The privilege of parenting (and re-parenting)
On ending the cycle of trauma, when no one showed you how
Hi friend,
I’m in Victoria right now—visiting my sister, my family, my newborn baby niece. I’ve held many of my friends’ kids over the years, but this is my first time holding a baby who is part of our family, and it is different. I feel the weight of things, with her little body in my arms. The weight of what is true, what has been true, what might be true for her. The weight of wanting her to have a beautiful life, and to feel loved and supported at every age and stage of it. The weight of responsibility, I suppose. I can only do so much, living a third of the way around the world. But I’ve been asking myself how I can show up for her (and my sister), since the day I learned she’d been conceived. Something tells me I could be asking myself this question for the rest of my life—and that feels right to me.
As you know, once/month, we share a guest post written by a reader of Explore Within. This is a new addition to our space, and it has quickly become my favourite part. The pitches coming through have been moving and powerful. (Our first guest post was so beautiful and meaningful, it was even featured by Substack.) It is an honour to give your stories a home, and to know you feel safe sharing your words here.
While I’m away this week, I am deeply honoured and grateful to be handing our space over to Jennifer. Jennifer is a historian-turned-writer (or, really, a writer who became a historian) who is passionate about challenging consumerism and helping others live in alignment with their values. (You can imagine we might align on a few things.) Her newsletter, Sustain Initiative, is all about making decisions that are better for people and the planet.
When Jennifer told me what she wanted to write about here, I knew I wanted to create a safe container for her story. First, with a disclaimer/trigger warning: Jennifer’s mom died by suicide, and she touches on this in the post. She also shares words that touch on childhood and generational trauma. If you feel any of this might be triggering for you, please take care of yourself and stop reading here. You can always click on the “❤️” to show her some love and support instead.
What I will say is that this story isn’t about those things. At least, that’s not how I read it. To me, this is a story about what you do on the other side of it. When you receive unimaginable news, while pregnant, and realize you’re left to figure this out on your own. It’s a story about taking responsibility for your life, in the past and present. In her words, it’s a story of parenting without your parent for support, of parenting in opposition to everything you've experienced, and of learning to “re-parent” yourself—and, letting yourself feel some big and uncomfortable feelings along the way. (That’s part of re-parenting, too.)
This story is honest and vulnerable and deeply personal—and, I have no doubt that elements of it will speak to many readers. I’m not a parent, and won’t have the experience of being a parent, but I still felt the power in Jennifer’s words: specifically, around the monster that might live inside you, and how much work it takes to rewire your brain…
I’ll hand it over to her now. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Jennifer.
xx Cait
The privilege of parenting (and re-parenting)
By Jennifer Newton
It’s okay to cry, they told me. And I did, a little. For the baby girl growing in my uterus who would never get to meet her own grandmother. For the COVID restrictions that meant we were picking up the pieces alone. But not for her. Grief is a funny thing. I could bring myself to grieve, but not for her.
I made the wry joke to my husband, “If I didn’t have mommy issues before, I’m pretty sure my mother setting herself on freaking fire is enough to cause them.” It’s not funny, but I laugh because I don’t know what else to say. What I really feel is resentment and hurt. After spending years coming to terms with my childhood, I was again waking up to nightmares: this time, it was the Wicked Witch of the West, screaming as she dissolved in a puddle on the ground. I lay awake for hours after, making a mental note that the Wizard of Oz isn’t as child appropriate as people seem to think.
I go in my closet, and dig out an old scrap of paper. It’s one of the few things I kept from my childhood, a commitment to myself for a better future:
One day, I will wake up
The sun will be shining through my bedroom window,
And I will be safe and warm under the covers.When I finally get up, I won’t hear yelling and screaming.
There will be no threats, no broken promises,
No broken hearts or broken lives.
I will never hear the sound of dishes being hurled at the floor,
Resounding with a deafening ‘crack’ that can’t begin to cut the tension in the air.One day, there will be no acronyms in my house.
No APS, no CPS1,
No well-intentioned people trying to solve problems they can’t begin to understand.
One day, there will be no blue lights flashing outside my window,
And no uniforms on my front steps.I won’t have flashbacks and recurring nightmares.
When I close my eyes, I won’t hear my grandma’s scream pierce the night.
The unkind words will no longer come flooding back.
They say sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never hurt.
I’ve never heard a bigger lie.
I stare at the page, at the watermark left from my own tears as I wrote it. I remember how vulnerable and defiant I felt when my 16-year-old self typed the poem into Facebook Notes and finally clicked “Publish.”
Fourteen years and 2,000 miles later, I had become adept at boundary-setting, so much so that my mother and I had actually been able to talk a few times a month for years. All that progress seemed to vanish in an instant. What boundaries can you set to protect yourself from someone who didn’t love you enough to stay on this earth?
And then, I think about my newest job title: “Mommy.”
It’s a role so encompassing that I left my “actual” job—the kind with paychecks and pensionable benefits—to focus entirely on this nebulously-defined position. I come by my over-achieving personality honestly; the hardest thing about parenting for me is the lack of accolades telling you you’re doing it “right.”
And what is “right,” anyway? I follow the checklist: My children rarely get screen time. They eat fruit and sometimes even vegetables. I nursed each of them for over a year and almost never let them cry alone, even when it’s 2am or I desperately need to pee. My Instagram feed and podcast list is full of peaceful, conscious parenting experts reminding me to say, “I’m here for your big feelings.”
My sister-in-law tells me I’m more patient than most people. I’m incredibly moved by the compliment—I’ve heard it enough that I’m no longer surprised, although before children I never would have described myself as such. But also, she’s never heard the voice in my head when my precocious toddler presses the red button on my phone, starting my hours-long ordeal with customer service all over again.
I don’t like that voice in my head. It tells me that the monster I grew up with could—if all the right buttons are pushed and the circumstances are just awful enough—exist within me too. It’s the same monster, I suspect, that my own mother grew up with. But now it’s my job—my full time, all-encompassing role in this world—to make that monster end with me.
It’s no secret that parenting is difficult. Just watch parents carrying a bawling child out of a store or teaching their teenager to drive and you know it’s no walk in the park. Instead of offering a deep, supportive community though, we are telling parents that they can “self-care” their way through the hard stuff. And if you’re a survivor of childhood abuse or trauma, I’m just not so sure that’s the case. An overpriced coffee, solo time to workout, or whatever else currently being hyped as parental self-care is lovely, no doubt. But it’s a band-aid over a stab wound, hiding the fact that even reaching a baseline of “good enough” parenting requires spending every spare moment rewiring your brain.
I go to bed at night exhausted, not only from changing diapers and refilling snack cups and answering endless why? questions, but also because there’s the mental checklist every time I’m working through a hard moment: are the words kind? Am I setting boundaries out of love and not control? Is my tone welcoming, or sharp and irritated? I don’t get it right every time, so then I learn to repair. Every time I say, “I’m sorry, sweetie, let’s try this again,” I wonder what made my own mom too proud to ever utter the same sentence to me.
As a mother, I have developed a better understanding of my own mom. I can empathize with her anger at the way her life turned out: working a series of dead-end jobs despite her graduate degree, resenting my sibling and I for never quite being docile enough to make things easy for her.
Some parts, though, have become more inexplicable. Did she disappear into her own mind because she didn’t want to commit to the family she had created, or because she was aware of the damage she caused when she was present? Did she realize that the names she hurled at her 12-year-old daughter would be the inner voice I’m still shutting down nearly two decades later, or that it would take me years to stop flinching when people hold a kitchen knife in my presence?
If I was feeling generous, perhaps I would tell you that I think everybody does the best they are capable of. But when I look at my little girls, it becomes abundantly clear that my mother’s best simply wasn’t enough.
What does it actually take to end the cycle of generational trauma? I wish I had the perfect answer, but what I keep coming back to is this: find the joy. I see the wistfulness in the older ladies’ eyes at the grocery store, the way they say, “It goes by so fast” with an earnestness that tells me it really does. Not once have I been disappointed by taking the time for an extra bedtime story, having a dance party in the kitchen, or hugging my children while tears are streaming down their faces.
And I remind myself, over and over: what a privilege. What an absolute privilege it is to watch my children grow up to be who they were meant to be in the world. To witness their creativity, sense of humor, and kindness. To be the safe space they can return to.
I think that what we most hope for as humans is to be witnessed. To know that someone sees you—not just on the surface, but all the hidden strengths and vulnerabilities. To see you evolve throughout your life. One of the tasks of healing trauma and re-parenting is to validate the unmet needs you had as a young child. Even watching my little ones, I can’t begin to tell you what toddler Jennifer might have needed. But 10-year-old Jennifer needed, “You can grow up to do anything.” Twenty-two-year-old Jennifer needed, “You are enough.” And 30-year-old Jennifer, well, she needed the moment where your mother watches you holding your baby girl and says, “I remember when I first held you that way.” I will never get that moment.
And, of course, the juxtaposition is not lost on me: the thing that I most want for my girls—to show up fully and with kindness as I bear witness to their lives—is the very thing that my own mother couldn’t bring herself to give her own children.
That cycle ends with me.
Adult Protective Services (APS) and Child Protective Services (CPS), respectively.
I feel your pain. The terror of mental illness can't easily be explained or understood. Thank you for sharing such a heartbreaking story. It sounds as though the cycle has really ended with you and your children are growing up with the gift of you as their Mom. What a miracle you are to give this gift to them.
I wish I could have made the cycle end with me. I was as harsh and absent as my own parents were. Good for you for figuring out how to end your cycle.