That's Not What You Said

June 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman

I have said things I meant as love that didn't land as love. I've also been on the receiving end — words offered kindly that felt, to me, like a verdict. I know both sides of that gap. I've lived in both places. And I'm still learning, probably every week, that meaning something and communicating it are not the same thing.

That's what I want to talk about today.

A friend called me recently, still sitting inside the sting of a conversation with her daughter. She'd said "I pray for you" — three words she meant as love — and her daughter had gotten upset. Not a little upset. Really upset.

My friend was bewildered. She kept saying: that's just how I say I love you. That's what I've always said. I didn't mean anything by it.

And I believed her. I do believe her.

But here's what I said back, and I want to say it here too because I think a lot of us are living inside this exact confusion:

That's not what you said. And that's not what your daughter heard.

The intention lives inside you. The impact lands in someone else's body. Those are two different things. Both are real.

My friend didn't only say I love you. She said "I pray for you." Those words carry weight that isn't hers to assign. Her daughter has her own history with prayer, her own relationship to faith, her own reading of what it means when a parent says that in response to a conversation about politics, or choices, or who she is in the world.

My friend wanted validation that she hadn't done anything wrong. And here's the both/and of it:

• She didn't intend harm AND the impact was harm.
• She was expressing love AND her daughter didn't receive love.
• She has the right to her faith AND her daughter has the right to her reaction.
• The relationship is real AND it has real differences inside it that aren't going away.

None of those things cancel each other out. They're all true at once.

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She's also been thinking about moving to the same state as her daughter. Not the same neighborhood, not the same city — just the same state. A proximity. A possibility. And she wanted me to tell her that was a good idea, that it would help, that her daughter would warm up.

I couldn't tell her that. What I could tell her was this: before you make a decision about where to live, you need to get honest about what situation you're actually in. Not the situation you hope you're in. The one that actually exists right now, based on what just happened.

That's Recognize. Not analysis. Not judgment. Just honest witnessing.

You have a daughter who feels something other than love when you say "I pray for you." You have political and theological differences that are real. You are looking for validation that your daughter isn't offering. Those are the facts on the ground. You don't have to like them. But you have to see them.

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Embrace isn't giving up. It isn't agreeing. It isn't deciding the relationship is over or that you were wrong or that your daughter gets to dictate your faith.

Embrace is stopping the fight with reality so you can actually work with it.

If my friend keeps waiting for her daughter to say "I understand what you meant," she will wait a long time. That's not where her daughter is. And every decision she makes from inside that waiting — including a potential move — will be built on a foundation that isn't solid yet.

So instead: what does she actually need right now? Not what does she need from her daughter — what does she need, for herself? That's where Align begins. What decisions are consistent with her values and her actual capacity — not her hopes, but her current reality?

And then Live is just that. Moving forward accordingly. One day at a time. Not perfectly. Consistently.

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The gap between intention and impact is one of the most human places there is. It's where so many relationships quietly break — not from cruelty, but from the assumption that meaning something is the same as communicating it.

It's not. And recognizing that isn't an accusation. It's the beginning of something more honest.

That's the REAL of it.

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If you're in a relationship where intention and impact keep missing each other — with a child, a parent, a partner — the REAL journal is a quiet place to get honest about what's actually happening. It's not therapy. It's permission to see clearly.

— Heidi