“And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last.”
— Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
My siblings were adopted into stable, loving homes—given a fresh start.
I was kept.
And in that, I became the one who stayed behind to carry what couldn’t be spoken.
It was hard—especially navigating young adulthood without an emotionally present mother.
I didn’t grow up with siblings, had no family nearby, and my father—older and unwell—could only offer so much.
I didn’t have a model for how to self-soothe, how to ask for help, or how to feel safe in my own body.
The emotional gap she left—the silence that filled the space where connection should have been—became a wound I didn’t fully understand.
As the child who stayed, I quietly absorbed everything unspoken—the grief that was never acknowledged, the emotional toll of a mother who couldn’t offer the love I needed.
So I took the long way home.
Not a straight path, but a winding one—through overachievement, anxiety, silence, rebellion.
Through moves that looked like reinvention, but were often just new backdrops for the same questions.
Through therapy rooms and relationship patterns that mirrored the emotional withholding I’d grown up around.
Through trying to be easy. Then trying to be good. Then trying to feel whole.
The long way home was never about the destination. It was always about the return.
We had different survival strategies.
Hers was silence.
Mine became expression.
Neither of us had a map—but we moved forward the only ways we knew how.
I learned early how to belong by blending in, by being what was needed.
But that doesn’t leave much room for truth.
Still, I see her now with softer eyes.
I don’t romanticize the pain. But I understand its roots.
I learned to do what she couldn’t: naming it. holding it. letting it move through—so I don’t carry it.
Now I write. I reflect. I speak aloud what was once unspeakable.
And in telling my truth, I’m setting it down—so it doesn’t unconsciously appear in a different form.
I had to parent myself.
I intuitively chose another path.
Looking back, I see it now as an act of quiet clarity.
The legacy of silence stopped with me.
In healing, I’ve come to comfort the child in me—and the child in her, too.
And that, too, is a form of love—choosing healing over repetition.
I moved often after leaving New York—always looking for home.
Eventually, the long way home wasn’t about arriving somewhere new.
It was about arriving back to myself—more whole, more honest, more free.
Not because the past changed.
But because I finally gave myself what I had spent a lifetime searching for:
Permission to belong—to myself first.
And she’s buying a Stairway to Heaven. 🎵
— Led Zeppelin
Related Life’ing Story
The Space Between Us: Love, Distance, and the Mother Wound →
Want to explore how generational trauma is carried—and healed?
Breaking the Cycle: How to Recognize and Heal Generational Trauma →
