
If You Never Felt Loved as a Child, How Do You Love Unconditionally as a Parent?(A Reflection from a Survivor of Silent Gaslighting)
When you've grown up—or lived for decades—inside relationships where love was conditional, confusing, or withheld, becoming a parent can feel like standing at the edge of a cliff with no map, no safety net, and no guide.
I was a victim of silent gaslighting—a kind of emotional abuse that doesn’t leave bruises, but instead erodes your trust in yourself over time. For over 20 years, I lived with someone who never hit me, only threatened once, never screamed, until the end—but who used silence, withdrawal, blame, and control to distort my reality. I lost track of who I was. I learned to second-guess everything. And slowly, I began to believe I didn’t deserve love at all.
So how do you parent after that?

What Is Silent Gaslighting? And Why It’s So Hard to Name
He never yelled—until the very end.
He didn’t hit me.
He didn’t even argue most of the time.
He just… said nothing.
No answers. No reactions. No acknowledgement of how I felt, what I needed, or who I was slowly becoming under the weight of all that silence.