This album started as shame I couldn't name. I wrote some of these songs last year, then deleted them. I buried my feelings. I was afraid of who might hear. But now I'm digging up the old bones for the little one inside. I rewrote the songs and finished the album because I needed angry music when I was a teenager. Sarah needed someone to cry with. She needed permission to be angry, to be ugly, to be too much. These songs are for her.

"Good girl" on a leash. "Tough" in a cage. She wanted a son. He wanted a legacy. I wanted a mother who could look me in the eye and a father who could sit with me and grieve. They wanted a daughter who would never break. I thought they hated me, so I hated them too. I couldn't be what they wanted. They couldn't be what I needed. I forgive them. I forgive myself. I built my own mirror and named my own face.

Momma pinched the back of my arms where no one could see. Daddy tied me nose to nose with my brother. Timeouts meant hours facing the wall. They wanted a polite daughter. They got a ghost in a good dress. I was born with the volume turned up. They tried to turn it down with pinches, splashes, walls, belts. I'm sensitive. I won't be quieted anymore.

The leash was real. Mother tugged. She grabbed my ear. She called me fat. Every birthday was a punchline — "I tried to give you back." She rounded a corner and knocked me down once. She didn't stop. Didn't offer a hand. Just said "you were in the way." Dad just looked away. The hate learned to stay. I learned to hate me first. I'm tired of carrying it.

She covered her mouth when she smiled. She dreaded her own reflection. I started dreading me. Her mother died when she was two. She doesn't remember the holding, just the hole. So she learned to hold nothing. Not herself. Not me. She was a model. Daddy didn't like makeup. She put herself away. Packed her opinions in a box. Buried her wants in the backyard. Now I look in the mirror and don't know whose voice is whose. I hear her voice when I apologize too fast. That's not mine. That's her past. I'm learning to look at me.

Momma kissed the dogs on the mouth. Their tongues cleaned her face. But when she kissed me, her lips tightened. I felt the cringe before I felt her skin. The dogs got the soft she never gave us kids. I got the duty. The quick peck. Daddy had a rule: never leave without a hug, a kiss, and "I love you." She complied. Dogs got her lips. I got her cringe.

One in three girls. One in five boys. That's how many were sexually abused before eighteen. He cut my hair in the bathroom. Scissors scraped my neck like a secret. No deodorant. No tight clothes. Dress like a boy. Avoid the male gaze. He said pretty gets raped. Pretty gets left in a ditch. I learned to be ugly. I still got raped. Pretty was never the problem. His eyes were.

When Daddy cleared his throat, I braced. He'd say "don't tell your mom." That's where the split started. He lectured for hours about honesty, then whispered secrets she couldn't know. She was always the last to find out anything. Family kept her in the dark, then blamed her for reacting. I stood in the middle — the messenger they both shot. He told me "you're not pretty enough" when I wanted to be a model. When I told him about the first rape, he asked why I got in the truck. I stopped calling home after that.

Daddy was conceived in violence. His mother was raped at fifteen. His stepfather beat him within inches of death. At sixteen he held a knife to his stepfather's throat and said "touch her again and you're dead." The beating stopped. He never learned to cry, so he learned to yell. He told me he loved me every day. The words were there, but the feeling never reached me. He broke the cycle — he didn't hit me. He just never learned how to be soft. I'm still wondering how he forgave the man who beat him — and why I can’t forgive his wandering hand.

Louise Hay said the body loves you. It maps where the hurt is buried. Momma's joints hold the rage she never expressed. Her thyroid carried the weight of a life on hold. Daddy's spine gave out. His stomach eats itself. Every diagnosis became another locked door between us. They taught me to be a rock. They became sand. Toughness without tenderness is just a slower way to break. They wanted me to be tough. I am. I'm tough enough to admit I needed them. And tough enough to live without them. I love them from here.

Mom and Dad gave me the old bones. I'm building something new. My son yells. I yell back sometimes. Then I stop. I get down low and say "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. I'm learning a new way." He hugs me. I breathe with him again. I hope he questions everything, especially me. I don't have it all figured out. My parents loved me. I know that now. I'm learning to hold both — the love and the ache, the rage and the repair. Feel it through instead of passing it down. My son doesn't need me to be tough. He needs me to be here. So I'm here.