Unbreakable Mind & Body

Hidden Costs of Tough Love

• Tiana Gonzalez • Episode 14

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Have you ever wondered where the line between tough love and abuse truly lies? That blurry boundary shaped my childhood in profound ways, leaving scars that took decades to understand.

Growing up in the 1980s with my father after my parents split, I experienced what was then considered "character building" but would today be recognized as neglect and emotional abuse. I'll never forget the day my thumb got caught in a car door, turning purple-black while I was told to stop crying and toughen up. No medical care, just shame for expressing pain. This moment, buried in my memories until recently, exemplifies how children can be failed by the very adults meant to protect them.

My father's determination to "beat the girl out of me" went beyond physical toughness. I was ridiculed for embracing anything feminine, used as a demonstration dummy in his karate school, and left to navigate puberty alone with overwhelming shame. These experiences created a hyper-independent person who struggled to trust others and lived primarily in masculine energy.

The journey back to my authentic self has been about reclaiming femininity without abandoning strength. I've learned to forgive my parents while acknowledging the harm done. Now, I pamper myself radically, knowing I deserve the nurturing. This is my invitation to you: Where do you find the line between being tough and being gentle with yourself? Can you dance comfortably between these qualities, embracing both rather than choosing one?

Your experiences shape you, but they don't have to define you. Connect with me through the show notes if this resonates—I'd love to continue this conversation about building an unbreakable mind and body while honoring all aspects of who you are.

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body podcast. I am your host, tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate, creative storyteller and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, tiana, and I just want to say thank you so much for being here On this episode. I want just want to say thank you so much for being here On this episode. I want to explore tough love with you, and I promised when I set out to create this podcast and cultivate a community and develop connection with you. I did make a promise at the beginning of this process to share stories, particularly from my past, particularly from my upbringing that posed a lot of obstacles and challenges and shaped me into becoming the person I once was and also the person that I am today. The person I once was and also the person that I am today. As you know, I believe that even when we shed our skin and move forward into a new level or we grow, we never fully abandon the old versions of ourself, and so on today's episode, I want to explore this idea about tough love, and where do we establish the boundary or where do we see the threshold for when tough love turns into abuse? If this is something that may trigger you, then you may not want to listen to this episode. For me, this is something I wanted to dive into headfirst because, as a child, I experienced different things that, from today's viewpoint, would be classified as abuse and treated differently in 2025 than it was in the 80s. Before I continue, I want you to know that I did a lot of soul searching before I chose to hit the record button and if you know me on a personal level and you have questions when you see me, do not be afraid to approach me. Of course, time and place, but anything that I share on this show is fair game. That is a promise that I make to my listeners. That is a promise that I made to you. That is a promise that I have made to myself, because it is through sharing these experiences that we can come together. I may be repeating some things from episodes one and two, so please forgive me.

Speaker 1:

When I was very small, my parents split up and my father took me and my brother and basically just disappeared. My mom eventually found us. She put up a fight it was a battle she was not going to win until she got a lawyer and took my dad to court and we did this whole court case thing and we would see her on weekends. My dad had full custody. He had a live-in girlfriend and I don't think the girlfriend was particularly fond of us. She was always very neutral, not the warmest person, not very affectionate, not very nice, and as an adult woman now I look back on some of the energy that I remember from that time, from the age of about. I remember her from the age of about six or seven until I was around 10 or 11. And you know what, if I was in her shoes, I probably wouldn't be the nicest person either. My dad was running around town with other women. He had a really bad reputation and she probably didn't sign up to be a stay-at-home girlfriend raising someone else's children. But here she was and there was one day in particular where we went to the mall and we didn't she didn't drive, so sometimes we walked there and other times her friend would pick us up Now I'm about seven or eight at this time and when we parked the car in the mall we go to get out of the car, I was sitting in the rear passenger side and as I'm closing the door and I go to walk away, I'm stuck.

Speaker 1:

I turn and look and my left thumb was locked in the door. I had slammed the door on my thumb. This was an older car. There was no remote to click the door, lock or unlock. You had to use a key to unlock one of the front doors and then reach and pull the lock up from the inside. Reach and pull the lock up from the inside. So I'm screaming, looking at my thumb turning blue, knowing that it's going to hurt like holy hell when I get this door open. But we need to get my thumb out of the door. So eventually we get it out, I of ice, and we continue to shop in the mall.

Speaker 1:

So I'm a little kid with a basically black, pulsing thumb at this point, walking around the mall with my dad's girlfriend, my brother who's younger than me, and my dad's girlfriend's friend, this other woman, and thinking back now, they probably were only in their 20s, maybe like 25, 26. They were younger than my dad and we're walking around the mall with a cup of ice, with my thumb in the ice. I'm dying. I'm in so much pain and I'm being told I'm a baby, I'm overreacting. It's not that big of a deal. Probably should have went to the emergency room but we didn't and unfortunately for me. I was told to toughen up and to deal with it. I was not given any care no aspirin, no Tylenol, no more ice.

Speaker 1:

After that, one cup of ice melted and I'm a kid and I basically did not sleep for two days, had to go to school the next day, dying in pain, literally dying in pain. I was so lucky that it was at least my left hand and I remember. Eventually the pain subsided it took about two days and my thumb, the whole thumb, turned purplish black in color. It was full of some type of fluid blood, pus, whatever you name it. Um and and eventually it burst and it was pretty nasty when it burst, actually, and probably a couple weeks later the nail fell off and it grew back. Now I'm lucky I didn't break my finger and the nail grew back. The nail is actually a little crooked. And then when I go to get my nails done whoever's doing my nails if it's a different person. They always make a comment about how my left thumb is crooked, and that's because of that accident and I thought about this story a couple weeks ago and I fell apart.

Speaker 1:

It was one of the things that I chose to forget. Now, at some point I don't know where in the process my dad found out, because obviously he eventually came home from work and he barely comforted me and I just powered through because I didn't want anyone to think I was weak. I didn't want anyone to see me crying Meanwhile. I'm sure they heard me crying, but I was in a lot of pain and I think back now to what I would have done with my daughter had that happened, and I know that I would have acted very differently. That was really difficult to reflect on because it made me feel like why didn't anybody advocate for me? And I think that because of the timing of the injury when it occurred, it was on a weekend that I was with my father, so a week later when I did see my mom, she was concerned about it, but I was already on the upswing and feeling better. It wasn't throbbing as much and I remember her being concerned about it and I do remember her and my dad having a little bit of a spat about it. They really disliked each other at the time. Could you imagine having an eight-year-old daughter and just telling them to toughen up, yeah, to toughen up, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And there were so many other stories just like that. You know, being the daughter of a black belt who owned a karate school, being used as like the test subject, being thrown around, being used to make an example of, I was constantly being embarrassed, belittled and basically the little girl in me got beaten out. I was so ashamed ever of like showing my emotions or being feminine in any sort of way. I remember seeing my twin cousins. I have twin cousins that are four years older than me and I adored them when I was little because whenever I was allowed to have a sleepover with them, they would treat me like a doll and play with my hair and put nail polish on me and put lipstick on me and put me in dresses and shoes, and I didn't get any of that. Living with my dad, in fact, I recall him telling my aunt that like he hated that shit and he wanted them to stop doing that because he didn't like it, and all it was was me celebrating the girl inside.

Speaker 1:

I was so ashamed of being a female as a kid that when I got my period for the first time, I tried to hide it from him. For about four or five days I was bundling up basically half a roll of toilet paper and sticking it in my underwear because I was so embarrassed that something natural happened and I didn't want to have to ask my dad for money to go to CVS to get feminine products because there's no way he was going to go for me. I mean, at that point I was 10 years old. I was old enough to go to the store by myself. Yes, in the 80s we used to do that A 10-year-old would walk outside and go to the pharmacy by herself. That was completely normal. Probably not in today's day and age, but back in 1988, it was. And I remember when I finally did tell him I started crying and then he made me feel ashamed for that, for not being honest and straightforward, and you know, feeling ashamed of being a girl. So I was constantly in this lose-lose situation Something natural that occurs in every girl turning into a young woman, into a teen. So, as you can see, I had to figure this stuff out myself.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't until I got a little bit older and I was with someone, dating someone who. We got into an argument and he just looked at me. I might've shared this on another episode. He looked at me and said, oh gosh, it's like dating a man. And it was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that to me and I remember looking at him. At this point, of course, I had embraced I was in my early twenties. I had embraced being more feminine, wearing makeup, doing doing certain things that we culturally assign to women, and I remember him saying that and I was so confused because I didn't understand what he meant. What did you mean that dating me is like dating another man? And it was because I lived in so much of my masculine energy and that is because of the way that I was raised.

Speaker 1:

I had a hard time trusting people because of things like being really badly injured as a child and being left to my own devices to figure it out. How am I going to heal and care for myself as an eight-year-old and then being thrown around in a karate school and being told to make sure that I didn't look too pretty because my dad didn't want boys looking at me in the karate school or not being allowed to wear certain things because I looked too girly. It wasn't because of safety reasons or being looked at a certain way by men. It was really more just about not being looked at as a girl. Period that may be a part of what my father's motivation was, but really it was just about beating the girl out of me literally and then feeling ashamed of myself for going through puberty. We didn't even have the talk about the birds and the bees. I got a book about human biology for Christmas one year, maybe when I was eight or nine years old. That's how my father communicated to me about the birds and the bees and sex.

Speaker 1:

It is a miracle that I made a lot of the choices I did as a young girl and as a teen and I ending a relationship when I was 15 years old because the boy wanted to have sex and I wasn't ready and he kept trying to pressure me and I said no and he eventually cheated on me. Imagine I'm 15 years old, first boyfriend, and because I didn't want to give up my virginity, this boy went and had sex with another girl that I went to school with. I went to St Catherine's Academy in the Bronx, he went to Mount St Michael and he slept with another girl who was an acquaintance. I knew who she was. I saw their body language standing at the bus stop. They used to take the same bus from the corner where his train let out. So you know, if you don't know, new York City, there's public transportation. There's buses and trains and, depending on where you live and where you have to go, sometimes you take a train to a bus or a bus to a train, and so he would take the train and get off right near where I lived.

Speaker 1:

So I would sometimes wait for him on the corner just to say hi, bullshit. For a few minutes before his bus came, and then he would get on the bus and go home. I mean, if that is not, pick me energy right there that I'm demonstrating because I had no fucking self-esteem or self-worth. I don't know what it is. Let me make sure I can. Time getting out of school walking to the corner so I could catch him for five minutes and get a crumb.

Speaker 1:

But again, I didn't know any better. I was only 13, 14, 15 years old, and so I don't let this boy take my virginity from me. So he goes and does what he needs to go. Do I find out? And I end it. And he showed up at my house, ring the doorbell, boogers dripping down his face with a stupid little ass teddy bear. My mom answers the door and he's like is Tiana home? And my mom says um, and I'm screaming from the kitchen. Tell him I'm not home. Obviously he could hear me, so I did that for dramatic effect, but I wanted him to know that I didn't want to see him or talk to him. And my mom slammed the door in his face after taking the teddy bear and the chocolates or whatever he had, and we moved to Westchester.

Speaker 1:

After that I trusted myself back when I was 15. I made worse mistakes as I got older and found my way back to being the strong, soft, feminine, but powerful. No nonsense, no bullshit girl. I needed to be no nonsense, no bullshit girl. I needed to be through all these different stages of my life, because imagine how powerful that little girl could have been had she been allowed to embrace the things God gave her, the natural parts of her, the things that she was born with, and integrating the toughness, integrating being able to defend myself, being around boys, but knowing how to act, being used as an example for other girls to defend themselves and protect themselves, and not as bait in an example. You see how that's different.

Speaker 1:

I know I went all over the place in this episode, but this has been heavy on my heart this story about my injury in the car door because I thought about it a couple weeks back and I shared it with a friend and they were appalled, completely appalled at the way I was treated when I was eight years old. So, yeah, it's been a rough road, having to learn how to trust people, having to learn how to ask for help, because when you're eight years old and you're fishing through the freezer looking for ice cubes by yourself because nobody wants you, you become hyper independent really fast. I have learned to forgive my parents for the mistakes that they made at the time, but I don't know if I'll ever really fully recover from asking myself the question why did that happen? Why did my dad want me to be something else so badly back then? And why didn't anyone else any other fucking adult in the scenario step up for me and advocate for me? Was everyone really that afraid of him? I can't even answer that question because I only know the experience through my eight-year-old eyes, through my eight-year-old lens. So, yeah, I grew up around having to protect myself, at what cost.

Speaker 1:

This episode maybe is not going to give you a ton of strategy or questions for you to ask yourself, but I thought it was important to share with you because everything that happens in your past is a contribution to who you are today Everything. I am so lucky that eventually my mom did step up and fight for us and she did everything she possibly could to intervene, to be a part of my life and to nurture me. I think her delivery was harsh and I know that her anger towards my father probably messed that up for her, because she always had great intentions. She really did go very far for my brother and for me to make sure that we changed our behavior, changed our language, understood right from wrong, had morals right from wrong, had morals and learned better values, because we weren't getting that with our father. He wasn't around. We were being raised by his girlfriend, who was also probably not qualified or emotionally equipped to do that.

Speaker 1:

If you follow me on social media or if you know me on social media, or if you know me personally, or if you are one of my clients and you've ever thought to yourself anything about the way that I present myself to the world and how I take care of myself and how soft and feminine I can be. I get my hair done religiously, I take care of my skin, I get my nails done, I get massage. I pamper the shit out of myself. I treat myself better than anyone else is ever going to treat me, no question, and I do that because there was a lot to make up as a kid. There was a lot that I didn't get when I was younger, and I'm not going to sit around and wait for somebody else to do those things for me. I can do that for myself and I have no regrets. I don't question anything or blink an eye. I want to get my hair done, let's do it. I want to get Botox, let's do it. I want to go spend money on a luxury vacation or rent a convertible or do all sorts of things for my upcoming brand launch. I'm doing it.

Speaker 1:

I don't care how much it costs, and I hope that for you, it doesn't take such extreme experiences for you to learn how to love yourself, but loving yourself, giving back to yourself, caring for yourself, witnessing yourself and being kind to yourself. Again, I know this episode didn't have a lot of resources or education behind it. This was much more of a personal word blob, but this is an important story and I will leave you with a question to think about. Where do you find the line to be between showing up for yourself, being tough, being strong and also being kind and gentle to yourself? And can you do that dance? And can you do it comfortably, because it's the right dose of everything together? It's both, and it doesn't have to ever be either or.

Speaker 1:

If you've made it this far in the episode, I appreciate you. I appreciate you more than you know. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this episode entertaining, educational, informational or thought-provoking, please let me know. You can send me a text. If you check the show notes, it comes right to me. It's anonymous and I will respond in an upcoming episode. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you. I will catch you on the next one.