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How childhood trauma robs your power away and how to take it back
This summer I spent about a month at my father’s house with my son. It wasn’t our first time and, as I’d expected, it was tumultuous. A part of me knew it was time to stand up to some of the dysfunction in my family of origin and confront it. I could only hope that this experience was going to bring me some resolutions and it would prove empowering. And it did. For the first week or so the usual, generations-old, themes of guilt and shame, insecurity and inadequacy were saturating the air until it came to a boil. There were tears and screaming, anger and pain – suppressed emotions and…
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How trauma and codependency in childhood can cause toxic mommy guilt
I often question why I feel so much guilt as a mother towards my little boy. It’s not only crippling my own experience of being a mother but also sending inaccurate messages to my son which shape the way he views himself and the world. I feel stricken with guilt every time I feel the effects of my trauma. I blame myself for not being able to shake off the sadness or depression I feel, for the anger that sometimes I can’t hold or the negativity that my critical mind is keeping me a captive to. I feel shame every time I’m not at my best for letting my son down. When…
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Why holding space is so important in relationships
You may have heard the term “to hold space” for somebody. Did you fully understand what it means? How we actually do that and why is it so important? I remember reading about it a while ago but couldn’t quite connect the dots – it just sounded abstract or something. And I’ve been seeing articles and videos on the subject circulating around social media, but it wasn’t until I had my own realisations about what relationships really are, that I fully embodied the understanding of what this term means. As I wrote in my previous post, relationships are tools that are assigned from God to us, and signed in a…
