Reparenting Your Inner Child: The Cycle Stops with You: How to Choose a New Story
I’ve heard it said that an emotionally neglected child doesn’t stop loving their parents. They stop loving themselves.
That’s why this section on reparenting is so essential. Because each of us has ways we’ve felt neglected or under-nurtured. Our parents are humans, after all. But when those wounds occur in childhood, we assume we’re the problem.
And we stop loving ourselves.
Until we gain the wisdom to reparent ourselves and break the cycle of generational trauma.
We often hear of breaking generational cycles. Well I believe there are two steps to this:
A person notices a toxic cycle or pattern in their family unit and decides they want to break it.
You wake up to the pattern, and then you decide to live outside of the pattern.
Before we notice the toxic cycle, we are burdened by shame. We call ourselves lazy, broken, unlovable, unfixable. It takes us years to realize that it isn’t our voice jeering those names. We’re repeating spoken (or unspoken) messages we received in childhood, messages that we let dictate our worth for far too long. When we decide to heal, we’re choosing to believe truth instead of lies.
Are you a cycle breaker?
And when you become a generational cycle-breaker, you free the whole bloodline from the issues, including future generations.
What you’re saying to yourself and to your children is “This shit ends with me.”
Do you realize how powerful that is? How many people this is going to affect? This is a ripple effect like no other. It turns a downward spiral into an upward trajectory.
But before you can choose a new life filled with new hope for future generations, you have to choose it for yourself. You have to identify the problem and face how it has affected you.
Often you have to have hard conversations with the generation before you to set hard boundaries to say, “I don’t accept this anymore. I won’t be doing this this way.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Jcl56KENv/
And when you set boundaries out of an abundance of love for yourself (and even the people you’re holding the boundary for), that’s when healing can happen. That’s when you can choose to do what is hard, because you know it’s also good.
But let's not get it twisted: setting boundaries comes at a cost.
Have you ever tried to explain yourself to someone, over and over, and you just keep missing each other? They can’t seem to understand you, and you are at a loss trying to understand their actions, choices, and responses?
People can only understand you if they are on the same vibration as you. If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how many times you try, you simply cannot reach common ground. It’s like you’re existing in two different realities. It’s not your fault. You are just operating at two different vibrations.
When this happens, we tend to either cut people off because we know they are not good for us, or we hold on because even though we know certain people aren’t the best for us, we don’t want to lose them. In many cases, this looks like family, even parents.
If we’re unwilling to give up relationships with those who repeatedly hurt us, then we need to release them from our hopes and expectations that they will ever be different than who they currently are.
When I first began dating after my divorce, one of the first things I wanted to know was a person’s astrological information. Not because I’m some crazy witch lady, but because I genuinely wanted to understand the person I was engaging with. Knowing their sign was like a shortcut to understanding.
Many people who become obsessed with psychology and personality types were once children who felt misunderstood, unseen, and unheard.
Because they felt overlooked, misunderstood, or ignored, they developed a desire to understand, see, and hear themselves and others.
Learning about themselves and those around them gives them the sense of connection that wasn’t provided by their caretakers.
As much as I crave understanding, it’s important to remember that not everyone is going to make sense to me and I certainly am not going to make sense to everyone. Sometimes people are operating in that space of different vibrations, a different reality. Sometimes, finding peace means accepting without understanding.
Here are some tips for being in relationship with loved ones, especially parents, while you try to heal your inner child:
You don’t need your parents to validate your childhood wounds in order to make them real and valid.
It’s not your job to make your parents happy or absolve them of guilt.
Just because they had good reasons for their actions doesn’t mean their actions didn’t hurt you.
Anytime you establish a new way of being in a relationship, there will be pushback. Habits are hard to break.
Leaning into the hurt is essential. But so is finding healing.
If you want some context or validation from someone outside of yourself to help you identify if you had a secure attachment growing up, watch this video below:
WERE YOU RAISED WITH SECURE ATTACHMENT?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4GLiJNLr2D/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
If you’re realizing that you didn’t have a secure attachment growing up, I want you to know that it’s okay to feel sad for what you lost before you even had a name for it.
As children, our parents might have taught us that time heals all wounds. It doesn’t.
Our bodies remember, and our patterns in adulthood show how childhood wounds stick with us. That’s what we’ve spent the past four weeks uncovering.
And even after all this internal work you’re doing, you may not get the apology you want. You may never get that closure you crave.
We sometimes go to the person who hurt us and we're met with defensiveness, denial, and sometimes anger. This creates a situation where we're desperate to get through to another person, where we plead our case, over-explain, and desperately try to get them to give us the acknowledgment or apology we deserve. But the more we do this, the more helpless we feel. The more invalidated, unworthy, and invisible we become.
You don’t need closure or an apology to heal.
Sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do is see that person for what they are: incapable of taking emotional accountability. We don't need an apology to heal. Someone's behavior towards us shows who they are. We don't need closure from them to process what's happened and move forward with our lives.
You need self compassion, self validation, and support from people who truly “get” you. All you can do is show yourself grace. Everything you need is within you. You have more power than you believe. And here’s the hard truth: Not everyone can go with you. You are healing. You are doing the hard work. You are growing. And you can’t take everyone with you.
For anyone waiting on an apology, I shared more about this in an Instagram post. I would encourage you to watch it. here's the link:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnkJUY-qwRa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Reparenting yourself while you parent your own children is incredibly difficult. There are triggers and reminders all around you.
But there are also glimmers– hopeful reminders that you are doing things differently. That you are choosing to free your children from the wounds of your past, not just because you are finding different ways to parent, but because you are healing your own childhood wounds.
Parents who live out of healing instead of out of woundedness speak life and strength into themselves and their children.
It’s how those downward spirals turn into upward trajectories.
If you want tools, resources, stories, and a community to help you navigate this healing journey with you, come join my life changing program, The Path Back to You. I’d love to walk alongside you in this most important work.
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