When the Storms Clear

How to Make Space for Peace Without Forcing Forgiveness

There was a big storm brewing the night it left my body.

I was drinking wine and playing cards with my roommate, Melanie, on the balcony of our Rue du Fort apartment.

I was eighteen years old and decided it was time to confront the man who had broken my hand two years earlier.

My father.

It took nearly 24 months for me to find the words that would help me come to terms with what needed to be resolved.

I remember the tension in my chest before picking up the handset to make the call.

The white, push button telephone base steady on the card table—I remember trepidatiously pressing in the numbers on the keypad as their tones played.

1.

4-1-0.

3-8-1…

I didn’t plan on saying everything that came out. But I did.

I didn’t expect him to cry or to apologize. But he did.

I told him what it did to me.

What it felt like to be punched by him.

What it felt like to be punished for existing.

What it felt like to have to work so hard to survive on my own.

What it felt like to be his child and his target at the same time.

How unfair it all was.

What it cost me, what I carried, and how much I hated him for it.

I told him everything.

And then some.

But I didn’t scream.

I barely cried.

I wasn’t cruel.

I was just done performing closeness without honesty.

If we were to be in contact, I couldn’t keep pretending that nothing had happened.

And as I spoke, the winds picked up and it felt as if they carried away something that was leaving my body with them.

I felt lighter.

It was as if suddenly the invisible weight I’d been carrying on the inside disappeared—leaving a great deal of open space behind.

Space where the rage had been.

Space where the resentment had nested itself in my muscles and bones and blood.

That was perhaps the first time I really understood that hate isn’t permanent.

It’s just what happens when pain has nowhere to go.

But it can be transmuted—all the way to love, even.

And when you give it a voice, not to weaponize it or to manipulate, but rather to reveal it—the current can shift.

And if you let it, it will.

That night, something new came in.

Not because my father apologized.

Not because we agreed on what had happened.

But because I stopped holding in my feelings for us both.

I didn’t speak to be right.

I didn’t speak to punish him.

I spoke because the truth was bigger than the silence.

That was over thirty years ago.

I haven’t hated him since.

I love him.

Deeply.

Without tightness

Without a mask.

Without the need to keep reliving the moment to prove something to myself.

Because when hate is met with presence—not performance—it has the chance to shift.

That’s what I want you to know.

If you’re walking around carrying hate for someone close to you—your father, your mother, your child, your spouse, your sibling—you’re not bad.

You’re not failing at forgiveness.

You’re not broken because love feels out of reach.

It’s okay if you don’t know that feeling yet.

You’re just full.

You’re still holding more than your system was built to hold silently.

And if you want to transmute it, you’re going to have to get honest about what’s there—without rushing to reframe it.

You can’t go from hate to love without crossing neutral.

And neutral isn’t disconnection.

It’s the space where the storm clears.

It’s where you stop looking for an apology and start choosing clarity.

It’s where your body can finally exhale without making someone else the enemy.

It’s not always a conversation.

It doesn’t need to be dramatic.

But it has to be honest.

Not just about what they did—but about what it cost you.

You’re allowed to tell the truth.

You’re allowed to name what you’ve been carrying.

You’re allowed to stop hiding your pain just to make things more comfortable for everyone else.

That’s what clears the channel.

And from there, love has a place to return to.

Not forced.

Not staged.

Not fragile.

Clean.

Real.

Yours.