
Because when you’re grown and still begging for crumbs of love and recognition… that ache cuts deeper.

The pain is indescribable.
Mourning the loss of people who are still walking the earth.

And yet here I am—building something different.
Because nothing in this world matters more to me than the people I raise and the man I chose to love.

This blog? This writing?
It’s not for pity. It’s not for shame.

It’s my truth.
It’s how I heal.
It’s how I show up for my life now.

And maybe—just maybe—it’ll speak to someone else trying to untangle their own roots.

If you’ve lived through something similar—if your roots were tangled in pain before they ever had a chance to grow—just know, you’re not alone. This is where we untangle. This is where we heal. One story at a time.