The first time I read that line, it landed in my gut like truth, not cruel, just precise.

Every limitation I’d defended suddenly looked less like protection and more like a cage I’d constructed for myself. It was sobering to realize I’d built the walls and then called them shelter.

For years, I argued for my pain — and rightfully so, or so I thought. My hurt, my trauma, my wounding, my experience of wholesale betrayal, all made for convincing evidence of why I felt the way I did.

Forgiveness was the issue, just not a simple one. Over and over, I trusted her. Over and over, I got burned. Eventually, the line had to be drawn: You cannot be in my life anymore. You cannot have access to me. You cannot know where I am or how to reach me. Because you are not safe for me. And until that changes, you can’t be anywhere near me.

I was the one who left, the one who finally stepped out of her orbit. And she did nothing about it. There was a way back into my life. It wasn’t hidden or impossible. It just required honesty she didn’t have, effort she wouldn’t give, and the courage to face the generational wreckage we both came from.

So I gave myself a pass. I told myself that because she refused the only path I believed forgiveness could travel — therapy — I was off the hook. I could move on without ever facing what was broken, as if firm boundaries alone could wipe the slate clean. I called it acceptance, but really, nothing had been resolved.

Each time I said I couldn’t forgive her, the belief buried itself a little deeper inside me. It hardened. My body learned it; my nervous system rehearsed it. Just thinking of her made my stomach turn.

Eventually, I stopped talking to anyone connected to her. I didn’t trust they’d keep me separate, that my boundaries would hold. I told myself if she could get information about me without doing her own work, she’d never have a reason to change.

I stopped coming to North Carolina. I stopped taking professional steps that might make me visible or easy to find. I spent so much time and energy actively hiding — who I was, where I was, what I was doing — because I didn’t want to give her any back channel into my life. I was so determined to hold that boundary that I built my whole world around it. I was willing to shrink and disappear to stay safe. And it cost me a lot.

It took years to realize that safety built on avoidance isn’t safety at all. It’s confinement. That’s what pain does. It convinces you isolation is protection when really, it’s just another form of loss. It teaches you to mistake control for peace. And once that confusion sets in, you start protecting the wrong thing.

I wasn’t the only one.

She did the same thing. She said, “Well, my daughter doesn’t want to talk to me, so what am I supposed to do about that?” She argued for her limitation the same way I was arguing for mine. Both of us righteous in our reasoning. Both of us ending up without the thing we said we wanted — reconciliation, or at least some understanding.

Charlie is just one example.

We all have our versions, the person, the situation, the unfinished story that keeps us stuck on the sidelines. We tell ourselves: I can’t trust after what happened. I can’t risk it again. I can’t start over until they change.

Each declaration feels reasonable, even wise. And sometimes it is, for a while. Limits can protect us while we heal, but they aren’t meant to become permanent fixtures. If you never test them, they calcify into identity.

The same logic that once protected you becomes the very thing that confines you.That’s the real trick of arguing for your limitations: you win. And in winning, you lose. You lose places, and the people you once built your life around. You lose the good memories along with the bad. You lose ease, rest, and trust. You lose whole corners of yourself trying to stay safe. You lose more than you ever meant to.

When I finally started questioning the story, nothing miraculous happened. No soft music, no grand reconciliation. It was smaller than that, just a sliver of awareness. The realization that I didn’t need her to change in order to stop being ruled by what she did and didn’t do

It was true once. I wasn’t ready then. But is it true now?

I wanted to stop asking for a pass on my mom shit. I wanted to know if all the tools I’d been building — the methods, the practices, the experiments I’d been exploring and integrating into my life — would actually hold. I wanted to know what I was made of. I wanted to see if there was a version of me without this fucking baggage. I was more curious about who I could become if this was no longer an issue for me than afraid of the work it might take to get there. And I’m so fucking grateful I had the courage to ask. Grateful I stopped defending the edge of an old wound long enough to see there was another way through. Because the moment I stopped arguing for my limitation, I finally stopped standing in my own way.

Forgiveness didn’t come as understanding or closure. It came as relief — quiet, steady, and almost unrecognizable at first. A loosening in places I didn’t know were clenched, just a little more room to breathe where there used to be pain.

After all of it, I’m grateful I had the courage to test my limits. Grateful I did this. Grateful to move through the world without the weight of that old mother wound. I didn’t know how deep it went until I had to clean that bitch out.

And it’s wild to stand here now, realizing that something that once hurt so much doesn’t hurt at all. To go from wounded, to healing, to healed — on this subject — it’s indescribable. There’s a peace here I was once sure I’d never find.

The finish line on my time here in North Carolina is finally in sight. Not there yet — but closing in — and I feel fucking great about it. These three months have been the most intense of my personal and professional life. Treating her like a client was the best move I could have made. I crushed it.

To not just forgive, but to serve — and serve well — the one who once hurt me most… that’s a whole new level.

And I’ll never argue for my limits again.

-Sunny