When loyalty costs you your inner peace, it is no longer loyalty. Then it is survival.

Sometimes it feels like distancing yourself from a parent is the worst thing you can do. Like it's ungrateful. Or harsh.

But what if that distance is actually an act of love, for yourself?

In this blog, I take you through one of the most painful and liberating choices you can make as an adult. The choice to step back from a parent who has never truly respected your boundaries.

You’ll discover why distance is not only helpful but sometimes essential to come back home to yourself. How old guilt and loyalty keep you tied to pain long after you’ve understood it.

And how you can gently, step by step, reclaim yourself. Not with hardness, but with truth, compassion and quiet strength.

Because freedom begins the moment you say:

This is it. I choose my peace, my truth. Even if it hurts.

I don’t write this from theory, but from the raw, heart-wrenching process of creating distance from a parent I continued to love despite everything.

I know how difficult it is, that deep-rooted loyalty. The hope that things will change someday. The fear that you are ungrateful if you let go. But I also know how it feels to slowly lose yourself in order to hold on to that connection at all costs.

Distance is not easy. It is not hate. It is not judgement. It is an act of self-love, protection, and emotional adulthood. And sometimes, it is the very thing needed to find yourself again.

This blog is for everyone who dares to break the taboo:
that parenthood is not a licence for destruction.
That love also has boundaries.
And that you are allowed to choose your own well-being, even if it hurts.

The deeper truth behind the distance

And for some of us, it goes even deeper. Sometimes it is only after distancing yourself that you discover something much deeper, that you never really learned what love is. That you had no example of emotional security, no parent who truly saw, comforted or affirmed you.

No mother who carried you emotionally.
No father who protected you and made you feel that you matter.
Maybe they were there, physically, but you didn't feel it.

And so you had to do it all yourself.
Build your own safe foundation.
Teach yourself to comfort, set boundaries, see yourself.
You had to raise yourself without ever having experienced what it feels like to be loved unconditionally.

It is one of the most painful layers of this path, mourning what you never received.
And at the same time... the beginning of something new.
Because now you can give it.
To yourself.

Where confusion about love truly begins

For many people with codependency, confusion about love doesn’t start in a romantic relationship, it begins in childhood.

With a parent who confused control with love. Who crossed your boundaries and dismissed your emotions. Who taught you that you had to adapt to be seen, and suppress your own needs in order not to lose connection.

Only when you start returning to yourself does it slowly become clear how much of your identity has been shaped by this dynamic. And that is precisely when you realise that distancing yourself is not only necessary, it is sometimes the only path to inner freedom.

But that choice... is perhaps the most difficult one you will ever have to make. Distancing yourself from a parent touches layers that go deeper than words can capture. Guilt. Loyalty. Grief.

Not only do you lose (temporarily or permanently) a bond that is culturally considered “sacred”, you also lose an inner role. Because who are you if you no longer try to be good enough for someone who never really saw you?

It can feel like betrayal. But in reality, it’s an act of protection. Of self-compassion.

You are choosing safety. You are choosing your truth. You are choosing your life.

Sometimes distance is the only way to find yourself before you lose yourself completely.

If a parent:

• Consistently ignores your boundaries

• Emotionally manipulates or gaslights you

• Ridicules or dismisses your feelings

• Keeps you trapped in guilt, care, or dependency

… then there may simply be no room for who you truly are.

Your well-being no longer has to suffer because of this.
Taking a temporary or permanent step back does not mean that you do not feel love. It means that you stop sacrificing yourself for a love that hurts you every time.

Sometimes you realise you’re not grieving what you’ve lost, you’re grieving what was never there.

No safe parent.

No loving safety net.

No validation or unconditional support.

That grief is raw. But it’s sacred.

Because you're not mourning what you've lost, you're mourning because you finally see what you should have had.

And it is precisely there, in that raw realisation, that the movement towards something else begins, towards gentleness. Towards forgiveness, not towards the other person, but towards yourself. Instead of forcing yourself to forgive your parent, you can first forgive yourself.

• For hoping for so long.
• For adapting, staying silent, and keeping the peace.
• For burying your needs to earn love.

Self-forgiveness means one day you feel:

I did what I could, with what I knew. I was a child. It was never my fault.

You don't have to approve the past in order to let it go.
You don't have to be spiritually enlightened to feel free.
What you do need is your own permission to move on.

Letting go without losing yourself

But how do you let go, inside?

How do you return to yourself without losing yourself again in guilt or struggle?
• Acknowledge the truth: your parent may never change
• Stop blaming yourself: you were a child – it was never your job
• Set energetic boundaries: inner detachment starts from within
• Recognise guilt as old loyalty – not your current truth
• Remind yourself every day: ‘My love is real. But so are my boundaries.’

You don't have to convince anyone.
Only yourself.

The world may not understand why you are distancing yourself. But the world does not live in your nervous system. You do.
You feel what it cost you.
You feel what it brings you.
And that is reason enough.

After letting go, silence often comes first.
Space. Discomfort. Perhaps sadness.
And eventually... peace.

You learn to live again, not as the child who had to prove themselves, but as the adult who chooses truth, strength and self-love.

Recovery means forgiving yourself for how you survived.
It means rewriting the old script with your values.
No longer searching for love in places that continue to hurt you.
But step by step, building a life in which you are at the centre, loving, clear and free.

Recovering from a toxic parental relationship requires more than just distancing yourself. It requires mourning, reprogramming and building a new foundation within yourself.

In my 16-week programme, you will work step by step to let go of old patterns, restore your emotional foundation and rediscover your strength. Not from a place of hardness, but from a place of truth and gentleness.

Do you feel that it is time to truly choose yourself?
Discover the 16-week programme here – Free from Codependency