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…
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…
The shame around being a “bad mother”
Sometimes I resent being a mother. That is not to say that I don’t love my child. Unlike my mother and some mothers who can’t love, I do love my son. With all my heart and soul, always and forever. I believe all mothers have moments when they resent motherhood. I believe that the contemporary expectation to be a non-stop happy and vibrant mother is not only unrealistic, it’s also severely shaming and stigmatising. It makes natural temporary feelings of dissatisfaction or unfulfillment fester into gnawing guilt. That makes me think how terribly unprepared and largely delusional so many mothers enter into motherhood, including me. I wanted my child with…
Breaking free of our mental prisons
I mentioned in my last post that I’ve kept myself into a sort of a mental prison. After talking to my therapist about it and going for a walk after, it came to me – another piece of the puzzle. After the dreams about my past lives, I had another few empowering dreams – one symbolising letting go of the burden I’ve been carrying by throwing things out of a backpack I’ve been carrying, and another – expressing myself freely by singing to a song I don’t remember the words of but nevertheless singing loudly and freely. To me, those dreams symbolise my emotional release of the trauma I’ve been lugging around…
Rewriting my story in a radical self-forgiveness context
“I am here to deal with my fear of isolation, loneliness and loss. I have chosen my parents, sibling, partner, child, close friends, and my life circumstances so they can support my soul’s evolution. My mother temporarily left me for 5 years when I was 10 years old. Then she permanently left my life when I was 26. By doing so, she first opened a hole in me as a young child, and then she made that hole graver, bigger and deeper by leaving this world altogether. When my mum first left she prepared me for encountering a greater feeling of loneliness and loss later in my life. When she…
Letting go of guilt
In this post I’d like to discuss the feeling of guilt – in particular the guilt inherited from our parents and the way we carry this within us through life. I believe guilt can play out in our lives in two ways: the guilt our parents felt towards us when we were young (and perhaps still feel) and how that affected us in becoming whole beings the guilt we carry over for our parents and we as parents feel towards our children. And I believe this guilt is carried through the generations. Perhaps this is a new concept for you but bear with me. If you find yourself feeling guilty in situations…
