Terri Cole calls it an invisible wound: the imprint left when a daughter never receives protection, presence, or emotional attunement from her father. This week, Tami Simon talks with Terri Cole—Sounds True’s own Boundary Boss—about her new book, Father Wound, and why even women with loving fathers can carry this wound without ever naming it.
Terri Cole, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist, relationship expert, and best-selling author who has spent nearly three decades helping people break dysfunctional patterns and build healthier relationships with themselves and others. With Sounds True, she is the author of the trilogy that began with Boundary Boss and continued with Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency. Her newest book, Father Wound: Break Unhealthy Patterns to Reclaim Your Worth and Power, examines what happens when a father or father figure is absent, abusive, immature, or simply not emotionally attuned—and why daughters of patriarchy carry a version of this wound no matter what kind of father they had.
In this conversation, Tami and Terri explore:
- How to recognize a father wound even when “my father wasn’t that bad”
- Why Terri defines the father wound as, at its root, a worthiness wound
- The difference between self-parenting and re-parenting, and what healing your inner child looks like in daily decisions
- The “father wound trance”: how old patterns resurface in adult relationships, and how to work with transference instead of being run by it
- Mourning the Dream, Terri’s exercise for grieving the father you wished you’d had
- Why healing this wound personally is tied to healing patriarchy at a collective, societal level
Who this episode is for: anyone doing inner child work, anyone who keeps finding themselves in the same relationship pattern and wondering why, and anyone ready to ask whether their sense of worth was shaped long before they had any say in it.
Listen now, and start reclaiming your worth. →
This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early, ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge: https://join.soundstrue.com/
