About Karen

This page contains a personal story of family and relationship trauma. Please read at your own pace.

Where Fierce & Free Healing Began

Being disinherited is not about money. Imagine sitting around a table with your four siblings. Your mother enters the room carrying a cake — not just any cake, but one filled with love, laughter, grief, and history. A cake baked over a lifetime. A cake that says, I love you. I always have. I always will. It represents a shared life — not perfect, not easy — but the only one you’ve known.

You watch her approach the table, the moment heavy with meaning. Let’s imagine this is the last cake she will ever bake. The last time you’ll ever see her. She gently sets it down and begins to cut it into four slices.

Four. There are five of you.

She places each slice on a plate and hands one to each of your siblings. You wait, assuming the final piece will be yours. Instead, she sets it in front of your brother. Then, without a word, she turns and walks away. Forever. 

No slice. No crumbs. No explanation. You sit in stunned silence as your siblings eagerly eat their cake. You’re left confused, heartbroken, and frozen in place, calling out, Why? Why me? But there is no answer. Only the ache of realizing you no longer belong at the table — and maybe never truly did. 

This Experience Isn’t Limited to Families

While this story comes from my experience in a family system, the pain it describes is not limited to families. Many people experience this same kind of erasure in romantic relationships with narcissistic partners — where love is conditional, belonging is revoked, and connection is used as leverage or punishment. Whether it happens at a family table or inside an intimate partnership, the wound is the same: the sudden realization that love was never safe or secure.

This Pain Isn’t About Money

It is not about assets or property. It is a final act of rejection. A message that says: You don’t belong. You don’t matter. You are not one of us. People often assume the pain is about money. But anyone who has lived this knows the truth. It is about love withheld. About a lifetime spent trying to be seen, only to be erased in the end. It confirms the deepest wound: You were never good enough to be chosen.

For those of us raised in narcissistic or toxic family systems — or who later found ourselves entangled in narcissistic relationships — this kind of loss often confirms what we feared all along: that love was conditional. That belonging depended on obedience, silence, compliance, or shrinking into a role that cost us our truth.

A year ago, I was told my mother had cut me out of her will and my siblings sided with my mother accusing me of the lies she had planted.  What I understand now is this: my disinheritance was not a reflection of my worth. It was a reflection of her brokenness — her need for control, image, punishment, and power. And as devastating as it was, it also brought an unexpected kind of freedom.

Building Something New

When my seat was taken away — and my siblings offered me no place to sit — the pain was unbearable. But that empty space also gave me something else: the chance to build my own table. A table rooted in honesty, compassion, and chosen family. A table where people are seen, believed, and valued exactly as they are.

I was never meant to contort myself to fit into a legacy that demanded my silence. I am here to break cycles, not preserve them.

Why This Work Exists

Fierce & Free Healing was born from this truth. It exists for those who have been scapegoated, discarded, gaslit, or erased — whether by a family system or an intimate partner. For those who know what it feels like to lose belonging, and who are ready to reclaim themselves anyway. This work is grounded in lived experience, compassion, and the belief that healing does not happen in isolation — it happens in safety, truth, and connection.

A Final Word

If you’re here, please know this: You belong. Your story matters. Your healing is sacred. Welcome to a community created from pain, built for freedom, and grounded in love. You do not have to walk this healing path alone.