Narcissistic Parent Betrayal and Their Need to Create an Environment for Abuse

The Friday Edition | No. 44

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⚠️Trigger Warning ⚠️

Dear Readers,

This week’s newsletter discusses sensitive topics, including abuse, grooming, and the impact of growing up with a narcissistic parent. Writing about personal experiences around abuse and trauma is not easy. It is often a struggle to speak about those things that have hurt so deeply, and while I usually avoid it, sometimes I get a nudge that it’s time to share hard truths and bring to light what is so deeply painful.

The content may resonate with those who have felt unheard and unprotected, both as girls and as women. Please take care of yourself, and feel free to step away if needed. I hope it helps in some small way to feel that you are heard and not alone.

With love and solidarity, Sunny Lynn

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Narcissistic Parent Betrayal and Their Need to Create an Environment for Abuse

When I was a child, a family friend groomed me for years. His presence felt normal, familiar, and even safe to me because no one in my life told me otherwise. I was placed in his clutches repeatedly: on family outings, at gatherings, on overnight trips, and, eventually, during a sexual assault that changed everything.

Grooming is a calculated process where a predator slowly builds trust and emotional dependency, often masking their true intentions. It’s a subtle manipulation that conditions a child – and the people around them – to see the abuser as safe, harmless, even caring.

I struggled for weeks to understand what had happened and what to do next. He began showing up at my part-time job and stalking me everywhere – to ensure I didn’t say anything. I was a teenager and still living at home. I remember struggling for weeks with what to do, and that moment of desperate courage when I finally told my parents. I expected protection, justice, or at least acknowledgment, but instead, I got silence and disdain. To my horror, my perpetrator was allowed to stay close to our family, to sit at our dinner table, and continue as if nothing had happened. We still went on our annual vacations to his cabin. Life moved on, but my world stood still.

There’s nothing lonelier than being a child in a family that refuses to see the harm happening right in front of them.