About Janet
I grew up believing that love looked like control, that protection meant isolation, that mothers built walls around their children to keep them safe. It took decades–and a journey through military service, custody battles, war zones, and the patient work of rebuilding myself–to learn that real love creates a space for people to grow, not towers to contain them.
From Towers to Sanctuary
My childhood was spent in invisible prisons built from religious rules and family trauma. I escaped into adulthood only to find myself in different towers–abusive relationships that called possession “love,” systems that turned my devotion to my daughter into evidence against me, cycles of control that masqueraded as care.
Military service became my forge. In the desert, dodging mortar rounds and learning to command respect in life-or-death situations, I discovered what real strength looked like. Not the performance of power that breaks others, but the quiet confidence that builds sanctuary for yourself and those you love.
The greatest test came when I lost custody of my daughter. The system decided that my transformation journey–leaving to become worthy of her–was abandonment rather than sacrifice. For years, I learned to love without guarantee of return, to other from exile, to build a life that could catch her when she was ready to be caught.
The Sanctuary Built
Today I live with my partner and our chosen family–proof that some of the strongest bonds are formed by choice rather than biology. When my daughter finally called to tell me that she needed to come live with me, we were ready. The sanctuary we had built held.
My memoir, Songs of Silence, maps this geography of trauma and healing. It’s for people in active transformation, those committed to breaking generational patterns rather than just surviving them. For anyone who has ever recognized the architecture of control being built around them and chose to become a sanctuary architect instead.
Why I Write
I write because someone needs to say that transformation is possible, that patterns can be broken, that love doesn’t have to kook like captivity. I write for the daughters who are learning to question their mothers’ definition of protection, for the mothers who refuse to pass down their own unhealed wounds, for anyone building something new from the rubble of what came before.
The towers fall eventually–under their own weight, through their own contradictions. But what we build from the ruins? That’s entirely up to us.
I chose sanctuary. I chose chosen family. I chose to love fiercely without conditions, to fight systems rather than people, to become the ancestor my descendants will thank.
Currently living in Westfield, Indiana with Percy, Luna, and the belief that home isn’t a place you find but a feeling you create.
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Janet Topping
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