Molestation

“Your father molested you. It is called molestation.” My therapist shared these words during our 9:00 am virtual session on Wednesday, January 21, 2026. Forty years old, and my life just got turned upside down in a matter of seconds as I sat alone in my office in Washington, DC. Molested? Me? By my dad? I always knew things were off, and my abuse felt different from my brothers'. I always felt like my gender and being his only daughter colored my abuse, but he never touched me. How could this be if he never touched me? 

“Molestation has a broad definition.” She honed in as she saw the disbelief on my face. 

What do I do with this information? What happens next? My understanding of my whole life was shattered, destroyed by these words, by this realization. What do I do now? 

“You nurture yourself. You take care of yourself,” she shared. How do I even do that? What could possibly make me feel better after finding out for the first time that my dad has molested me? I canceled all my meetings for the day and went home in complete shock. That evening, I purchased a weighted blanket on Amazon, ordering the one that would come between 4:00 am and 8:00 am the next morning. It was the only thing that I could think of that could help me at this moment, and I needed it as soon as possible. I needed something to soothe me as I made sense of this new revelation. With these few words, my whole life changed; nothing was the same, and yet nothing had changed. Everything stayed the same. I felt such profound confusion; my head hurt just thinking about it.

What really hurt was my heart. I would close my eyes and open them again quickly, wishing this was just a dream, a painful nightmare. But it’s not; it really happened. I’m scared to Google molestation. I would rather live in mystery and hold on to hope that my therapist is wrong; that she made an incorrect assumption about my life and my father’s behavior. I tightly held on to this hope, not letting it go. It’s easier to comprehend that she is wrong than to face the reality that the way I understood and framed my whole life was wrong. I couldn’t face the fact that I may have been bamboozled by my own father. Honestly, I felt stupid. I felt stupid that it took me forty years to learn that my dad brainwashed me and gaslighted me so much that I didn’t even realize how abusive he was. I felt like I just realized that I was in a cult, and I never even knew it. The worst part is that I didn’t even come to that conclusion on my own; my therapist had to tell me that I was in a cult. So silly. 

I always saw myself as a smart and rational person, but I don’t feel so smart right now. I blamed myself my whole life, over and over again. I was the problem. I felt so dumb for just falling into his mind traps so easily that I couldn’t even recognize that I was trapped. Trapped in a world where he was king, and we were his peasants, disposable, useless unless we served a purpose for him. How did I not know? It’s weird because rationally, intellectually, I think I knew. I did. But emotionally, I couldn’t face it. I was stuck. Intellectually, I knew I was in thick mud, unable to move, but emotionally, I thought that was normal, regular behavior. That’s just my dad. I love my dad. It’s just the dad that I got, and it’s all I know, but I still love him. So stupid. 

The hurt is overwhelming me. The more I read on Reddit about covert incest, the more it hits me that my therapist is right. I spent so many decades blind to this abuse, denying it in my mind, but my body knew something was wrong. This is the first time that my mind and body are aligned, and now the pain is taking over. This feeling is foreign. My chest feels so tight; I worry my heart has no space to pump, constricted, like a snake squeezing my chest. I can’t decide if it's better to have my eyes open or closed. The lights feel too bright, and there is too much clutter around me to feel safe. When I close my eyes, it’s too dark, leaving my brain to go to too many places I do not want to go. My active imagination is against me at this moment. I just want silence. I just want space. Please make it all stop. 

I do want to preface all this, though. I do want to share that I have an amazing life. I married the love of my life, and I have a very healthy marriage. I have three beautiful children, who are extremely loved, and they feel that love. I have a very successful career, and I have my PhD. I have a lot of strong friendships, and I have many friends that I would do anything for, and vice versa. I also have strong relationships with my family and with my husband’s family. I have hobbies and interests, and I am always putting myself in spaces where I can learn and where my assumptions are challenged. I also believe in the goodness of humanity, and frame my whole profession and values for the love of people and the world. I believe in forgiveness, and I don’t believe in holding grudges. I believe people can do better if they know better and are allowed space to be better. I believe that everyone belongs in this world, and everybody deserves respect and dignity, no questions asked, everybody. 

I also want to be very clear that I am not a victim. I am angry, I am hurt, I am disgusted, I am confused, but this is not my fault. I do not feel bad for myself or blame myself. I do not want pity from you. I don’t want you to feel bad for me. I am proud of who I am, and I am proud of myself for not letting this break me. I am proud of the life that I have built, and I feel extremely lucky and grateful for all that I have. I feel like I won in the game of life, I really do. 

This book is not to change my future because my future is bright and always has been. This book is to rewrite the narrative of my past. It’s to make sense of what has happened to me so I can better understand myself. Facing this new framework and reality is daunting. I’m scared of what I will discover as I begin to flip the rocks of my childhood and see what is there. But I am tired of running away and looking the other way. I am ready now to face the facts, look at it straight in the eyes, and let myself feel. I am giving myself permission to feel, to emote, to process, to reflect, so I can finally be a whole, complex human with a range of emotions.  

I have always been stoic. I have worn that identity as a badge of honor. In my eyes, stoicism was the best way to be. You endure, you detach yourself from your emotions, and you continue with life. Life is hard, and you don’t feel bad about it. You just keep going. Enduring. I really thought this was the best way to live life. It was the only way that I knew how to cope, how to survive, how to pick myself back up and continue. What I am learning now, though, is that there is a cost to this way of life. The cost is that I do not know how to feel, and I do not know what I feel because I never had the luxury or the safety to feel. I worry that if I let myself feel, I will be overwhelmed and overcome by the wave of despair. How will I be able to climb myself out? Will I ever get out? 

Most of my life, when I had to talk about myself, it revolved around my father. What he did, or what he didn’t do. How he treated me or mistreated me. My thoughts about myself were intertwined and twisted with his thoughts. There were no boundaries, and I was responsible for his feelings. But fuck that. That ends right now. I don’t want to give him more attention than I already have. He has been the main character in my own narrative for far too long, and now I am claiming my space in my own story. A recognition of the pain and abuse, a shoulder to cry on, and a celebration of the joys between the moments of pain. I am a resilient person, and I also had the support of a lot of people, and this is for them as well. For all the individuals who were there for me when it mattered. This book is a love letter to myself.