Terri Cole: This process is about going in and being honest about what we experienced and moving from being people pleasers to being so much more embodied in our authentic selves. And the only way we can do that is

Kate Northrup: Hi. Welcome to Plenty. Today, I have one of my dearest friends on the show. She is the brilliant Terri Cole. She is the author of Boundary Boss, Too Much, and the brand new book out today, Father Wound.

And in today’s episode, we talk about Terri’s extensive background as a therapist and how the father wound showed up over and over and over for decades with her clients, both her therapy clients and her coaching clients, as a worthiness wound for women and what we can do about it if we have a father wound. In today’s episode, we specifically get into father wounds and how they relate to our relationship with money. A few months ago, I recorded an episode, a solo episode about your father wound and your relationship with money. And we had so much response from that episode that I knew I wanted to bring Terri on as an expert to go even deeper. You may have seen Terri on the Today Show, ABC, CBS.

She’s been in the New York Times, on Cosmos, so many other places. She’s brilliant. She’s hilarious. She’s a Jersey girl, and she is one of the wisest women I know. So enjoy this episode about father wounds and money with the brilliant, the delightful, Terri Cole.

Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans. I’m Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you’re truly here to live. If you’re ready to reimagine what’s possible for yourself and for the world, you’re in the right place. Let’s go.

Terri Cole: Welcome back, Terri. Why thanks for having me, Kate Northrup walks. You.

Kate Northrup: So listen. I wanted to have this conversation because I recently… I don’t know. Let’s call it a few weeks ago, a couple months. I don’t remember, but did an episode about father wounds and money.

Mhmm. And it was before I had gotten to read your book, and that episode did so well. Our community was really into it. And I got more voice memos from friends, DMs. We got a lot of emails.

So I know that our audience is ready to talk father wounds. And I’m gonna wanna start with what is a father wound? I mean, we just have to start there.

Terri Cole: Yes. We do. Psychological and emotional injury that happens when you are raised by a father who is either not present, abusive, neglectful, self absorbed, narcissistic, addicted, maybe they died. Right? So there’s so many different ways that we get to having a father wound.

There’s many, many roads to having a father wound. What it is is it’s a worthiness wound. It’s where we learned in childhood that the way that we were wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t right. We needed to be more…

Either more accomplished, maybe prettier, maybe thinner, maybe more like our sister, maybe whatever. But it got us sort of striving for attention and approval. So really, it is this worthiness wound that does not stay in childhood. It plants seeds, and then that should just follows you into adulthood and into your relationships and your relationship with yourself and authority and romantic relationships and friendships and money and all the things.

Kate Northrup: Why is it that a father wound would be a worthiness wound in a way that perhaps a mother wound wouldn’t be, or could it be as well? Like, with that worthiness that I don’t feel enough, why is that father?

Terri Cole: Because think about what the job of a father traditionally was, was to protect you, was to teach you about the world, how to change your tire, how to how to be safe in the world. And if the person who was supposed to do that the most for you didn’t, as mine didn’t, you grow up thinking perhaps that you are not someone who’s worthy inherently of those things. So I didn’t know how to protect myself really. Ended up in relationships with the wrong people for a long time in my life because my father was personally… I mean, why why am I writing a book about father wounds?

Obviously, you teach what you most need to learn. Yeah. As people say, and I think that’s very true, at least for me and all the books that I’ve written, it’s always something that’s changed my life. So healing this father wound in my life completely changed my life. And I was like, it can’t just be me and it’s not.

Mhmm. So anyway, there was many many things.

Kate Northrup: But

Terri Cole: did I answer the question?

Kate Northrup: No. You you definitely answered the question, and I wanna go a little bit deeper. And this is, you know, my style is never challenging. So it’s genuinely because I’m so curious. Mhmm.

And I’m trying to sort this out for myself and for my own research. I know you have not written a book called Mother Wound. So so I don’t wanna get too far off track, but I am curious. Mhmm. If someone had a mother wound in the same way that you would say a father wound is a worthiness wound, a mother wound is a blank wound.

Terri Cole: I mean, I also think it impacts worthiness, but it impacts different parts of your life because there’s an expectation. Right? The way the way that I write about it in the book, there’s an expectation that your mother will be attuned to you. When when we talk about attachment issues and styles, they’re always referencing your relationship with your mother. So in this book, I included this concept of co wounding because my own lived experience tells me that I have two attachment styles.

And doing this work for almost thirty years in the trenches with clients, I’ve seen, I mean, thousands of women at this point who have also had two different styles. One based on relationship with the maternal figure, one based on the relationship with the with the paternal figure. So for me personally, my romantic blueprint got heavily impacted by my extremely unavailable father. I said, you know, he has the emotional IQ of a sneaker basically, Could not deal. Could not be in connection.

Had four daughters. Wow. I always felt like he should have had four sons.

Kate Northrup: Uh-huh.

Terri Cole: And so what… How did that inspire me? Unconsciously, I recognized in unavailable men that that was mating material. Right? Before you start doing a lot of work, you’re just naturally drawn to what you’re drawn to.

Yeah. And when we look at co wounding, the mother figure will either buffer, right, mitigate, or exacerbate. Uh-huh. So the question is, did you have a mother or maternal figure who made it better or made it worse? So personally, I had a mother who made it way better.

I had a mother who was incredibly attuned to me, still is. She’s 89, still is like, you’re the most… Know, just devoted, ridiculous. She’s embarrassing. Literally.

Do not talk to my mother about me. She’ll like, isn’t she amazing? Like, she’s just ridiculous.

Kate Northrup: But you are, Terri. She will agree with you, Kate. Correct. You’re like,

Terri Cole: that is accurate. But how did that impact my friendships? Yeah. I have the same friends since Nixon was in office. Literally, the same friends.

We traveled together. I have a million other friends like you that we’ve been friends for decades. Past time. I mean, twenty years at this point. It has been.

And I have so many in our crew. Right? I I collect women because I had three older sisters that loved me to death, and I had a mother who loved me to death. And so I understood what sisterhood and female connections, how beautiful, how important, how safe Yeah. And valuable.

How I related to men was what I learned from my mother. Men are people to be managed. That’s it. Manipulated and managed. They are not people you should make yourself vulnerable to.

They are not people that you create some heart centered connection. Absolutely not.

Kate Northrup: Mhmm.

Terri Cole: So obviously, that doesn’t set you up to have good and healthy relationships. Never entered my mind to make myself vulnerable to my boyfriends when I was in my twenties. What? Lied all the time. Always cheated on people, like, didn’t care.

They were not trustworthy, and, of course, neither was I with the way that I was behaving.

Kate Northrup: But Well, but if you’ve experienced, you know, no emotional IQ, then you might also… And I… I’m curious about this. You might also then assume that men also don’t have emotions. I definitely So then it would sort of be like, well, what does it matter?

Yes. How I would treat them because it’s not there… There’s nothing there anyway.

Terri Cole: Yeah. I I definitely… Because my father was so emotionally stunted, it definitely entered my mind that men… That’s how men are. Right?

Because think about it. Your father is your first exposure to the masculine. And so we’re so imprinted by the way they behave, how they regard us, or if they regard us. A lot of women have father wounds. I wanna talk about something that I think can be a barrier to entry for women with doing father wound work, which is that what I’ve heard from people in my practice and my mastermind groups and my courses is a lot of minimizing our own experiences by saying, my father was a good guy.

He wasn’t that bad. He didn’t hit us. He was… He had a good job. He provided a nice life for us.

And here’s the thing. All of those things can be true. And you can love your father, and he still could have been disappointing. Right? You don’t have to choose.

This is not a loyalty thing. This is for you because why I call this an invisible wound is because the way that it impacts so many women is they become high functioning codependent Right. Which is what my second book is about. Yeah. And have disordered boundaries, which is what my first book was about.

Kate Northrup: It’s a trilogy, folks.

Terri Cole: It… Indeed, it is.

Kate Northrup: That’s why

Terri Cole: the covers all match. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: That’s That is correct. That co wounding around or that co… Whatever you said about attachment styles. Mhmm. I’d never heard anybody say that before, you know, because we talk about, oh, anxiously attached or avoidant attachment style, and I absolutely had to.

And so that was the first time that I had read that because my relationship with my father and my relationship with my mother was very different and has morphed many times in adulthood. Right? Because there’s the there’s the blueprint that you get at childhood. Mhmm. And up until about what age would you say that blueprint is forming?

Terri Cole: I mean, we we talk about formative years going up to, eight. Some people talk about 12. Okay. But honestly, I think your whole experience can be formative. You can have a dramatic or traumatic interaction with your father when you’re 15.

A lot of the women… Because there wasn’t a lot of research done, I gathered 650 women who were self identified as having father wounds and just met with them. And

Kate Northrup: it gave a group or individually?

Terri Cole: It met with them in

Kate Northrup: a group.

Terri Cole: You’re like, that’s just too many sessions.

Kate Northrup: Okay. Wow. You’re like, you’re committed. In a group.

Terri Cole: Love that. In a group virtually. Great. But what they did for me, because there’s not a lot of research out there partly because the research that was done in the sixties, seventies, eighties, even nineties, they were looking for problems where they expected to find them, which is in the mother daughter relationship, which is also very patriarchal. There wasn’t an expectation that your father would be attuned to you in 1978 or ’85 or ’95.

Right. There really wasn’t. There was different expectations. So the patriarchy in full gear affecting sort of all of this, but… And also there weren’t father wound books out there that weren’t religious.

A lot of godly things. And I mean, I like god… She’s great. Like, I like god plenty. Yeah.

But I just feel like we could keep it separate. Like, I don’t… For my work Yeah. It’s more science based

Kate Northrup: Yeah. More data based. It is interesting. I have some friends who have later in life started going to church and in churches where there’s masculine language around God, and they have found it incredibly healing around their father wounds, which is just fascinating that you mentioned that. So, anyway, you gathered these 650 people.

Terri Cole: Yes. And then asked them all the questions and did a very extensive survey so that, a, I wanted to make sure I was writing the right book. Yeah. Right? Like, what do you need?

But they… There’s so much, Kate, that, I mean, it’s so heartbreaking how when you’re a high functioning woman woman, this is why it’s an invisible wound often because people don’t know that you’re suffering. If you have it all together and you’re doing all the things for all the people and you’re running a business and you’re an entrepreneur or you’re in corporate or whatever you’re doing, no one is stopping and being like, wonder if Kate’s okay.

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Terri Cole: They’re like, she’s fine. She’s obviously… She’s always fine. Like, nobody is like a Terri okay. Literally, obviously, I’m fine.

Now by healing this wound, though, we’re raising the bar from fine. Because what is driving our behavior to do all the things for all the people? Right? We’re checking boxes, but it becomes heavy if there isn’t mutuality. It becomes heavy if you’re saying yes when you wanna say no.

We become resentful in our own lives, and that’s a real indication. If you’re listening and you feel resentful, you’re like, okay. Something needs to change in your life because this is your, you know, not to quote share, but, you know, there’s no dress for her. Like, this is it, Like, we’re live right now. This is your life.

Like, right now.

Kate Northrup: There’s not a there’s not a do over. There’s not a do over. That piece about resentment and then you also wrote a lot about control and for high functioners for women who seem like they have it altogether. One of the mechanisms is control. Can you talk about why and how control shows up for us with with women who have…

I mean, do you think all women have a father wound? I think listen On the spectrum.

Terri Cole: We were all raised in a patriarchy. So if we were gonna say who’s the original bad daddy, it would be the patriarchy. Right. So I think it’s very hard to be completely unaffected by the limiting narrative that has been out there about women since the

Kate Northrup: beginning of time. Yes. And facts. A 100%. So then back to my previous question, how and why does control show up for women with a father wound?

Terri Cole: First of all, it shows up suddenly often, which is that’s the high functioning codependent playbook, which is that I’m not really controlling what you’re gonna do. I’m controlling what I’m gonna do. So I don’t have to depend on you because you, I don’t trust. So we’re hyper independent if we look at the symptoms Yep. Of having an active father wound.

Hyper independence is one of them where you’re like, I’m just gonna do it all. So then a, I don’t owe you anything, which would be great. And b, you don’t do it wrong. And c, you don’t do it in a not timely fashion. Right.

I don’t need to wait. I’m just doing it. Because what did we learn? So if you learned in childhood that your father couldn’t be counted on to show up, right, you… Maybe he showed up sporadically.

I mean, I had a client whose father, you know, she he she had weekends with him, but he would only show up, like, every third weekend. So her whole life is about the the push pull of being waiting, waiting, being so excited, being so let down. So what do you learn? She really learned. You know who’s not trustworthy?

Men. So if I do it myself, I also don’t have to have a hard conversation. I don’t have to be vulnerable. I don’t have to ask for anything and be rejected.

Kate Northrup: It’s that vulnerability when you’re listing all these, It’s the asking that feels so brutal. Yep. Just like I need help. I remember, you know, as someone… Obviously, when you told me you were gonna write this book years ago, I was like, can I be one of the first people to receive it?

And you were so kind to have your publisher overnighted to me, and I’ve just been I’ve just been inhaling it. And years ago, when Mike was really, really sick, it… I think one of the things that happens for folks, and you could speak to this therapeutically, is that in the moment that things are really bad when we’re going through a traumatic situation, we compartmentalize, and there’s not enough energy to be aware of how bad things are.

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: And that’s a great coping strategy Yep. To deal with the situation. So when Mike was so, so, so, so sick in 2018, I’ll never forget my dad walked in the door for Thanksgiving. We were hosting Thanksgiving or something. Yeah.

We were hosting Thanksgiving. And was she even thinking back to that? I’m like, interesting that I was hosting Thanksgiving. It was so hard and But anyway I was thinking. Why?

There we were. You know, we just I don’t Yep. And, my dad walks in, and I will never forget it. He put his hands on Mike’s shoulders, and my… You know, I don’t know if you remember at the time, but his whole face was peeling off.

I mean, he looked awful, but I had gotten so used to it. I just didn’t think about it anymore. My dad put his hands on Mike’s shoulders, and he said… He looked at me and Mike, he said, never.

Terri Cole: Oh,

Kate Northrup: no. He said, like, never let it get this bad before you call us. Like, how did you not tell us? My dad lives twenty minutes… Lived twenty minutes up the road, and it just didn’t even occur to me that I should call someone to say how bad it was.

Yeah. It was such a moment of like, ugh. I mean, my dad was being a really good dad in that moment. Yes. But it was that mirror of, woah, I didn’t think to ask.

Terri Cole: It’s like, what does that speak to of the hyper independence? It’s a perfect example of feeling like I have to do it and I have to do it myself. And how exhausting it is to live with the inability to receive, which is another one of these symptoms of having a father wound is that we’re so afraid to be vulnerable and so afraid not to be in control.

Kate Northrup: Right.

Terri Cole: Right? And to be disappointed and to be rejected.

Kate Northrup: Right. Because if I make the ask and then they can’t show up, Yep. Then not only have I used the energy to put myself out there, now I’ve only further confirmed That I’m not lack of worthiness. Yes.

Terri Cole: Yes. One of the the stories that I tell in one of the other books, but it’s very poignant for this, is that I was graduating grad school, and I said to my therapist, Bev, I’m not inviting my father to my graduation. And she was like, okay. Why not? My father was retired already, lived in Florida.

He hated New York. And I just… I said, well, I I don’t think he’ll come. And she said, okay. But do you want him to come?

And I was like, well, what does it matter if he won’t? She was like, PS, it’s literally the only thing that matters. So, you should ask him. She’s like, Terri, you’re going to visit him. That’s your homework.

You’re gonna invite him to your graduation. And I was like, oh, But… Okay. Fine. So I can’t fail.

So I have to do it. So he’s driving me back. I was visiting him for literally three days. We’re in the car going to the airport. I have not invited him yet.

And I finally, I just had to do it because I’m I’m like, I’m getting out in four minutes. I have to ask him. So I said, hey, dad. He was like, yeah. I was like, I got an extra ticket to my NYU graduation, like, at the end of May if you wanna come.

And he was like, ugh. I really can’t deal with New York terror. And I was like, okay. It’s okay. And then he said, ugh.

Here comes the guilt. He says to me, and I’m thinking, I’ve never guilted

Kate Northrup: you a day. I could have

Terri Cole: been guilty you all these years. I never did. Right. But what opened up… So I said, dad, it’s not guilt.

I actually totally get it. It is a lot, and I… I’m not mad that you’re not coming. Mom will be there. My sister had a baby six days before my graduation, and she came there with a six day old.

Right? I was like, Kathy will be there. I said, but dad, you’re my only father. Now we’re crying. And nobody can replace you.

So I want you to know that it matters, but I’m not mad because I sincerely wasn’t. What my therapist taught me in that moment and what shifted, you know, he hugged me a little bit longer when we said goodbye that day and I started getting, like, random weird ass cards from him that’s like, dear Terri, happy spring. Love dad with his, little chicken scratch hand.

Kate Northrup: Wait. That’s so sweet.

Terri Cole: I can’t. Like, he just couldn’t. He just didn’t know. He didn’t know. He couldn’t do better.

Yep. But that was such an effort for him, and that was so sweet. But what my therapist Bev taught me about the asking was that my healing was in asserting my desire. Yeah. My healing was in the asking and being okay because the asking isn’t about manipulating the other person.

It’s about representing for my little little Terri and grown up Terri. Giving that part a voice. Exactly. And it opened up this incredible conversation with my father and I that we never would have had in a million years. And from that interaction, I started…

I said, I’m gonna call you every Sunday. And he was like, okay. Started calling him the most awkward Sunday conversation. Just imagine. Stop.

Just the most awkward

Kate Northrup: Oh my god. What did you guys talk

Terri Cole: about? I mean, literally no things. He did no idea. I would… I remember telling him I was like, was dating someone at the time, and I was like, I don’t know, dad.

You know, when he leaves my apartment on Sundays, I just feel really sad, and I’d cry and whatever. And he was like… Literally said, what’s your problem, pal? I was like, good advice. Good talk.

I was like, I don’t know. That’s why I’m talking about it. But the shift and the fact that for my little girl, being able to just voice that he mattered Yeah. That my mother always picked up the slack for him. And, you know, they got divorced when I was 13, so I continued, you know, to have relationships with

Kate Northrup: both of Did you ever stay with him after that?

Terri Cole: Did you split time? Not split time. Thank god.

Kate Northrup: Okay.

Terri Cole: Please. But there were I I was, like, 13. So I… We did do the… My mother actually said, legally, Terri, you you have to go.

And I was the only one because my sisters were all older and, like, my… Even my sister, Kathy, it was only two years old than me. She didn’t have to. And I go… I remember saying, what do you mean?

And she’s like, you have to go visit your father. You don’t have to stay, but you have to go visit him on Sundays. I go… Said to her face, what am I gonna talk to him about? She was like, I don’t know.

You’ll think of something. So what we did is I brought my friend Grimsby with me.

Kate Northrup: Is that a real person?

Terri Cole: Yeah. My friend. You got a friend. One of my yayas. Her name is Grimsby.

No. Her name is Gather Grimsby.

Kate Northrup: Oh, but that’s her laugh. I was like, I’m sorry. Somebody named a little girl Grimsby. Grimsby. That was your nickname.

Understood.

Terri Cole: You brought her with you. Bring her with. He would take us to a movie Okay. So nobody had to talk.

Kate Northrup: Okay.

Terri Cole: And then out to dinner, which was kinda great when you’re 13, like free out to dinner pizza. We were like, right on. Okay. It kinda worked, but we… It was weird.

Yeah.

Kate Northrup: How about you? My parents got divorced when I was 15, and so I did see my dad. I think I stayed over at his place one time. I was laughing with him the other day actually because… So my bonus mom, Tracy

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Met him around like a… At the same time that he was living at this apartment. My dad’s really into model trains so he was living in an apartment over the model train store.

And so I would go and

he would make me this dinner which was microwaved fish

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: With like Ritz cracker crumble on the top and Tracy and I were talking about how hilarious that was because that was also the dinner he would make her when he would invite her over for dinner. Anyway, hilarious. So I would go, and it was hard. And so I wanted to share with you, Tracy. Tracy, hi.

That’s not your name. Terri. I knew what you meant. You know a lot about my story with my dad, and in the interest of being evidence that this work works

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: I have the best relationship with my dad probably that I’ve had since I was 10. Wow. And there’s been this profound shift in my nervous system. Mhmm. It is not to be super clear because one of the things I love that you say in your book is that it does not require having the participation No.

Of the other person.

Terri Cole: No. Or permission.

Kate Northrup: Or nothing. Like, can actually have a new experience. Exactly. Your experience is your experience. Correct.

And a completely different reality is available from work that you do on the blueprint, on building safety in your nervous system. Yep. And I love, by the way, your body breaks throughout the book. So genius. I learned a lot of new tools.

So thank you for that. Sure. So I wanted to share that, yeah, it really has been kind of miraculous. It… That The fact that you did it though, what changes, Kate, you…

Terri Cole: You’re lucky that your your father’s alive and that you’re having the… In this incarnation, you’re able to shift, But the healing work that you did previous is what changes you and created the opening and the opportunity to have the relationship you have with him now. Yeah. Because that’s the whole… The way that we walk through it in the book is you go back to go forward.

And if there was any way that I could not go back, I would not go back, but we must. Yeah. Right? We have to go back to the scene of the crime. And it’s each person getting so honest about what they experienced.

And many of us were conditioned to minimize and to say, what happened thirty years ago, I should be over it. My father did better than his father. His father was physically abusive to him. He wasn’t to me. Yeah.

Like, all of the… He… People should say, you should be grateful. My friend’s father died. You at least have your father.

Like, all these ways to try to convince us that we don’t have a right to the way we feel. So I wanna be so clear that this is not a vilifying of any one thing. This is a truth telling thing. And for once in your mother effing life, it’s gonna be just about you. Yeah.

It’s not about your father even if we’re talking about how you interacted with him.

Kate Northrup: Exactly. And what you talk about is that siblings, you know, you talk about your experience of your father being completely different than your sisters.

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Same thing with me, and I have two siblings, and all of our experience is wildly different. Yep. We might as well have been raised by three different men. Yep. And so that aspect is different than control because taking responsibility for our own experience is different from trying to remain in control.

Can you talk about what is different about those two things? Well, part of it is if we do our own work, right, go back to the example of asking my father to

Terri Cole: go to my graduation. In doing that for myself, my mantra was the asking is where the healing is. Asking is healing. Asking is healing. Like, I had to get it in my body because I so didn’t wanna do it, that you stop being afraid of what other people will do.

It wasn’t that I needed to control him to come. It was that I needed him to know that he mattered, and that is different. I needed to be seen and heard, and that is different. When we’re trying to control other people, we’re trying to make sure there’s no conflict. We’re trying to make sure nobody’s mad.

We’re trying to not get rejected. We’re trying to avoid hard conversations. Many of us. Right? If the…

This is very common with father wounds. But what we’re not doing, because you can’t do that, and honor your truth and honor yourself. So we’re going from all of this out. Right? I’m worried about you.

I’m worried about you. I’m worried about other people. I wanna manage all of these things. This process is about going in and being honest about what we experienced and moving from being people pleasers to being so much more embodied in our authentic selves. And the only way we can do that is if we decide what I think, how I feel, and what I want matters, and it needs to matter to you, meaning the person, the most.

Right. We will still compromise. We have husbands and children and people. Totally. Fine.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But for many, many women, especially father wounded women, they cannot say that how they feel, what they think, and what they want is the most important thing to them. And we need to get… Because on the other side, I want you to understand that the adaptive functioning that you got from having this father wound, your incredible abilities, you’re a super empath, so am I. We’re highly sensitive people.

We’re attuned within an inch of our lives to all the people and all the things, but these are superpowers given what we do for a living. Yeah. Right? Like, this is… It’s amazing to know people, to see people, to have that bandwidth.

So it isn’t like when you heal your father wound, you suddenly don’t have these adaptive skills. It’s just that now you have choice. Yes. We are not reacting. Right.

Right? We are not compulsively fixing auto advice giving, finding all these ways. We’re so dialed in. I don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want anyone to suffer.

What do I need to do so nobody suffers? But in the meantime, you are suffering. Mhmm. So we’re really turning this in. And, really, it’s your turn to legitimately heal these original injuries so that on the other side is all of this expansion, all of this choice.

Right? My ambition… Right? Think about your ambition. I know both of us have a similar story with this.

I remember talking to my therapist, Bev, years ago, and she was asking me about my time in entertainment where I was kind of leaping up the Hollywood ladder, like intentionally burning out, which, of course, is what she was seeing. But I was all like, oh, I’m just ambitious like that. That’s just my nature. You know?

Kate Northrup: And she was like, okay.

Terri Cole: Really? Yeah. We’ll say. And she was like, I have a question. Do you think you can make the distinction?

Are you running towards something, or is it possible you’re running away from something? And I was like, wow. That shit hit me in the chest. I was like, oh, I’m definitely running away from something. I was running away from the fear that I wasn’t worthy, that my next big accomplishment, my next amount of money, my next famous client, those were the things that would make me worthy because it was what my father valued.

He valued success. Right? Do well in school. That’s the only intention I could get from him was being smart and doing well. So I was like, okay.

I guess that’s my winning formula in life, but I thought it was who I was. And she’s like, it’s an adaptation. So what happens is I’m still as ambitious, but driven by my passion Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: By my desires, by free will, by my choices, not fear of being unworthy. And that’s why you call it an invisible wound. Correct. Because folks who are out here living what may look like their best lives Mhmm. May be fueling it from passion or may be fueling it from trauma.

Yes. And no one on the outside could know Yes. But you know Bev knew because she was talking to you on a weekly basis. Correct. But but, you know, the Internet doesn’t know.

Yep. Now maybe your nearest and dearest do know. And I’m curious because ambition is obviously kind of a sister of earning money. They’re, you know, or brother, whatever we wanna call it. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Siblings. And how do you think a father wound might show up in our relationship with our money?

Terri Cole: A lot of it has to do with how whatever your money blueprint is from the family you grew up in, how your father did or didn’t manage and or make money. So is it okay to out earn your father? For many father wounded daughters, the answer to that is no. Is it okay to draw attention to yourself and ask for the raise and speak up in the meeting and say no when something isn’t working for you? For a lot of father wounded daughters, the answer to that is no.

So it impacts your money in a whole myriad of ways depending on how dysfunctional your father’s relationship was to money. Was money used as a tool? Was it withheld as a punishment for the way that my father loved was with money because he had no emotional IQ. Right? So he couldn’t do it a different way.

And I remember, saying to my mother, because my father was saying at the end of college, he was like, alright. And then you’re off the payroll. Now he did pay for my undergraduate work. I did not work through college, and I was so middle class and not… I was so sheltered.

I thought everyone’s parents did that. Duh. Obviously not. So I became very grateful once I got into the real world. Yeah.

But I remember calling my mother, and I was crying. And I was saying, because he said I’m gonna be off the payroll. I was like, what is he? Not gonna come to my wedding? Like, what does that mean?

I’m gonna be off the payroll. I… It meant so much because my connection to him had been Was financial. Financial. And he was very fiscally responsible.

So, I mean, there there was something about him. He would, like, send me a note. Like, if you save this money, I’ll put this towards your IRA. You know? Like, he was teaching me about things, which was his love language,

Kate Northrup: was duty. And for men of his generation, the primary available love language for a father would have been financial.

Terri Cole: Right. It was provide.

Kate Northrup: There wasn’t a different one.

Terri Cole: Provide and protect. But what’s interesting about the protect thing is that if you didn’t have it Right. Right? If in my case, I was a sophomore in high school on a Tuesday night at three in the morning drinking with the football team, Like, why was… Why didn’t anyone know where I was at that point?

That’s that’s probably not great. And what you learn is maybe you’re not worth protecting. Yeah. So it’s very hard. I see this with father wounded…

A lot of father wounded women is that we end up making ourselves vulnerable to untrustworthy people.

Kate Northrup: Mhmm. One of the things that occurred to me because I had a history of resisting structure and resisting anything that felt even slightly like a limitation, whether it was a budget or an organized chart of accounts that had a specific place for my money to go or tracking software Yep. Any of those things. And so what I thought about this and having worked with many people around their money, I saw this over and over again, and I thought, I wonder if… Because the masculine is structure.

Right? And, obviously, women and men both… We all carry the masculine and the feminine within us. So Right. But I I did think, okay.

Is it that our father wounds can show up in our resistance or hyper vigilance around systems Yep. Structure and those sorts of things? And I I just wanted to ask you what you thought about that and if if you would wanna add anything.

Terri Cole: I think it’s true. And I think that when you think about disordered boundaries, because you’re really talking about your money boundaries. Exactly. So they can be too malleable or they can be too rigid. Yep.

And both of those things are dysfunctional, and they don’t give you what you teach about having this alive chosen relationship with money and abundance. Right? You teach us how to be in a relationship in a healthy way rather than all of this control. Yeah. Right?

You… Your work… Obviously, I’ve said this before, but your work has helped me so much around my own financial stuff through the many years that we’ve been friends to have a much healthier relationship to abundance. Because when you think about how functioning codependency and being father wounded, often receiving is very problematic. We’re good givers, we’re crappy receivers.

And then when we don’t receive, we teach people not to give, and then we’re mad that everyone in our life is an entitled asshole, and you’re like, oh, but you created those assholes. You literally taught them exactly how to treat you. Yeah. And now they’re doing it, and now we’re mad. Right.

So the good news for anyone listening and feels identified with that is that we taught people how to treat us and you can teach them something new. So no matter where you are in your relationships, no matter what’s happening, no matter how you feel like your father wound if you have one, is showing up in your life. None of this is permanent. Mhmm. Right?

This is not a diagnosis. This shit is not terminal. It’s raising your awareness about what you experienced and then honoring it. That’s what I walk you through. This is not a book that you read.

This is a book that you do. Right? And everything is in it because nobody wants to read about theoretical crap and neither do I. Everything is a story. Every chapter is anchored in a story.

Every little bit of the 650 women that I gathered, so much of what’s in here is quotes from them Yeah. Of what happened. And I did something in the end of the book that I was on the fence about doing. I hoped it works, but I really feel like it does. So I’m gonna tell you what it is.

It’s an addendum. So you go to chapter 10, and if you close the book in chapter 10 and you go, I am complete, amazing, good for you. If you get to chapter 10 and you go, ugh, I think I have to have a conversation with my father, Then you have… It’s like a flowchart. You don’t feel

Kate Northrup: complete that.

Terri Cole: Then you go, it’ll be like, to page two twelve. And I give you things that… Is it that you need better boundaries? If so, I give you ideas of how to do that. If your father…

Maybe your father has passed away, but you feel like you need a ritual to really honor, it’ll say go to this page where the rituals are. If you wanna go no contact, maybe your father is still actively abusive and you need support and help and strategy to do it safely, there’s a place to do that. So it really is like a choose your own adventure, how to… What your next right actions are in your relationship with your father, whether he is alive or past ready.

Kate Northrup: What I’ve noticed with the healing I’ve done, so much of it is nervous system based and that’s woven so beautifully in through your book

Terri Cole: Yep.

Kate Northrup: Is that all of my relationships with men are completely different. And I am someone who… I was always just scared of men. I didn’t… They were like a foreign…

Women all day long, like Yep. Yeah. All the women, I know exactly what to do. Would be virtually impossible for me to not be able to connect with basically any woman ever. Same.

But men, I was like, I don’t even know how to relate to men. I don’t… And then I was genuinely scared, and I would get so weird. Like, I remember, you know, in high school and in college, my friends would just be, you know, talking to boys, and I just didn’t even know how to act. And interestingly, you know, obviously, I’m very happily married to an amazing man.

And the… Even this morning, just this morning is a perfect example. So we have a coffee shop that we go… I I often go to on the way after I drop the girls at school. One of our dear friends, the husband, also is there almost every morning.

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: And this morning, I sat down with William. We had the nicest chat about all the different things. I’ve just… I love him. I don’t think Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Before I did this work

Terri Cole: Yep.

Kate Northrup: That I would have been able to be myself Yep. Act so normal.

Terri Cole: Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Right? Like, there was no static on the line. There was nothing I was thinking about other than I am connecting with a wonderful human who I love. Yep. And it has really enriched my life, Terri.

Terri Cole: Oh, it’s so true. And and think about how it affects your relationship with authority too. Yeah. Right? This is the

Terri Cole: Oh, it’s so true. And and think about how it affects your relationship with authority too. Yeah. Right? This is the

Kate Northrup: same thing.

Terri Cole: Always… I I give an example in the book of a woman, same thing that you’re talking about, Kate, being just afraid. So she she had something wrong at her house. She was trying to fix it. She ended up having to call, and she called the dad from school.

Just a normal plumber came in, and she just described to me how she was standing in the door while he was there, so weird, so uncomfortable. He was making normal conversation. She still was like, this is so weird. Can’t wait till he leaves. He leaves, and she’s like, what is wrong with me?

I’m… And she had an abusive dad. And she’s like, I’m always afraid

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Terri Cole: Of men. And now we have all of the people talking about choosing the bear. So you’re like, okay. Well, that’s also in the zeitgeist at this moment in time. But unhealed father wounds make us walk around as the five or seven year old in a way Yeah.

Like, without the social skills that the grown up us actually has. Right. Because it’s the same skill.

Kate Northrup: It is the same skill, and it’s so much more fun to live this way.

Terri Cole: Indeed. See, that’s the expansion on the other side of healing, which is you can choose to be friends with William and to be normal and to have a normal conversation

Kate Northrup: Normal.

Terri Cole: Yes. And to feel like you are enough. To feel like I’m enough,

Kate Northrup: and then also, you know, the other thing is… So I will just say, like, a brief summary of what I… I went to this experience called On-site last year. Have you heard of On-site?

Terri Cole: I… Just for my… Just for so no.

Kate Northrup: So I went last year, and it’s psychodrama. So you’re there. The group starts off as strangers, you know, within five days. They’re my absolute best friends, and we text every day. Of course.

Right? And you know nothing about them. First names only. No career information. Nothing.

And you’re basically acting out scenes, you know, in some ways from your each person’s patterning. Yep. And I had some opportunities to repattern my relationship with men in that room. And I swear to you, I walked out of there, and it was like somebody had put new eyeballs in my head. Yes.

And then I went to Egypt right away, four days later, get on an airplane to Egypt. I’m on this retreat with 30 people. I’m still sort of very much in this in in this paradigm of I’m relating to people on a first name basis, and I’m not talking about what I do. Even though that was not, by any means, the rule in Egypt, I had just been doing it for five days, and

it felt so good.

So Yeah. I was very well practiced in simply being a human. Yep. Not my career. Not identify my those other words.

Things. Yep. It’s deeply relaxing. I definitely recommend it. So I’m not asking people about what they do.

We’re talking about all sorts of other things. Four days in, I’m sitting at dinner with this sweet couple who were, like, my retreat buddies, and I really connected with both of them. But the husband in particular

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Was, like, my trip person. I don’t know how to describe this, but you know how usually you’ll

Terri Cole: just meet someone. Exactly.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. He was my person.

Terri Cole: Yep.

Kate Northrup: Never before in the history of my entire life out of a group of 30 people of which four are men Yeah. Have a straight man

Terri Cole: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Have I connected the most with a straight man. And I was like, weird. I just clocked it. Yep. Again, obviously completely platonic.

I think that’s obvious.

Terri Cole: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know, but there’s lot of poly stuff.

Kate Northrup: Okay. Well, so just… Yeah. Just to be clear. Yeah.

100% like bro y kind of.

Terri Cole: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. And four days in, we’re getting water out of the water jug, and he just happens to mention that he’s an orthopedic surgeon. And I was like, oh my god. God, you have a funny sense of humor. As you know, my dad is an orthopedic surgeon.

Was like, really? Out of all the… Okay. Hi.

Terri Cole: Out of all the gin joints and all the cities.

Kate Northrup: Orthopedic surgeons are a particular type.

Mhmm. And, again, in my previous history, I would have avoided

Terri Cole: Of course.

Kate Northrup: Connecting with that person without even ever knowing anything about their career. I just would have felt it and, like, been across the room. So it was so cool, and I wanted to share that with you because it feels like a freaking miracle, but life is so much yummier.

Terri Cole: It sure is. You said something though that was so powerful, so I just wanna reflect it. Great. It’s like you had new eyeballs. Yes.

So in the… So I’m gonna quickly tell you. In the in the beginning of… So this is the story that I share in the book about me and Vic, my husband, is that we got together before originally. Our first date, we got together before I did this father wound work.

And we didn’t get together, but we stayed friends. So I would invite him here. I I kept trying to fix him up with other women. I was like, somebody’s gotta bag this guy. Like, it’s not gonna be me.

Kate Northrup: He’s such a catch, but not for me.

Terri Cole: Exactly. Just not not my guy, someone else’s guy. So I don’t see him for about… So this is maybe four years go by, but I haven’t seen him probably in about two. And our mutual friend who introduced us said, hey.

Can Vic call you? You’re almost a shrink. I was literally graduating grad school. He’s he’s having a terrible breakup, blah blah blah. So I talked to him on the phone.

I talk him off the ledge, and then he says, let me take you out to dinner just as a thank you. And I said, alright. Let’s invite the friend who introduced us because I was still trying to fix him up with someone else. So I invite another friend because they were all ten years older than me. So I’m sitting at Joseph’s

Kate Northrup: Grimsby, if you will. It wasn’t Grimsby. Inviting a friend. No. I’m just saying.

Yes. It’s a pattern.

Terri Cole: It definitely is. You know, I’m a group girl.

Kate Northrup: Don’t know. I know you’re not. Yes. If I can bring a girlfriend. I’ll do

Terri Cole: it, but I have to bring a friend. Anyway, so I’m sitting. We’re sitting on Josie’s on the Upper West Side, 73rd in Amsterdam, and this is 1997. And all of a sudden, I look out the window. I haven’t seen Vic in two years.

And this huge plate glass window, and I see this guy walking by, and I was like, who the is that? He’s wearing this white t shirt, worn in Levi’s, long hair. It looked totally different than the last time I saw him. I swear to God, I did not recognize him. He’s got these little John Lennon glasses on, comes in and sits down, and I’m like, oh my god.

Why did I bring her? I was like, oh, no. Hope he doesn’t like her. So we go through the dinner. Wow.

He says to me… He’s like, we go out to smoke because it was the nineties people. Everybody smoked. Don’t judge. Okay.

So we go out to smoke and he’s like, hi. Can I just say whatever you’re doing is really agreeing with you? I was like, I was gonna say the same thing to you. And then he was like, do you wanna ditch these people and go see some jazz? And momentarily, forgot that I hate jazz and that I had a soul cycle class at 6AM, but I was like, I’d love to.

And got in his beat up station wagon, went downtown as we were chain smoking, walked around, went to Sweet Basil’s, watched jazz, and we’ve literally been together ever since. And here’s here’s my point of the story, is that my eyeballs changed from doing the work. I could not see him. And on our second date, he says to me, just straight up, and I had already decided I didn’t wanna get married because I didn’t have to. My…

No pressure from my family. And I was like, it’s a bad deal. Like, if I can’t be with someone who can teach me something or can get me something or build me something that I can’t do myself, I don’t want it. Because all these men were like, curse less, wear less makeup, be different. Like, I’m not into it.

I just wanna be myself or more of myself. So, anyway, we go on the second date, and he says to my face, let me ask you, what do you really want in a relationship or, like, in a partner? And I was like, well, here’s the moment. I’m either gonna perform as I’ve done so many times and be like the cool chick. What?

Easy, breezy, casual, whatever. Or I’m just gonna say the thing. And if this guy isn’t into it, who cares? Yeah. You don’t even wanna get married anymore.

So what does it matter? I say all the things. I want someone who’s had twenty years of therapy. I want someone who has a funded retirement account. I want someone who knows how to tickets to the opera.

I want someone who owns their own home, who’d be willing to have a second home, would consider having a biological kid with me. I just said them all. I didn’t care. I get to the end, and I was like, how’s that sound? He goes, sounds good.

That was almost 30 ago.

Kate Northrup: I love that story.

Terri Cole: Crying. Both crying. So we’re both crying.

Kate Northrup: New

Terri Cole: eyeballs. It was it was true because I opened the book saying, I was sitting across from my soulmate, but I couldn’t… I didn’t recognize him. I couldn’t see him. Recognize him.

Kate Northrup: That’s what a father wound does.

Terri Cole: And when you heal it, you change? Yeah. And what you see changes and what you can do changes. It’s so…

Kate Northrup: As you say, it’s like it’s freedom.

Terri Cole: That’s the most important thing. If you think about Danielle’s work, the core desired feelings

Kate Northrup: Mhmm.

Terri Cole: Mine has always been freedom. Same. Always. I want to do what I can want when I want. I want to, and I will.

But now I’m in a relationship where I can. Yeah. And have been. And also another thing that happens on the other side of healing is that attract… And when you’re not as hyperindependent, you attract people who wanna do things for you.

And when you heal, you go, okay. Like, you start to learn to go, this is what it’s like to be cared for actively, to be loved as an action when I’m stopping rejecting it all, where it’s like I was the queen of I got it. I got it. I got it. And I remember my mother saying, because Vic used to say he was in New Jersey with the boys.

Keep in mind, he was widowed, divorced, and had three teenage sons who were acting out nightmares at the time. Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it?

Kate Northrup: Sign me up. But perfect for me.

Terri Cole: And he used to say, let me come scoop you up. And I’d be like, babe, that makes no sense. I could just go to Penn Station, just get on a train, and then you wouldn’t have to come in. That means he… He’s going through the Holland Tunnel, picking me up on West 68th Street, and then going back to the Holland Tunnel.

And he’s like, I don’t care. And my mother, I remember saying… I was saying to her, this guy loves to get in his car. Like, he just wants to always drive and pick me up. And she goes, why are you stopping him Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: From making your life easier? Yeah. And I was like, I literally don’t know. I… It was so hard to accept, and it’s so it’s so interesting to think about how much easier he has made my life for the last thirty years.

I mean, you know, it’s mutual, obviously. Of course. But I am so convinced I would never have been able to recognize him if I hadn’t healed that original wound. And this isn’t a book about calling in the one. This is just how it played out in my life.

Kate Northrup: Right. Right. But it could be

Terri Cole: It sure could be.

Kate Northrup: Someone. And I will tell you, Terri, Mike and I had a conversation in December, last December. And, you know, I have been the face of our business, and he has been the logistics and the structure. Mhmm. And we had a conversation where spontaneously, he presented this plan that would allow me to create far more optionality in what I do.

And I didn’t even realize that I had let that desire die. I just thought I never got to have that. Right. And I never asked him

Terri Cole: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: For that, but I changed. Mhmm. And then spontaneously, he sits me down and he’s like, hey. Here’s what I wanna do so that you can do whatever the… You want.

Wow. And I know it’s all related.

Terri Cole: But it’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful that you… We do the work ourselves, and then the world and our relationships become this mirror Yes. To the new reality that we have created because we’ve healed that little kid. Yeah.

Because we know we’re worthy. Yes. And now the world starts reflecting that worth in a spontaneous conversation that liberates you in a way that you might never have thought you could liberate yourself.

Kate Northrup: Yes. It’s so good.

Terri Cole: It’s so beautiful.

Kate Northrup: All of that to say, go get your copy of Father Wound because this work freaking works. It really And it really feels a miracle is the is the best word that I can use for it.

Terri Cole: I still am shocked at… And this is years. Right? I I I did this work in my early thirties. I’m in my early sixties now.

But how different the quality of my internal, my lived experience for sure, but my internal life, how much it changes when you are not questioning your worth. And you as I’m doing, you can preorder the book Great. At fatherwoundbook.com, but I’m doing a four hour deep dive. If you preorder, you come back, and you can put your name in and go to this father wound freedom, basically, is what we are creating, and we’re gonna do a deep dive on your father wound blueprint. Beautiful.

Kate Northrup: So beautiful. I love you, Terri. I love you too, friend. So fatherwoundbook.com, and the link is in the show notes. It sure is.

Kate Northrup: So beautiful. I love you, Terri. I love you too, friend. So fatherwoundbook.com, and the link is in the show notes. It sure is.

Terri Cole: You are the best. You are a gift to the world. You are a gift to my life. Thank you Aw. For who you are.

Kate Northrup: Aw. Thanks What for helping

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