About ten years ago, I was on the phone with my best friend.
I was pacing my apartment, rehashing something my parent had said.
(again)
I could hear how fast I was talking, but I couldn’t slow it down.
At one point, she interrupted me.
“Morgan,” she said, gently.
“Every time we talk, within five minutes, you bring up your parent. Every conversation, you sound exhausted. I don’t think you realize how much space they’re taking up in your life.”
I remember freezing.
I felt exposed. Defensive. Slightly embarrassed.
And then—quiet.
Because I knew she was right.
They were with me everywhere.
While brushing my teeth, replaying what they had said.
While driving, going over what I should have said back.
While lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering why they even treated me this way in the first place.
Even when they weren’t there, they were there.
And you want to know what scared me most?
If someone had asked me to describe myself back then, I would have said: "I'm empathetic. I'm good at reading people. I can handle tense situations."
But if you look closely, you'll see that none of these are actually real personality traits.
They are survival skills I had developed to predict my parent's mood and keep myself safe.
My entire identity was just a collection of strategies for managing someone else's chaos.
I had no idea who I really was, because having them constantly occupy my mind meant I never had the mental space to figure it out.
So, I did what many of us do.
I brought this new finding to my therapist.
I told her about the constant replaying. The resentment.
She listened, then said something that scared me:
“If you want your mental space back, you need to accept they won’t change. You need to grieve the parent you wish you had.”
And frankly, this just sounded too risky.
Because, to me, grief and acceptance sounded like forgetting.
Like letting them off the hook.
Like pretending it didn’t happen.
And I just couldn’t risk that.
So for months, I resisted.
But what I didn’t realize at the time was that resisting meant making a huge trade off.
I got to keep the memories as “proof,” sure.
But in exchange, I gave up my entire sense of self.
Because if both hands were busy holding the past, there was nothing left to actually hold me.
The turning point came when I finally asked myself a different question:
What if grieving didn’t mean "letting it go" or pretending it didn’t happen, but trusting myself enough to stop proving it did?
That was the shift.
Trusting that grief didn't mean I was going to erase the past.
It just meant letting my body stop reacting to something that’s already over.
That’s when I finally committed to the grief work.
And it didn't take long before I started to notice the pay offs.
I distinctly remember this moment because I woke up and realized I hadn't replayed a single conversation the night before.
I'd just... fallen asleep.
The mental loop was gone. And that was HUGE for me at the time.
There was so much more mental freedom.
In the mornings, my first thought wasn’t about them.
When I was alone, there was spaciousness instead of anger and replays.
And it was in that space that I met my real self.
Not the collection of survival skills I'd mistaken for personality traits.
The real me.
Preferences I didn't know I had. Opinions that were mine. Parts of myself that had been buried under years of hypervigilance and need-to-remembers.
That space is where my own sense of self was born, and it made everything I have today possible:
A beautiful and rich and loving marriage where I don’t have to disappear.
Friendships that feel mutual and steady.
Weekends that feel calm instead of anxiety provoking.
Holidays that no longer hijack my nervous system.
A deep, embodied sense of self that holds steady in conflict, or whenever life just gets tough.
That’s why I call this work taking yourself back.
When the self that was buried under survival finally comes home.
And that’s why I created this year's masterclass bundle.
For survivors who refuse to minimize the past, but also refuse to keep living inside of it.
Featuring a grief and self-love workshop focused on reclaiming your sense of self, this is where the work I just described actually begins.
Doors are closing to the masterclass bundle. It will not be back again.
2026 is waiting for the version of you who carries the truth of the past without being run by it. Join me there.
Forever on your side,
Morgan
P.S. As a practicing therapist, I remain thoughtful about what I share from my own life. When I do share, it's because I’ve seen, again and again, how powerful it is to feel seen and understood; to glimpse what life can look like after doing the work. If this resonated with you, thank you for being here with me.