The Father Wound: How It Shapes Your Self-Worth and Relationships

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Welcome to Dear Dr. Tracy, the podcast that dives deep into the messy, beautiful world of relationships. I'm Dr. Tracy. Clinical psychologist, relationship expert, and your go-to guide for navigating relationships, boundaries, in-laws, and everything in between. Whether you're striving to rekindle the spark, set healthy limits, or build deeper connections, this is the space where real talk meets expert advice. Together, we'll tackle the tough questions, untangle the sticky situations, and uncover the small shifts that lead to big transformations in your relationships. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's rewrite the stories you tell yourself. This is Dear Dr. Tracy, your guide to creating relationships that feel good. Terri Cole, welcome back to the show. I am beyond thrilled to be sitting here with you.

Thanks, Dr. Tracy, my friend. I'm so psyched to be back.

I got your book and I opened it up. So everybody who is joining, this is— we are talking about the father wound today. And Terri, this is your 4th book because you have 3— this is the 3rd book, but you have a workbook in there as well.

Correct.

You have just been fantastic in giving us helpful resources. And when I got this book, I think, I think I shut it and I said, woo, Terri, we're going here. Okay. And I immediately thought about this experience in my second year of the PhD program. I was sitting with one of my dearest girlfriends and we were in one of those moments of, will we ever get through this PhD program? It's grueling, it's hard, it's uphill. We're trying to figure out ourselves as clinicians and also researchers at the same time. And I remember this conversation we had, we had both said we could never leave the program because we didn't want to disappoint our fathers. And that— I hadn't started therapy at that point. It was a few years later that I started doing my own work. And we also didn't really have labels at that time for words like mother wound or father wound. So I just know that this conversation is so needed for so many people.

It really, really is, Trace. It's, it's incredible how people are responding, and it's not even out there yet, you know?

Yes. So I had read that the father wound is, is really this, I mean, you'll be able to define this better than I can, but it's this, it's an element of worthiness. And I immediately thought about who we are in our deepest relationships, because I think so many people, so many women especially, we don't walk around thinking, I have a father wound. I didn't think that back in that day, pushing forward in the PhD program. And I also know we don't walk around often thinking about, I have to earn love. And I also think then when we frame this episode, I, I know a lot of people will come and maybe say, well, Terri, I have a good relationship with my father. So I wanted to start even just right there. Let's jump right into that. Can you love your father, believe he was a good dad, and still have a father wound?

Without a doubt. And I would say probably it's, it's almost equal, the amount of women who have very sort of problematic fathers. My father was Neglectful. So he was a workaholic. He wasn't there. We were afraid of him. He had 4 daughters. He should have had sons. So there's that type. Then there's the, you know, aggressively abusive, right? So there's sexual abuse, there's verbal abuse, emotional abuse. Then there's addicted. So you're there sometimes, but not there all the time. The in and out, right? Even if you had a dad who was present and who was there, another aspect of having a father wound is being raised in a patriarchy.

Hmm, tell us more.

Well, I mean, we've internalized the second-class citizenship, the lack of value, the limiting beliefs around women and their worth. And it's only gotten worse in the last 10 years where, you know, obviously we only started gaining any kind of actual rights in the '70s, right? And, and, you know, young women today, I wonder, like, do you really realize, like, how, how new this is? You couldn't get a business loan for your business without a male cosigner until 1980. Are you grasping it? You couldn't get a credit card in your name without a male cosigner until 1973. So we're really talking about— what is that even? Even that just says you can't be trusted with money. Men do the money, women don't. There are so many pervasive limiting beliefs around being a woman in society. So even if you had a great— So Let's hit both things. If you, because a lot of women also say, my father and I have a great relationship now.

Amazing.

I'm talking about the relationship you had with your father growing up, right? And so we can do that. We can work it out. We can accept. But are those injuries processed, honored, integrated? Because that's what this, that's what the Father Wound book does. It walks people through the process of going in before we go out. Identifying, giving you permission to tell the truth about what you experienced and without shame. You don't need your father's participation, his permission, his presence. A lot, a lot of women will be coming to this book and their fathers have already transitioned off this plane. They're no longer on planet Earth. That's all okay because this is not about them.

Right.

is about you. And yes, will we be talking about your experiences? Of course. In the book, we unpack, you know, your, you know, one of the most pivotal experiences in the beginning of the book where you're going to unpack your own very unique downloaded father wound blueprint. And any experience you've had, right? Your father wound blueprint is as unique as your fingerprints.

Mm-hmm.

Because you were a particular, you know, I was the 4th daughter But I was the designated oldest child. Like all of us have these nuanced and intricate experiences that have our unhealed father wound be expressed in a very particular way. But there are themes throughout. So before we get into it, let's just start so that we're sort of all on the same page definition-wise. I define a father wound as a psychological and emotional injury that stems from Growing up with a father or father figure who was absent, abusive, or not emotionally available to you. It could be someone who was addicted, someone who was psychologically unwell. It could be he might have been taken away because of a brutal divorce. So maybe you only had limited time. He might have died. And you have what happens when you— that's still an abandonment wound, right?

Mm-hmm.

It still happens in that way. So, and this is not just biological fathers, of course. If you were, maybe you were raised by Mm-hmm. Or a foster dad, right? It's whoever sort of took over that role in your life. And as you stated at the top, at its core, a father wound is a worthiness wound. Why it's hard to identify— well, before, before that, let's go back to it's where you learned sort of that we weren't inherently good enough as we were. Your need to produce, right? Your need to continue to be PhD program, my need to be very successful in entertainment before becoming a psychotherapist, you know, just my ambition, just leaping up the Hollywood ladder. So much of it was to prove my value, and accomplishments was a way to do that for me with a father who that was like the only thing he sort of could acknowledge was good grades and, you know, going to college and And even though I was the first one in my family to go to college, so I felt a lot of pressure to like, I was definitely the golden child in, in, in my family system, which as you know, there's a lot of work to keep that role going.

Mm-hmm. You and I connect a lot on the identified eldest daughter and the golden child piece.

Indeed. Mm-hmm. It's exhausting though. And here's the thing about why it's so insidious is that the same thing with being a high-functioning codependent, right? The high-functioning piece makes this wound very easy to ignore because people look at you and go, look at you with your fancy PhD and your people and your marriage and your children and your thing.

And you're—

we're doing all the things. The question is, what is the quality of our internal and our lived experience?

Hmm.

And this is what I'm finding with women in my practice and have for many, many years. So I've been researching this obviously for Forever. I've been teaching a father wound course for the last 5 years. There really wasn't a ton of research out there.

I have yet to come across a book that solely focuses on the father wound.

Is this not the first one? No, because they're usually religious, right?

Yes.

This is the first one that is secular.

Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Right? Because there's all of this merging of with religious stuff and father and father as God, right? So that's not this book. This book Is completely secular and is completely psychotherapeutically based. I ended up gathering about 650 women who self-identified as having father wounds 2 years before I started writing the book because there wasn't research. So I took what research there was. Of course, that's all in the book. But for my own sake, even though I'd been teaching it, I wanted to make sure that I was hitting what women needed.

Mm-hmm.

How, in their own words, What do they think having a father wound, how it impacted them? And of course we can get into all the many ways that they believed. And there is some research done, but researchers in the '60s, '70s, '80s, even '90s and the outs, what were they doing? They were looking for where they thought they would find the problem. And that's the mother.

And where do we often look? Yes. Yes. We look to the mother. Right. It's, it's all about the mother. I, I remember, uh, one client once said— it was actually a male client— he had said, it's all about the mother, isn't it? We're just going to bring this back to my mother. I said, actually, we're going to look at both parents, because I think that's important. But it is interesting to have the research all previously available on women instead of looking at both. And, and when we think culturally, many of the women were, were at home with children, having more time and to interact with them and to quote unquote be the ones child-rearing, given they were not in the workplace. But gosh, fathers still had an impact on them.

Of course. And, and here's the thing though, there wasn't an expectation that fathers would be attuned to their children, right? There was an expectation fathers would say they were babysitting their own kids. Yeah, they would say they were helping out at home because that was the woman's job. So for you guys listening or watching and you're wondering, you know, does this apply to me? Because I think that there's a lot of resistance. So A, give yourself permission that you can love your father and he could still have been disappointing in some way, right? Even a father that had very high hopes or very authoritarian, we can look at that and say, oh, that maybe that was driven by love. Sure. Maybe all of this was driven by love, but what we care about Is not the intention, but the impact on us as women and as human beings, right? Because your father could be physically present but emotionally unavailable. That creates wounds, you know?

And I think that's really beautiful too, because a lot of people say, I, I read this flavor of comment online a lot. Oh, here we go blaming parents again. Oh, I'm so sick of blaming parents. No insight into this is not about blaming parents. We can understand. What fathers looked like in our past. We can radically accept that this was our experience and this is who they became to be as a product of their histories. And then you're saying the real work here is the impact on us and what we're then going to do internally of it.

Yeah. It's really not about the blame, but it is about getting radically honest about what we experienced because that's the only place place that we can heal from, you know.

I want to pull back for a moment and just contextualize this a little bit, because when I try to explore this with clients, I'll have clients say things like, well, my parents never asked me to be perfect, or my father didn't say I had to do better. And I think sometimes it's in the more subtle ways that it shows up for us. One of those Common examples, and this ran in my family as well, is I would bring home that 95% in calculus. And my father had said, I can't help you with calculus, you're on your own. And it worked out well for the way my brain works. And I brought home a 95% and he would say, where's the other 5%? And of course I can say now with my adult brain, that was his way of joking and cheering me on. And that's who he is. And in that lived moment though, Right. I learned Do better. Be perfect. And it—

this plant— I was just going to say it plants the seeds of perfectionism, which is so exhausting. Um, I think that, you know, there, there's all of these subtle and nuanced ways that we get impacted. So you could have a father who shows little or no affection, fathers who are self-centered, emotionally focused on themselves, make their daughters feel less important than work or other siblings. Right. You have a lot of gender stuff or just a preferred child in the family. Hobbies, addictions, other priorities.

Or even a child who demands the attention. If I think of those who struggled with mental health, behavioral, developmental issues.

Yep. And then the, the more quiet one, like you're, you're left to deal with what is left. Other things that can make us feel invisible. Addiction is a big one. Gambling. And even socially acceptable stuff. Like if your father is a triathlete You know, but is always training. You're still getting like screwed out of time with that person. Another question I get often from people is, you know, do I need to confront my father to heal? And the answer is, of course not. Because again, and this is news, this is all about you. This is not about your father. Now, you know, in the in the end of the book, I think we should probably hit maybe some of the symptoms of if people are wondering if. They have.

Let's, let's do that. Let's, let's talk about some of those symptoms. But in the book, I had put a sticky in here for daughters with father wounds. The relationship with ourselves is sometimes the one that needs the most repair.

Hmm.

And the work now is learning to offer yourself the safety, protection, and care that we're missing. It's about building a deep, abiding, and compassionate relationship with yourself. And that, that is such deep work. So yes, let's go. Maybe even if I ask a more specific question, what would the symptoms of the father wound look like in relationships? So I know a lot of people who are listening are in committed romantic relationships.

Mm-hmm. What would that look like? I mean, for a lot, it's high-functioning codependency. Mm-hmm. So what does that look like? Over-functioning, overgiving, overdoing, controlling all the things. There's the nice second book, Too Much.

People, I'm holding up her second book. People are just going to buy both of those books as they're listening. Too Much and Father Wound.

That's one way, right? Mm-hmm. Tolerating things, right? So you, you think about your father or your father figure was your first experience of masculinity. And if they treated you like crap, someone else treating you like crap will feel very familiar. Doesn't mean it's good. But a lot of times unconsciously we go, oh, that's mating material. That makes sense. I get this. This resonates with me, even if it's not what we want.

Mm-hmm.

So I call it repeating relationship realities where we just find ourselves in these similar— my father was very emotionally unavailable. I found myself in relationship with men who were emotionally unavailable. And then when I got healthier and I was starting to attract men who were emotionally available, they were still— they were physically unavailable. There were all these men who lived in Europe on different continents. And my therapist was like, not exactly cracking the code, um, because it leaves you in the same I mean, she helped me come to this conclusion where she's like, there's still a part of you that's ambivalent. Because yes, they're emotionally warm and supportive and physically affectionate, all these things that my father wasn't. And yet they live in Greece.

You're keeping them at a distance. Yeah, that distance is such a safety familiarity.

Yes. And not being known, but part of From my own experience of it, if I'm looking at my trajectory of healing my father wound, is that for me, what I learned from my mother's experience with my father and in life was that men were people to be managed.

Hmm.

I mean, never to be vulnerable to. Get outta here.

No.

Why? They're not trustworthy. They're definitely not. So manipulated and managed, sure. And I had 3 older sisters and we all, we all had boyfriends that we were all lying You know, everyone knew, never tell the truth. When the phone rings, you're like, uh, let me check to see if she's here, looking right at her face where she's like, nope. You're like, nope, not here. Bye. Like there was a whole code of how we, quote unquote, as this group thought about men. And in my healing journey, part of the process I needed to go through was differentiating from that limiting belief system about men.

Hmm. It's so interesting when we start thinking about some of those subtle behaviors. That we do in relationships. And when you can start to confront them and to ask yourself, well, what's that really about? And is that, is that even something that exists in this current relationship?

Right. Right.

Because I'm thinking of the projected version of your partner that's not actually them. It's maybe, I mean, it could be them and they could be rejecting, cold, dismissive, or angry if you bring something to them. Or is it that you think that this man in front of you Will be that way because of who you raised. And so then that's where that self-fulfilling prophecy comes in. I'm avoiding discomfort by not bringing something up to you because I'm afraid of your reaction. It might be just like my father's. And that's the whole internal work within that.

Exactly. And allowing yourself to just tell the truth about whatever it was. Because listen, women with father wounds, I know cuz I am one, you grow up and you, when you I didn't see other fathers. You know, I tell one of the, one of the stories I tell in the book is about my friend Mia who lived around the corner and how I would go and play at her house. And her dad worked and my father worked, but my father was like an upwardly mobile white-collar guy. He actually ended up retiring at 50 and doing very well. Her dad was a mechanic, but I was in 4th grade. But I, so I thought they both go to work, they're the same. And one day I was at her house and her father came home early and I immediately grabbed my sneakers. I was like, Get the hell out of Dodge. Putting my shoe on as I'm hopping on one leg down the steps to get out. And she's like, where are you going? And her dad's like, Terry, where are you going? I was like, I don't know. I said to my friend, your father's here. We have to get out. All right, don't we have to get out of here? Because that's how we responded to my father. And she was like, no. And her dad was like, why don't you stay for dinner? And I didn't know how to say no. I didn't want to stay for dinner because that was also my only experience of dinner with anybody's dad. Dad was my own, and it was very uncomfortable every 4 weeks or whenever we did it on a Sunday. So I had this education, like I saw a father could be warm and kind and not someone I needed to be afraid of and wrestle with us. And he— I remember we watched Charlotte's Web one night and he had a little tear in his eye, and I was like, what in the hell is going on? I, I was shocked. And I was, I was already—

The blueprint. Yes, the blueprint that you were holding already of what it meant And to be a man, to be in relationship with a man.

Yep. And that made me know there's something different. And also the longing for my father to be like that only became more, right? It only became more intense because now you kind of do know what you're missing. You're like, wow, there's someone who has a fun dad. Amazing. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins.

Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and So for people listening, and one of the things I've always had as a value on this podcast is to show up as human and to not have this facade of, I'm a psychologist, I have no wounds, and all those things. That's never my position. session. So I didn't say it clearly, but I have a father wound. I have worked through it and done some healing around it. And also too, I have a great relationship with my father today. He's someone that I respect, and I've gotten all these traits about myself that I've gotten from him, the leadership that's helped me to build my businesses. And then as you're talking, I remember I'm immediately thinking about how making mistakes In my marriage was really hard. And the reason why it was so hard is because growing up I learned, be perfect. Where's that other 5%? Don't make mistakes. And the mistakes that kids regularly make, you spill milk or the hard moments that you have, or, oh, what would be another one? You know, just even the interpersonal mistakes that we make. So anyways, I've gone to my husband and I'd shared something. I said, oh my gosh, this is so hard for me to tell you. I think you're gonna be upset with me. And so I should try this mistake. And he has completely helped me to reframe that. It's been such a journey in the last 14 years of our marriage, but even longer in the 17, ooh, almost 20.

Mm-hmm.

Ooh, this year is 20. Um, the 20 years we've been together and he has helped me to see, I remember him saying it to me, you're supposed to make mistakes. That's how you learn. And that, that for me was, what do you mean that's how we learn? You're not supposed to. It's right. So it is really interesting then when we find partners who can, or people in our life who can then just confirm that experience. That your story of you being in grade 4 and learning this about another man made me think of that.

Yeah. It's, it's amazing how when you start to get exposed, you're like, oh, Because anybody listening, you knew if you had a friend who had a good dad, or we would— I would watch something on TV and see a kind or kind of funny dad where people were not scared of them. That always blew my mind. I was like, wow. But there was a longing to have that and to be accepted in that way. And it took for me all of this personal work of Healing this father wound. I had healed so many other things. I got into recovery, like I did all these things sort of young in my 20s. But I really got to a point in my later 20s, I was like, if I don't just face this, I'm— because I was spending all this time with my ambition, right? Before I ended up going to grad school in my early 30s. So I was working as a talent agent and doing all the things and realized my therapist Bev had said to me, she's like, let's talk about your ambition. Cuz it It was ridiculous. Like, it was off the hook. It was burnout central. It was crazy. Traveling all the time, all the things. And I said, yeah, it's just the way I'm wired. It's just, it's just my nature. Of course, she's thinking, no, it's not. Um, and she said, well, did you ever think, like, can you, can you make the distinction? Are you running towards something or are you running away from something?

Hmm.

I was like, oh, it's definitely that. I knew The second she said it, I was like, oh my God, what am I running away from? And again, it was the lack of worthiness that having this father who didn't care, because what ends up happening is you as kids, and you know this, Trace, we end up making up stories, right? We try to make sense of the world we're living in. So I had this whole very well-established story that my father, who was an incredible athlete and went to college on a full ride and all that stuff, that he was disappointed Disappointed that I was a girl because I was his 4th daughter and his last chance for a boy. So that was my story and I was sticking to it. And then I remember when I got into my 20s, my mother was like, Tara, you say this, I don't think that's true. She was like, I honestly do not think your father would've been interested in boys either. He was not interested in any of us. And I was like, oh, now I understand. That is so much more painful He's just not that into you and he's your father, than coming up with a reason of like, oh, if it was a gender thing.

Hmm.

And so I spent a lot of time unpacking my ambition as this chip on my shoulder of like, I'm gonna show him that I'm more successful than any stupid boy he could have had. Let's say moving into when you have an unhealed father wound, you can be very successful, but what is driving your behavior? Right? difference between being driven by fear or lack of worthiness or feeling only as worthy as your last accomplishment, then being driven by passion and your goal of what you want to create in the world and your heart's desire. Like, those are 2 completely different experiences. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best What starts to happen for people when they start to heal this wound? Oh, so many things.

But first of all, which I put the— everybody will get the book so that they can figure it out, what it looks like for them, what drives them, is that— what, what are they running away from. I think that's, that's going to be such valuable work within that book. But yeah, I'd love to know what, what actually changes in the way that they love and the way they show up in the world.

I mean, so much less perfectionism, right? So much— the worthiness. You really get that you're inherently worthy. It is so baked into this work that you get it, especially if you have kids or you've ever loved a kid. You don't look at a kid and you're like, you better make me dinner. Like, Where they don't have to do anything. We just love them. That, that's you.

Mm-hmm.

Much more regulated. I do a lot of— there's a lot of nervous system. Each chapter has a nervous system. We just call it a body break because it's not like official, but it's very simple things that we can do to be more regulated on a regular basis. Much less self-abandonment because that is baked into an unhealed father wound, is constantly If you want it, but I need something else, I will defer to you. Um, having better boundaries, less fear of abandonment, because when you stop abandoning the shit out of yourself, you're way less afraid of other people abandoning you because there's this change when you have your own back. Um, way less hyper-independence.

Mm-hmm.

Which is one of the symptoms of having an unhealed father wound. is just so much difficulty trusting others or accepting help. And then a lot of times we just trust the wrong people altogether because safety wasn't necessarily modeled or provided for us growing up. So more interdependence on the other side of healing rather than, um, hyper-independence.

Yeah.

And then the last one to talk about is less hypervigilance. One thing that I've seen Throughout all of my clients, my mastermind, my groups, my courses, with women in particular with father wounds, there is such a high level of hypervigilance that there is no standing down. It's like the war is on according to our nervous system.

Mm-hmm.

And we are in this state of being so dialed in. And I mean, listen, many, many of you guys listening, and probably you too, Tracee, I mean, I'm a super empath and I'm a highly sensitive person. So I see this as directly connected to having a father wound because we had to be hypervigilant to make sure that we didn't get disapproved of or worse, depending on what your situation was. So much—

Or left.

Yes. Abandoned. Absolutely. Because this constantly scanning for danger, overthinking all of our interactions, needing to Stay in control to feel safe. When this switches, which it does throughout this process, there is so much more expansion of your internal experience. Like, what is it like to put down something super friggin heavy that you've been carrying that you, you realize throughout the process of this book? And the book is done in a linear way, right? You start in the beginning. Listen, I'm gonna have a I'm doing a course that's going to go along with it. I'm doing all kinds of things. But here's the thing, every book I've ever written is a one-stop shop.

Yes, all of them.

They're beautiful. Why, thank you, my friend.

I'm just looking at the table of contents. Intentionally you do that. You want people to go in and, and feel like they— to actually get what they need. It's not the, oh, and we'll leave you on a cliffhanger. We're actually going to take you through the healing, which you do. Chapter 9 is Becoming Whole. Chapter 10, What Becomes Mm-hmm. Oh, I just have to stay in this moment with you, Terri. I just listening to you just brought tears to my eyes thinking about, I think when we go into this healing for so many women especially, we go in because we want to be different for ourselves. I think about my daughter actually a lot. I wanted to be different from her. And I, I can just remember this radical awakening for myself, not just becoming a mom, but becoming a mom of a daughter. And then also And, and truthfully, my son shows me a lot of myself with emotions, but my daughter reflects back my experiences. We're very similar in that way. And I think this kind of healing shakes everything because not everybody around you will want to stay around you when you decide that you are no longer going to abandon yourself.

Yeah.

When you decide that you don't give up your yourself when you decide to stop people pleasing in service of your own wellness. And that, that's a layer of grief that sometimes I don't think— I mean, I'm not fully done my grieving work that I will always continue to do. Um, but gosh, sometimes it just feels like, oh, I don't know if I was ever ready for that.

It's so true. And I think that you bring up such a good point that was That's really beautiful, so thank you for sharing it. The mourning, you know, there's a whole exercise in the book and there's a whole section on mourning the dream. So it's mourning the dream of the father we wished we'd had, the experiences we wished we'd had.

Hmm.

And having so much radical self-compassion for the little kid that we each were.

Hmm.

Because that's the thing that a lot of us When you grow up and you become high-functioning, if you're a very capable person, that we have this really strict expectation, like, get it together, girl. I mean, I should be over this, but people can't tell you how many times I've heard, like, listen, that happened 35 years ago. Like, come on. I mean, my father's great now. He got sober in, you know, 2017 or whatever. None of this is about that, right? This is about you and the little kid in you. And what she experienced, and now we are going to go back and become the present, kind, compassionate, and educated parent that you might not have had without dissing them. You know, it's not about them; it's about you. And I don't call it re-parenting because for many of us, at least when it comes to the father wound parenting, this is not re-anything. This is self-parenting. Reparenting is the way that I basically teach it because—

Ooh, I love that.

Yeah, it's different though. Reparenting just sounds wrong because you're like, that means it happened before, you know? Um, I want to point out something that I also included in the book because every person is so different that I did something. I was wondering if it was going to work. I feel like it does, but I added an addendum, right? So it's chapter 11 or the addendum. And now this is a You know, create your own adventure, or basically, what adventure do you need? So if you're done with chapter ten and you go, I feel great. This is where I'm at. I feel I feel complete. You shut the book. You're complete. If you go, I'm at now. I want to change my relationship with my father now. My father's still alive, and he's too intrusive. Then it'll show you. Okay, go to step three, changing the dance. You can say my father passed away, but I don't feel like I've properly. Mourned. I need some kind of a ritual. Then you're like, okay, go to page this. There's a whole bunch of rituals and things you could do. I want to have less contact with my father. Okay, this is what it looks like. I want to go no contact with my father. Okay, go here. So I didn't include all of that in the body of the main part of the book because it was so specific.

Mm-hmm.

But there's only a couple of scenarios people can be in. Your father has passed away. You want less contact. You want more contact, you need more mourning, right? That's probably it. So far the feedback from the readers we've had has been really positive for that feeling that it's very, um, like you customize it like every other part of healing. Because I don't care who's teaching it, and you teach the same way, so I know you agree, there is never one size fits all. And so there's so many things that I include And you include it in this book too. You know, back to you. Every back to you is basically a little answer these questions type of a thing because we want that.

Yes. Right?

We're reading the book and yeah, it's interesting. Great. But what we really as readers and as seekers want is, okay, I understand this concept of good fathering. How does this apply to me? So answer these questions. 'Cause really, you know, I've never claimed that I'm definitely not a guru. to anyone for any reason, but I'm a damn good GPS to get people to their answers, right? It's about asking the right questions and journaling those answers.

Mm-hmm.

But you know, Trace, I want people to get that it's so possible, and that even if you had a decent dad, that unless you were raised on Mars, we all had the experience of being raised in a patriarchy. We've all had bad Yes. Every— why do you think people— I put it in the book about choosing the bear. Why do you think when, when that question came up on all the places and people are like, would you rather run into a bear or a man you do not know in the woods?

Right.

I literally, honestly would say the bear. So why, why is that? Because we live in a world where a lot of the times we're unsafe, and that we don't even think about how much We are defensively living our lives, right? Like always thinking about holding our keys, doing the thing, having the mace, locking the door.

Yeah, crossing the street. Crossing the sidewalk.

Yep.

Yes. I explained that one to Greg recently. I said, I don't know, it's such a different lived experience. When you walk the street, you just walk and you don't think twice about it. But when I'm walking, I'm navigating who am I crossing and do I need to change the sidewalk sides? Do I need to swerve out to give more space? But yeah, it's, um, oh, Terri, this book, it, it's gonna help so many people and everyone listening needs to go and grab a copy. It is coming out shortly, so I'm gonna put the pub date in the show notes so they can preorder it.

And, and yeah, preorder's happening now. You can go to, uh, fatherwoundbook.com. And I'm also doing a half-day virtual retreat for just for free. If you preorder, it's a $300 value where we're gonna be diving into your father wound blueprint in that retreat. So it's gonna be pretty heavy duty. I just wanna get people sort of moving on the path. So you can just go to fatherwoundbook.com and then wherever you, you can buy your book from your local, from wherever. Whatever it is, just put your thing in and that will, that will give you a seat in the retreat.

Mm-hmm.

One last thing I wanted to say about this that I think is important also, and it's really a concept that also isn't really out there, but it's about co-wounding. That the importance of the other parent and that you could have a mother who mitigated your father wound, which is what I had. Which is why I feel like I really grew up being so me, like loving and being out there and being such an extrovert.

Mm-hmm.

Because I felt in this one area, I felt so safe. Or you could have a mother who actually amplified the father wound by making it worse, by siding, by ignoring, by acting like the abuse wasn't happening if you were in that situation. And each of the chapters in the book is grounded in a case study. Mm-hmm.

So it's not just the, the let me talk at you. And that's something I appreciate about, about all of your books is you root in it. Actually, I had read the story about Kate Hudson in there as well, and what she has shared about her father wound. So it, it's every chapter is rooted in real life experience. You just bring it so alive. And I just, listeners are going to just love this book.

I'm so excited. I just, my goal is to help 10 million women across the world, identify, honor, and integrate this father wound. And we might just save the world, right? If we could get out of our own way. And this is one of the things that I feel like keeps women playing small. But now that we're gonna shine a collective bright light on it, you have the power to change whatever isn't working in your life.

Thank you so much, Terri, for hanging out with me today. It's always one of my favorite conversations that I have here on the podcast. I'll link our other conversations from our previous sessions together as well. But I've got all the information in the show notes. Everybody, please go preorder this book. This is what supports authors. It helps Terry continue to do what she's doing. And also to consider reaching it for a friend because it might be part of the conversation that you have next with them in your group chat. Terry, thank you so much for being here with me.

Thank you so much for having me, friend.

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