From Hell and Back: A Letter from Love 💌

From the depths of trauma to the light of understanding—this is a story of finding peace amidst the pain.

Sometimes, healing doesn’t come in a neat, predictable way. Sometimes it’s a relentless excavation, digging through layers of protection and survival that you’ve built around yourself just to make it through. What you’re about to read is one of those moments—an unexpected letter that emerged through years of reflection, pain, and ultimately, transformation.

It’s a letter that doesn’t shy away from the truth of abuse and exploitation, yet it also doesn’t lose sight of the profound peace that has been hard-won. Here, Unconditional Love speaks to the resilience needed to unearth the buried trauma, make sense of the past, and find a place of understanding.

This letter is a testament to the possibility of healing, even when it seems unimaginable. It’s for anyone who’s felt trapped in their own story, yet continued to seek freedom.

Hey Sweetie,

Do you know how deeply I love you? I see all your efforts, your strength, and your resilience. I see how far you’ve come, and I am so proud of you. What I want you to know today about your relationship with your parents is that the greatest thing isn’t about condemning them or holding onto the hurt forever. It’s that you’ve somehow managed to find a sense of peace with them, even in the midst of all the pain they caused.

And I know—even hearing that brings tears to your eyes. You’ve kept these feelings buried for so long, wrapped up in layers of protection and survival. Looking back, it’s clear that your parents abused and mistreated you in ways that went far beyond what should have been bearable. There was violence from both of them over the course of several years. It was akin to white slavery, a life of exploitation and extreme, rigid norms. What they put you through was living hell.

And even though there was a time when you believed peace with them was unattainable—from hell and back, you’ve made it. You’ve found a way to make peace nevertheless. It’s possible, and I see the immense gratitude you hold for that. But it wasn’t something that happened overnight; it only became possible through understanding, through relentless exploration and digging deep—what you call *ausbuddeln*—examining everything under a microscope until you unearthed the roots of it all.

Yes, they made sure that what they were taught became your reality. There was no room for you to question or deviate.

**“They wanted me to conform to a standard no one could even define.”**

You were always rebellious, always searching for freedom, even when you didn’t have the words for what you wanted. And again and again, you hit those boundaries, like Don Quixote charging at windmills. **“It’s no wonder I found myself drawn to Don Quixote, Atlas, and Sisyphus,”** you’ve said. Characters who fought impossible battles, trying to move the unmovable. These are parts of yourself.

**“Each trauma-created side Canyon belongs to my Canyon map.”**

They are what make you *you*—they contribute to your complexity, your authenticity. This journey of understanding, of integrating these side Canyons, has been nothing short of profound.

Your parents, yes, were responsible for their own actions—the violence, the restrictions, the emotional control. They created your personal labyrinth of rules and expectations. But there was something bigger at play. You began to see, didn’t you, that it wasn’t just about them? There was a time when you believed it was all about your parents, and you asked yourself over and over,

**“Who is this damned ‘we’ that makes the rules, sets the standards, enforces the norms? Who is ‘them’?”**

You searched for answers in so many places, tangled in what felt like an unbreakable knot—a _Gordian knot_. It took you decades before you started to see that these constraints didn’t originate solely from your parents. They were caught in a pattern much bigger than themselves. A pattern shaped by fear, by conformity, by a set of rules that they were trying to follow—rules that weren’t truly theirs, either.

**“It wasn’t about me,”** you’ve shared, **“and in many ways, it wasn’t about them, either.”**

This realization, once you saw it, was like a light piercing through the darkness. But that understanding didn’t come easily. It was only in the past two or three years—after you began to dig even deeper into each side Canyon, climbing its sides, uncovering hidden caves, and exploring every nook and cranny of each trauma—that you started to piece it all together. This year, at last, you began to see clearly what they were responsible for and what they were not.

**“I know now,”** you said, **“which parts of the pain belonged to them and which parts were a consequence of something much larger than any of us.”** That clarity, Sweetie, is hard-won.

Your upbringing in that middle-class family system, which came with cultural privileges like trips and experiences, was set against an emotional and psychological constraint that felt like a prison at times. Those trips funded by your parents in 1986, the opportunities they provided—there were moments of gratitude amidst the pain. Moments that contributed to shaping who you are, even if the structure around them was a labyrinth of societal expectations, your parents enforcing the rigid norms and roles that they had inherited themselves. They, too, were trapped in a system that perpetuated trauma across generations, caught in a web they didn’t know how to break free from.

And you’re still alive. That, at least, is something. You’re still here, with the chance to alter the course. Perhaps, even to pursue your dream of living in an English-speaking country, somewhere overseas—far beyond Europe. It’s been a desire since 1982, when you felt an inexplicable connection to a land, its people, its history. In 1986, you traveled there for the first time, a journey your family—your mother—made possible by paying for it. You cannot deny there were roses among the thorns. The many trips, the opportunities they and she provided, those have shaped you as much as the pain.

The restrictions, though—the invisible cell they confined you to—were relentless. You are still prying open the door, working your way beyond the limits imposed on you. You are expanding your circles, stepping outside the cell that once defined the edges of your life. But it was never just their fault; they, too, were victims of their time, inheritors of intergenerational trauma that twisted their behavior toward you. It’s been an archaeological journey these last few years, uncovering how deeply trauma has intertwined with your very being, your growth. Even understanding how it has limited you physically.

For years, you moved forward with determination, even as the weight of responsibility continued to grow. You found love and stability with your partner of 22 years, building a life that helped you carry the emotional burdens your family left behind. But the losses kept coming, didn’t they?

Your mother passed away in 2007, leaving you with a complex mix of grief and relief, as if she had taken with her a part of the story that you would never fully understand.

**“At just 40, I became the oldest, the matriarch. So much sooner than I was ready for.”**

And then, your brother—the older of your two younger brothers—died in 2013 from the injuries of a car accident that had happened in 2012. He was only 29, experiencing, in a cruel twist of fate, the same destiny that your father had faced before him in 1985—dying too young from the consequences of an accident, only aged 43.

**“How glad I was at his funeral that our parents didn’t have to experience that,”** you remember thinking. It was hard enough for you and your other brother—the one you had partly been a father to. The one born after your father’s death, who had always looked up to you, even when you felt unworthy of the role.

In 2020, your partner of 22 years died unexpectedly at 64. Despite her marriage, you never disrupted her life, even as you cooked for everyone, holding things together. Then the pandemic hit, isolating you and stripping away your routines and support. Grief accumulated over decades, leaving you lost and alone. Her death changed everything; her family waived inheritance rights, and the company you worked for fell under estate control, making your future uncertain.

Without the distractions of daily life, without the constant demands of being the one who held it all together, you began to see things more clearly. Piece by piece, memory by memory, you started to unravel the threads of your story.

Your healing journey started just a few months later. You sought help at the end of 2020, and by 2021, you were already confronting those initial memories of trauma. And as you began to retrieve more and more fragments, you realized that this journey wouldn’t work if you simply handed the pain back to your parents. There had to be another way.

You chose the path of understanding, of seeking out the roots of your pain and integrating them. This path has been anything but straightforward. It’s taken you through so many side Canyons, through losses and grief that you thought might swallow you whole. But through it all, you’ve kept going.

So, can you blame them? Truly, can you hold them responsible? They played their part, but they were also trapped, guided by a historical force that runs deep. Influences that go far beyond their parents, their upbringing—right back to ancient societal structures, monarchies, philosophers, and the rigidity of German history. The expectation to bow before authority while pressing down on those below. You felt like you were always passed downward, a weight nobody wanted to bear.

They weren’t alone in this, not in their complicity or their ignorance. They were part of a much larger current—a system that swallowed you all whole, like so many others before and after you. No, you cannot blame them for societal structures that stretch back centuries. The patriarchy of Rome, the iron rule of Victoria, the suppression perpetuated by Wilhelm, and the rigidity of a post-war Germany still scarred by obedience and submission. These forces shaped them, just as they shaped you.

And yet… you’ve been blessed with mentors who showed you a different path—one that led you away from blame and conflict. They’ve walked alongside you, validating what society refused to see, what no one dared to acknowledge in a “respectable” family like yours. No one would have believed that these up

standing members of society could have inflicted so much pain on their own child. This validation, this guiding light, was the first step toward healing.

Now, in piecing yourself back together, you are not just releasing your parents, but releasing generations of trauma that preceded even their existence. Every step forward is not just for you, but for those before you who could never take it. With this, you place the past in its rightful place, not as a shackle, but as a foundation for the liberation that is yet to come.

For now, the door of that cell stands ajar, and you are outgrowing its confines. Your Canyon, with all its side channels and scars, is your own. A landscape forged through suffering, yes—but also through exploration, courage, and a deep yearning for something more.

Sweetie, your very ability to process all this complexity, to see it and still choose to walk a different path, is a testament to who you are. To have faced it all, to have named it, and still, to speak of your parents not with hatred, but with this nuanced understanding… it’s a sign of your growth, your authenticity. That is a triumph greater than you could have ever imagined.

With this, you place the past in its rightful place, not as a shackle, but as a foundation for the liberation that is yet to come.

Always yours,

Unconditional Love.

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