1/ Tribute and Rebirth

This text is a tribute to my father. He left in 2016, taking with him a story he never told, and leaving me silence as an inheritance.

Today, I write so that his silence may become my words, so that his courage may become my truth,
to transform what he kept unspoken into light and freedom for his granddaughters.

This text is also a gift to myself — proof that I have understood, a trace of my healing, an act of love toward the woman I have become.

My father was a man of war who became a man of the earth. He had known exile, fear, and violence, and yet he chose life, patience, and reconstruction.

When he left this world, I was living through my own war — a couple turned battlefield. I was trying for peace. Conflict was imposed upon me. I wavered, but I remained standing and dignified, because my father’s death reminded me of one essential truth: I had no right to fall. And yet… I could not mourn.
I lived my grief in silence — alone before everything, alone before absence, alone before my own survival (🎧 Listen to my song: “The Sons of Silence” )

But History, when it has not yet been understood, often returns in another form. It was no longer within my relationship that war returned — it came through my children. Once again, I sought dialogue. And once again, conflict was imposed upon me.

They tried to soil my name, to make me appear as a bad mother, to take away custody of my own daughters, as if protecting my children were a crime. They investigated me, searched my life, looked for the smallest flaw to justify violence. I was dragged through the mud by lies I could never have imagined hearing about myself.

I cried,
I suffocated beneath the weight of injustice…
But each morning, I stood back up —
for my daughters,
for my truth,
for my mother’s heart.

For a long time, I believed that authority was always on the side of justice,
that those who wore a uniform were necessarily there to protect.

But when the uniform is used as a shield for the ego, or as a weapon against one’s own family,
then it no longer shines with the values it represents — only with the violence it conceals.

I almost stopped believing in justice, or in a better society, until I understood my father: it is not the uniform that brings honour, but the heart of the one who wears it.

The summer of 2025, everything finally ended. At last, I was recognized as the mother I had always been.
The teenage years of my daughters had been stolen by a war I never wanted. It wasn’t me who wanted those wars — but they came, again and again, as if life itself were saying to me:
You must speak.
You must heal.
You must break the silence.

I no longer want these invisible wars, these wounds people pretend to imagine, this pain no one wanted to see.

That silence — my father carried it in his scars. But I refuse to pass it on.

So I write, I draw.
For him.
For my children.
For all those who have lived through wars no one can see.

Here is the story of a silent war: the story of a father who chose peace after violence, and of a woman who refused to remain silent before the uniform used as power. She reveals the true face of the uniform — the one that only appears when you look into the heart of the man who wears it.

2/ The Truth of the Uniform

I didn’t grow up with a father in uniform. I grew up with the mystery of the man he once was — a soldier who became a farmer, a silent hero who became a man of the earth.

One day, he lent me his old uniform and beret for a costume party. (He had kept them carefully.) He was slender, like me. I slipped into that outfit as one steps into a story they don’t yet know. Through that garment, I could imagine a glimpse of the young man he had been.

He had been a soldier, decorated with the Legion of Honour, a discreet and profoundly humble man.
He never spoke of the war. He had seen death, fear, and abandonment. He had been left for dead —
and yet… he came back.

I never saw horror in his gestures, only in his silences. He chose the earth to rebuild his life.
He sowed life where he had once known death.

Later, I encountered the uniform again — but this time, it was within my life as a woman. And this time, the uniform was not a symbol of humility. It became an armor of pride, a mask of authority.

I knew fear — that suffocating fear that grips your chest, that gaze that controls everything. My children knew it too. It’s easy to play the hero out in the world. True courage is shown at home, in the way one treats those they claim to love.

My father, he was a true gentleman.
He never needed to demand respect.
He inspired it — through kindness, silence, and dignity.
He never sought admiration;
he simply lived, with the quiet truth of his life.

The other one — the man in uniform — thought himself a great man.
He wanted to be called Mister. He wanted me to stay in my place, to obey, to admire.

And I did.

That’s how I learned: Respect cannot be demanded. It must be earned.

The real gentleman — was my father.
The other was nothing but an empty uniform.

And that’s why you’ll understand that the greatest man I have ever known no longer wore a uniform. And if that uniform marked his life, it also marked mine — but in a completely different way.

3/ When the Uniform Becomes a Psychological Weapon

What revolts me the most is not the uniform itself — but what it becomes in the wrong hands.

◆ The war that tried to silence me

How can one call themselves a protector while waging war against their own family?

I have known anxiety. My children have too. Fears that take up all the space, that cut off the breath, that blur the will to live — all in the name of power, never in the name of love.

Even after separation, the violence did not stop. I faced threats, intimidation, attempts to silence me — even to erase me from my own website, as if telling my story were a crime.

At one point, a case was even brought before the children’s court. He accused me of influencing my daughters through my site, claiming my testimony was manipulation. He demanded that I shut it down. My children don’t read my website. They are not drawn to my artistic universe… Just as I, as a child,
did not find my fulfillment in the work of the land that my parents had to bear. We each have our own path, our own passions, our own ways to grow.

I only want to tell the truth — simply. When someone causes harm, they must be named. To speak of what wounds us is not to wish harm — it is to open the path to healing. I am learning to do this for myself, and, above all, I am teaching my daughters that they have the right to speak when they are in pain: words replace silence, and communication saves bonds. I seek to heal, to understand, to transform — so that silence and pain are no longer passed down.

◆ The war he carried in silence

My father, too, had known an invisible war. At twenty-two, he joined the army, hoping to find refuge, a future, a family. But he discovered another kind of violence: bullets that threaten the body, and racism that tries to break the soul.

He didn’t only see enemies die. He saw brothers-in-arms turn on each other, lives cut short for reasons that had nothing to do with the war itself. Absurd deaths, impossible to justify, impossible to forget.
He was left for dead — and to survive, he learned to remain silent. Because some horrors cannot be told,
and some truths are more terrifying than bombs.

So when the war ended, he also left France. He found a land of warmth and respect — Tahiti, a place where people look at your heart, where peace could finally be planted. He never sought admiration. He only wanted to live — humbly, with his silences and the dignity they contained.

I wish he had told me his story. I wish I had known his scars, his resilience, the man he was before he became my father. He would have had so much to share. But he chose silence — as one chooses survival. I grew up with that emptiness, the regret of never discovering the treasure he carried within. He used to say he would live to be 100. So I believed I had time — time to one day write his story together.

Those who wear the uniform tried to reduce my father. Then they tried to reduce me — his daughter. And yet… we are still here. Standing. Stronger. Clearer. Those who wear the uniform tried to reduce my father. Then they tried to reduce me — his daughter. And yet… we are still here. Standing. Stronger. Clearer. Because a man who uses power and the law as weapons cannot claim to represent respect, nor the values he demands from others. This text is not written against anyone. It is written for all the women and children who have ever been broken by someone who was supposed to be their refuge.

4/ He Planted Life, I Sow Light

There is a story I’ve always loved:
“The Man Who Planted Trees.”
Each time I watch it, I see my father again.
He had that rare gift —
he could make anything grow.
For him, to sow was to repair the world.

And he shared everything.
His friends would leave with trunks full of abundance.
That generosity — it was his love made visible.
He spoke little, but he gave much.

Behind those beautiful farmlands, there was the hard work of an entire family: us, his children — and him, a man marked by war, starting again from nothing to rebuild a life, a home, a future far from the wounds of his past and his origins.

Working the land was tough. It was not a childhood dream, but an inheritance of survival. My father’s resilience had become our reality. My father was not perfect. He was sometimes distant, trapped in the shadows of his own trauma. As a child, I longed for his presence, his gaze, his love. And like many children wounded by silence, I tried to find my father again through another man — a man in uniform — thinking I might finally understand what he had never said.

But my peace was not in the earth. My battle was an inner one.

My father chose silence. I chose words.
He buried his pain beneath the soil.
I transform mine into awareness and healing.

He sowed seeds of life in the earth, through the sweat of his brow, in a world that could be seen. I sow seeds of meaning — in the invisible, in people’s hearts, through my cards, my illustrations, and the universe of Princesse Papillon.

We both plant, but not in the same soil. He made vegetables grow to feed bodies. I grow stories to feed souls. His resilience spoke through silence; mine speaks through voice and creativity. Because some seeds do not grow in the ground — they grow in the light we pass on.

(You can discover my six symbolic universes here: The Authentic Universe of Princesse Papillon – https://universauthentique.phonghg.fr/

◆ My Father’s Legacy

I’ve come to understand that through love, my heart was searching to comprehend what my father never spoke of. He survived the outer war. I had to survive the inner one.

And in both, the word that heals is the same: DIGNITY.

It is through my art, my truth, and my children that I found my salvation.

Today,
I will no longer be silent.
I will no longer hide.
I will no longer be ashamed.

My father passed down the greatest strength of all — to keep loving life despite the wounds. He chose the earth to repair his world. I choose words and light to heal mine. He showed me that peace is not declared; it is cultivated, quietly, in the silence of the heart — like The Man Who Planted Trees. And that is what I wish to offer in return: a transmission of light, truth, and inner peace.

If I have broken the silence that came before me,it is also to give others the courage to look at their own story.

5/ The End of Invisible Wars

Breaking the invisible wars and the wounds passed on in silence

There are wars no one speaks about.
They make no noise,
they bear no flag,
they build no monuments.
They are lived within.

These are the silent battles
we carry without ever having chosen them —
traumas passed down without words,
inherited fears,
beliefs that bind us,
shames whose origins we no longer even know.

These wars travel through generations.
They move from one heart to another,
like a wound seeking to heal
but unable to find the way.

My father survived the war outside.
I survived the war inside.
We carried different pains —
but both were born of the same silence.

► He chose not to speak.
► I choose to say everything.

Because what is hidden cannot heal.
Because no family is freed
by carrying the weight of its ancestors.

To break the transmission of trauma
does not mean betraying our parents.
It means honoring their courage
by going where they could not go.

Healing is not turning your back on the past.
It is daring to face it —
so that one day,
our children can look at it without fear.

So I write.
I transform what once destroyed me
into something that now builds me.

I speak for him.
I speak for myself.
I speak for them —
my daughters.

So that the chain of silence
stops here.
With me.
Because of me.

To break the invisible wars
is to pass on a new inheritance —
the freedom to be oneself,
the dignity to say “no”,
and the strength to become
the love one never received.

◆ What Ends With Me: The End of Inherited Wars

For a long time, my daughters believed that silence was respect — that to honor a parent meant to never speak. Yet sometimes, it is the parents themselves who wound the most, by sowing fear, shame, or guilt
where love should always reign.

They knew what it is to gasp for air — the fear of disturbing, the fear of disappointing, the fear of simply existing. One suffered in silence. The other stood beside her, carrying a secret too heavy for her age. They thought they had to wait until they turned eighteen to finally breathe — free from a parent’s toxicity. But the younger one’s heart cracked too soon… and the elder one felt guilty for not having been able to protect her — she who had carried silence out of love.

Always silence.
Always the same belief: “You just don’t talk about it.”

STOP.

No more silence to protect an adult’s authority.
No more believing a child must sacrifice themselves to preserve a toxic parent.
No more suffering in the shadows.

I want my daughters to know they have the right to speak, the right to be heard, the right to say: “This hurts.”
Even if the one who hurts them is a parent.

To break invisible wars is to refuse the transmission of wounds.

It is to offer your children a future where light replaces fear.

From them onward, the story changes.

And you… what do you do with your wounds?
Do you hide them to survive —
or dare you transform them,
so you can truly live?

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To discover….

Coluche and the Dignity of True Men

Coluche once said that we should never glorify war through parades — because war should never be celebrated. He reminded us that the real tribute belongs to the invisible wounded, the survivors who carry silence instead of medals.

And in my story, that is exactly what I see through my father. He was a man who knew war — but he never glorified it. He drew neither pride nor hatred from it — only the humble silence of one who knows. He saw horror. He survived. And he chose to remain silent rather than pass the violence on.

He embodies a truth few people understand:

true dignity does not lie in the medal,
but in the refusal to reproduce violence.

My father never sought admiration. He simply wanted to live, to plant, to nurture, to exist differently. And that’s the difference between him and those who still hide today behind a uniform to demand respect. Respect — true respect — cannot be commanded. It is inspired. It is earned. It is born from the heart.

My father embodies this entirely: the dignity of one who has seen horror and chosen not to pass it on. He doesn’t celebrate war — he honors those who never returned. He stands with those who understand without words. True greatness lies not in the medal, but in the humanity regained.

And I believe this is what my father passed down to me — without words, without speeches:
a lesson in peace, a lesson in restraint, a lesson in humanity.
In his silence, there was more truth than in the speeches of many powerful men.