\u201cApologize, or Dad will freeze your account.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was my mother\u2019s message three days after my wedding.<\/p>\n
I read it while sitting beside my husband, Daniel, in the small apartment we had rented together. Outside, rain tapped against the windows. My wedding dress was still hanging in the bedroom, and the flowers Daniel had bought me were beginning to wilt on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I read the message twice.<\/p>\n
Then I put my phone down.<\/p>\n
My parents had skipped my wedding to attend my younger sister\u2019s engagement party. They hadn\u2019t even bothered to call me that morning. My mother had sent a brief text saying they were \u201cneeded elsewhere,\u201d as though I were inviting them to a casual dinner instead of watching their eldest daughter get married.<\/p>\n
I had spent weeks hoping they would change their minds.<\/p>\n
They never did.<\/p>\n
My sister, Vanessa, had gotten engaged to a wealthy real estate agent named Blake. My parents had spent months planning the engagement celebration, which apparently mattered more to them than my wedding.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t argue. I didn\u2019t beg them to come.<\/p>\n
I married Daniel without them.<\/p>\n
And for three days, I thought their absence was the end of it.<\/p>\n
Then my father froze my bank account.<\/p>\n
It was the account I had opened when I was eighteen. My father had helped me set it up, and because he had been listed as a joint account holder, he still had authority over it.<\/p>\n
I had kept the account for years out of convenience. My paycheck no longer went there, but I used it to pay several family expenses.<\/p>\n
My parents knew that.<\/p>\n
They also knew I had been helping them financially for nearly six years.<\/p>\n
My mother expected me to panic when she sent that message.<\/p>\n
Instead, I replied with one word.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n
She called immediately.<\/p>\n
I let it ring.<\/p>\n
Then she sent another message.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be childish. Your father is upset, and you owe us an apology. We sacrificed everything for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at those words for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then I opened my banking app.<\/p>\n
The account balance was $312.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
Six months earlier, Daniel and I had quietly moved almost all our savings into a new account at another bank. We had been saving for a home, and after my father made several comments about how much money I had \u201csitting around,\u201d we decided it was time to separate our finances completely.<\/p>\n
My parents had no access to the new account.<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t even know it existed.<\/p>\n
My father had frozen an account containing less money than he spent on a weekend dinner.<\/p>\n
He thought he had taken away my security.<\/p>\n
He had forgotten something far more important.<\/p>\n
For years, I had been helping pay his bills.<\/p>\n
The mortgage.<\/p>\n
The car insurance.<\/p>\n
The property taxes.<\/p>\n
And part of Vanessa\u2019s private student loan.<\/p>\n
My parents had become so accustomed to my payments that they no longer thanked me. They simply expected the money to arrive.<\/p>\n
Every month.<\/p>\n
Without fail.<\/p>\n
And I had kept paying because I believed family was supposed to help family.<\/p>\n
I was about to learn what my parents believed.<\/p>\n
The first call came the following Monday.<\/p>\n
It was my father.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother tells me you\u2019re refusing to apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not refusing anything,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m just not discussing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou owe your mother some respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t ask either of you to choose between my wedding and Vanessa\u2019s engagement party.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour sister needed us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I didn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re married now. You have Daniel. Vanessa is still getting started in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
I almost laughed.<\/p>\n
Vanessa was twenty-nine. She had a new luxury car, a private apartment, and a fianc\u00e9 who had recently bought a house.<\/p>\n
I was thirty-two, had worked since college, and had spent years quietly helping my parents keep their own house.<\/p>\n
But in my father\u2019s mind, Vanessa was always the one who needed saving.<\/p>\n
I was the one who could be relied upon.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou froze my account,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you need to learn that actions have consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the faint hum of his television.<\/p>\n
Finally, he said, \u201cYou\u2019ll regret this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hung up.<\/p>\n
I looked at Daniel.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe thinks he has leverage,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Daniel reached across the table and took my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen stop giving him any.\u201d<\/p>\n
That night, we reviewed every recurring payment connected to my parents.<\/p>\n
There were more than I remembered.<\/p>\n
I paid $1,180 toward their mortgage each month. I covered their car insurance, which cost another $246. I paid a portion of their annual property taxes through monthly transfers. I also sent $450 every month toward Vanessa\u2019s private student loan.<\/p>\n
The total was more than $2,000 a month.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I had contributed tens of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
I had never demanded repayment.<\/p>\n
I had never asked them to put my name on the house.<\/p>\n
I had never even asked them to acknowledge what I was doing.<\/p>\n
But when they needed to punish me, they reached for the one account they thought they controlled.<\/p>\n
Daniel leaned over my shoulder as I opened the mortgage payment portal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sure?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
I stared at the scheduled payment.<\/p>\n
For years, I had treated helping my parents as a permanent obligation. I had never considered what would happen if I stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
I canceled the automatic transfers that were in my name.<\/p>\n
Then I contacted the insurance company and removed my payment method from their policy, making sure the account holder would be notified directly.<\/p>\n
I also contacted the student loan servicer to confirm that I was not a co-borrower or guarantor. I had only been making voluntary payments.<\/p>\n
That distinction mattered.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t abandoning a legal responsibility.<\/p>\n
I was ending a financial arrangement my family had come to take for granted.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I sent my mother a short message.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve stopped the payments I was making on your behalf. Please make arrangements for the upcoming bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
She responded within minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means I won\u2019t be paying them anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do this to us!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can. And I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I turned off my phone.<\/p>\n
By Wednesday, my mother had called fourteen times.<\/p>\n
My father called nine.<\/p>\n
Vanessa sent a message accusing me of trying to ruin her future.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t respond to any of them.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, my mother appeared at our apartment.<\/p>\n
She was standing outside the door when Daniel opened it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere is she?\u201d she demanded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here,\u201d I said, stepping into view.<\/p>\n
My mother looked past me into the apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have any idea what you\u2019ve done?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI stopped making payments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father\u2019s mortgage is due!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen he\u2019ll need to pay it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have that kind of money sitting around!\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt something shift inside me.<\/p>\n
For years, I had assumed my parents were struggling because of bad luck, rising costs, and the ordinary difficulties of life.<\/p>\n
But they had never explained their finances to me.<\/p>\n
They had simply told me what they needed.<\/p>\n
And I had paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy can\u2019t you afford your own mortgage?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s face tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t question us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been paying it for years. I think I\u2019m allowed to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou offered to help!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. I did. And I\u2019m allowed to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
She lowered her voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father is furious. He says you\u2019re making him look like a fool.\u201d<\/p>\n
I almost smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe froze my account because I got married without apologizing for something I didn\u2019t do. I think he managed that all by himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her expression changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve become just like Daniel.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know what that was supposed to mean.<\/p>\n
Then she said something that made me go still.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no idea what we\u2019ve done for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked directly at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She opened her mouth.<\/p>\n
Closed it.<\/p>\n
And walked away.<\/p>\n
That was when I began to suspect there was something beneath the anger.<\/p>\n
Something my parents had never wanted me to see.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, the mortgage company called me.<\/p>\n
At first, I assumed it was a mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cAm I listed as an authorized contact?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
The representative explained that my phone number had been included on the account because I had previously made recurring payments. She couldn\u2019t disclose the full account details, but she could tell me that the account holder had contacted them about a payment shortfall.<\/p>\n
I thanked her and ended the call.<\/p>\n
Then I searched my email for old payment confirmations.<\/p>\n
I found years of them.<\/p>\n
Most were ordinary receipts. But one, from nearly four years earlier, caught my attention.<\/p>\n
It was a confirmation for a $9,600 transfer to my parents.<\/p>\n
The note attached to the payment read:<\/p>\n
Temporary assistance for property expenses. To be repaid after the refinance.<\/p>\n
I had forgotten about it.<\/p>\n
I opened the email thread.<\/p>\n
My father had written that the money would cover closing costs and several overdue expenses while he refinanced the house. He promised to repay me within a year.<\/p>\n
A year had become four.<\/p>\n
I searched for the original bank statement and found another transfer, this one for $14,200.<\/p>\n
Then another for $7,500.<\/p>\n
The amounts were large enough that I remembered why I had sent them. My parents had said the house was at risk. My father had promised the situation was temporary.<\/p>\n
I added the transfers together.<\/p>\n
More than $31,000.<\/p>\n
And those were separate from the monthly payments.<\/p>\n
I called Daniel into the room.<\/p>\n
He read the emails slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid they ever repay any of this?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid they tell you what happened with the refinance?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
My father had said the bank needed additional paperwork. Later, he said the process had been delayed. Eventually, the subject had disappeared from our conversations.<\/p>\n
I had assumed the loan had been settled.<\/p>\n
Now I wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n
I called my father.<\/p>\n
He answered on the fourth ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat now?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI found the emails about the money I lent you for the refinance.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou promised to repay me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. It was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand. But I need to know what happened to the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother is right. Daniel has changed you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, where did the money go?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInto the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why did you need more money every month for the mortgage?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause life is expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you refinance?\u201d<\/p>\n
Another silence.<\/p>\n
Then he said, \u201cYou don\u2019t understand how these things work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHelp me understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He ended the call.<\/p>\n
I sat there staring at my phone.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I wondered whether my parents had been telling me the truth at all.<\/p>\n
The answer came from an unexpected source.<\/p>\n
My aunt Linda called me the following evening.<\/p>\n
She was my mother\u2019s younger sister, and she had attended my wedding. She had been one of the few relatives who showed up without making excuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard there\u2019s trouble,\u201d she said carefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose there is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to get involved in your parents\u2019 business, but I think you should know something.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father has been talking about selling the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
I blinked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me last year whether I knew anyone who might buy it. He said the mortgage was becoming difficult to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried to make sense of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would he sell it? He told me the refinance was finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linda hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it ever went through.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thanked her and ended the call.<\/p>\n
Then I sat with Daniel and went through everything we knew.<\/p>\n
The monthly payments. The loans. The unexplained transfers. The promises that had never been fulfilled.<\/p>\n
We decided not to make accusations based on fragments.<\/p>\n
Instead, I gathered every record I had and requested copies of the documents relating to the money I had transferred. I also consulted a lawyer to understand what evidence I would need if I wanted to pursue repayment.<\/p>\n
The lawyer explained that the old transfers might be treated differently depending on the written agreements, dates, and applicable law. The emails were useful, but they weren\u2019t a guarantee of recovery.<\/p>\n
That was fine.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t looking for revenge.<\/p>\n
I wanted the truth.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to stop being treated like an unlimited source of money.<\/p>\n
Three weeks after the wedding, my parents invited me to dinner.<\/p>\n
The invitation came from my mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father wants to settle this as a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
I agreed to meet them at a restaurant.<\/p>\n
Daniel came with me.<\/p>\n
Vanessa was already seated when we arrived, scrolling through her phone. My father sat at the head of the table, looking as though he were preparing to negotiate a business deal.<\/p>\n
My mother began.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all said things we regret.\u201d<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father was upset about the wedding,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou should have understood how important Vanessa\u2019s engagement was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understood that you chose not to attend my wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen let\u2019s talk about something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
I placed a folder on the table.<\/p>\n
Inside were copies of the transfer confirmations, the emails, and a summary of the monthly payments I had made.<\/p>\n
My father looked at the folder but didn\u2019t touch it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA record of the money I\u2019ve given you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not discussing money tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou invited me to settle things as a family. This is part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa finally looked up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you seriously keeping track of every dollar you\u2019ve ever given us?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I\u2019m keeping track of the money you said you would repay.\u201d<\/p>\n
My father pushed the folder away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe raised you. We paid for your education. We gave you everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou helped me through college, and I\u2019m grateful. But I also worked, paid my own expenses, and helped you for years afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter everything we sacrificed\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDad, I\u2019m not asking you to repay the cost of raising me. I\u2019m asking what happened to the money you promised to return.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re humiliating us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m asking a question.\u201d<\/p>\n
My father finally opened the folder.<\/p>\n
He read the first page.<\/p>\n
Then the second.<\/p>\n
His expression changed when he reached the old email about the refinance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kept this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at my mother.<\/p>\n
She looked down at the table.<\/p>\n
That small exchange told me more than either of them had said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did the money go?\u201d I asked again.<\/p>\n
My father closed the folder.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had other debts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat debts?\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit cards. Personal loans. Things you don\u2019t need to know about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why did you tell me the money was for the house?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were trying to protect you from worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou asked me for money because the house was in trouble. I sent it because I believed you. If you had told me the truth, I could have made my own decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother began to cry.<\/p>\n
Vanessa looked between us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does this have to do with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned toward her.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you know I was paying part of your student loan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you know Mom and Dad had been borrowing money from me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her expression hardened.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said you wanted to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI did want to help. But did you know they told me the money would be repaid?\u201d<\/p>\n
She said nothing.<\/p>\n
Then my father spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough. You\u2019ve made your point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou froze my bank account because I didn\u2019t apologize for getting married without you. You thought I depended on that account. But I don\u2019t. And I won\u2019t be paying your bills anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother wiped her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re abandoning us?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I\u2019m ending the financial arrangement. Those are not the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
My father stood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you walk away from this family, don\u2019t expect us to welcome you back.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him for a long moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope you change your mind about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Daniel and I left.<\/p>\n
The months that followed were difficult.<\/p>\n
My parents struggled to cover their expenses. They sold my father\u2019s second car and canceled several subscriptions. Eventually, they listed their house for sale and moved into a smaller property they could afford.<\/p>\n
The sale did not solve every problem.<\/p>\n
After reviewing their finances, my parents admitted they had accumulated years of credit-card debt and personal loans. Some of the money I had given them had gone toward those debts, while other amounts had covered everyday expenses.<\/p>\n
They had not been honest with me about the extent of their financial trouble.<\/p>\n
They had also continued spending as though their income had never changed.<\/p>\n
The house had become the center of a financial burden they could no longer maintain.<\/p>\n
I did not rescue them.<\/p>\n
For the first time, they had to make decisions based on their own income and expenses.<\/p>\n
My father eventually agreed to discuss repayment of the money he had promised to return. With legal guidance, we documented what he acknowledged owing and established a repayment plan based on what he could reasonably afford.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t everything I had hoped for.<\/p>\n
But it was a start.<\/p>\n
Vanessa stopped speaking to me for nearly two months. When she finally called, she sounded different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you were doing fine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know you were giving them that much.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was quiet.<\/p>\n
Then she admitted that our parents had told her I was happy to help and that the payments were temporary. She had never questioned it because she had never been expected to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was the first apology I received.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t dramatic. It didn\u2019t erase years of resentment.<\/p>\n
But it was real.<\/p>\n
My mother took longer.<\/p>\n
She eventually sent me a letter. In it, she admitted that she had treated my reliability as an obligation and my independence as permission to ask for more. She apologized for missing the wedding and for threatening me afterward.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s apology came in a short phone call.<\/p>\n
\u201cI handled things badly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, you did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should never have frozen that account.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, you shouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He waited for me to soften the answer.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
But I told him I was willing to rebuild our relationship if we could do it without threats, guilt, or money being used as leverage.<\/p>\n
He agreed.<\/p>\n
Whether he fully understood what that meant remained to be seen.<\/p>\n
A year after my wedding, Daniel and I bought a modest house of our own.<\/p>\n
We celebrated with a quiet dinner, just the two of us.<\/p>\n
My parents were invited to visit the following weekend.<\/p>\n
My mother brought a homemade pie. My father helped Daniel carry a bookshelf into the living room. Neither of them mentioned money.<\/p>\n
For the first time in years, we spent an afternoon together without a bill waiting at the end of it.<\/p>\n
Before they left, my father stood beside my car.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re doing well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother still thinks you should have apologized after the wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen she still doesn\u2019t understand what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose she doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t a perfect ending.<\/p>\n
My parents were still learning to respect the boundaries I had established. I was still learning that loving someone did not mean making their problems my responsibility.<\/p>\n
But I no longer confused financial support with family loyalty.<\/p>\n
And I no longer kept an account open simply because my father wanted access to it.<\/p>\n
That old account remained frozen for a while, holding its $312.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I closed it.<\/p>\n
The money was transferred to me after the bank completed its review, and I put it toward our new home.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I think about the message my mother sent three days after my wedding.<\/p>\n
\u201cApologize, or Dad will freeze your account.\u201d<\/p>\n
They believed that account was my safety net.<\/p>\n
They never understood that the real safety net had been my willingness to keep paying their bills.<\/p>\n
And when I finally stopped, the truth came out.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t abandoned my family.<\/p>\n
I had simply stopped financing the illusion that everything was fine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cApologize, or Dad will freeze your account.\u201d That was my mother\u2019s message three days after my wedding. I read it while sitting beside my husband, Daniel, in the small apartment … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relaxing-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103226,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103225\/revisions\/103226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/103155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxingstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}