What Is Transconciliation™? The Word My Friend and I Invented — and Why It Matters
This morning, I used a word publicly for the first time — on LinkedIn, of all places. I’d been sitting on it for a while, working it into my thinking, testing it out in private conversations. But posting it out loud felt different. Like finally putting a name on something that had been living in the back of my throat for years.
The word is transconciliation™.
On September 9, 2025, my good friend Rick Ramirez and I came up with it together. We were talking — the way good friends do, going long and loose on big ideas — about what it actually takes to move from a broken relationship to a healed one. Not just calling a truce. Not just tolerating each other at Thanksgiving. Full, genuine reconciliation, where both people are actually glad the other one is in their life.
And we kept bumping into the same problem: the word reconciliation doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Gap the Word “Reconciliation” Misses
When most people hear reconciliation, they picture something like a reunion scene. Two people meet, maybe there are apologies, maybe there are tears, and then things are better. The credits roll.
But that’s not how it actually works. At least it wasn’t for me.
I left home at fourteen. My father and I didn’t speak for decades. When we finally reconnected, it wasn’t because one of us surrendered or because the old wounds magically healed. It was because both of us had become different people. We met each other as the men we were, not as the boy and the father who’d reached an impasse in 1970.
The reconciliation was real. But it wasn’t the first step. It was the destination — and transformation was the road to get there.
That’s the gap Rick and I were trying to name.
What Transconciliation™ Actually Means
Transconciliation™ is the process of transformation that must occur before authentic reconciliation becomes possible.
The trans- prefix is doing real work here. It points to change — fundamental, honest, interior change. Not performance. Not going through the motions of an apology to get the awkwardness over with. Real transformation.
Think of it as the journey between two points:
The Break → [transconciliation™] → The Reconciliation
That middle space — where you do the actual work on yourself — is what Rick and I kept circling back to in our conversations. Because that’s where it either happens or it doesn’t.
Transconciliation™ can involve:
● Accountability — not just saying “I’m sorry” but actually understanding your part in what happened, without requiring the other person to confess theirs first
● Perspective-taking — coming to see the other person as a full human being shaped by their own circumstances, not just a character in your story who wronged you
● Personal growth — building enough of a life and enough of a self that you’re not coming to the table empty-handed, needing the other person to fill something for you
● Releasing the old narrative — letting go of the version of events that kept the distance justified
None of that is quick. None of it is linear. And crucially — it doesn’t require the other person to do anything. That’s what makes it so hard and so powerful at the same time.
Why I Needed a New Word
I wrote a memoir, Travis Heights: A Journey of Resilience and Reconciliation, about the twenty-five years between when I left home and when my father and I finally found our way back to each other. There’s a lot in that book — homelessness, the Marines, a career, a marriage, a life built from scratch. But the through-line is that estrangement, and what it took to end it.
When I was writing, I kept reaching for a word that didn’t exist yet. Forgiveness wasn’t quite right — it points inward and doesn’t require the other person’s involvement or readiness. Reconciliation pointed to the outcome but skipped the process. Healing was too vague. Transformation was close, but it didn’t carry the relational destination.
So Rick and I built the word we needed.
This isn’t a therapy model, and it’s not a self-help framework. It’s a description of something that actually happened — and a name for the process underneath it.
Transconciliation™ describes what happened with my father and me. It describes what I’ve watched happen (or fail to happen) in dozens of people I’ve heard from since the book came out. Mostly men, and many women. And it describes, I think, what’s missing in most conversations about estrangement — a name for the inner work that has to precede the outward repair.
Who This Is For
If you’re estranged from someone — a parent, a child, a sibling, a close friend — and you’re wondering whether there’s a path back, I’d offer this: the question isn’t only whether the other person is ready. The question is whether you are.
Not ready to forgive in some abstract way. Ready to be transformed. Ready to meet them as who you are now, and to let them be who they are now, without needing anyone to go backward.
That’s transconciliation™.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the thing I’m most grateful for.
My father and I had two good years before he died. We were honest with each other. We were kind to each other. We didn’t need to relitigate everything — we just needed to be present for each other as the men we’d become.
That was enough. That was everything.
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If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your story. Drop a comment below or reach out directly at ray@raytyeauthor.com. And if you know someone who’s navigating an estrangement and could use a word — and a framework — for what they’re going through, feel free to share this post.
Travis Heights: A Journey of Resilience and Reconciliation is available
At Amazon https://amazon.com/dp/B0GX1GJRMG.
And order it at your local bookstore, and on Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/travis-heights-ray-tye/1149907329?ean=9798999762801
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And remember — 10% of net profits goes to support Covenant House International, supporting homeless, runaway, and trafficked kids. https://www.covenanthouse.org/
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