Unpacking

Do it.

Parenting is hard. It is hard on the people doing it, hard on the ones that surround those who do it, and hard on the children, who receive what actually happens.

It is especially hard on the results.

For the children, who walk through life, repeating false narratives, building up personal defenses, and constantly feeling misunderstood for walls created out of survival.

For the parents, who did the best they could with what they had. Who utilized their own upbringing to birth a new legacy.

But no matter how hard parents try, children will ALWAYS have trauma.

Trauma appears in habitual reactions: a triggering word resulting in fear followed by anger, aggression, and maybe tears. In character defects, so deep they feel entirely ingrained in you; that the pure idea of removal causes panic, anxiety, fear. In flashbacks, that feel so intense your body will reflect the same shiver, chills, and tremors just like the first time.

Trauma lives in the inner child of adults. In boxes, that are stored in the mind, buried deep, surrounded by cobwebs, fragmented by attempted erasing.

But to erase, is not to heal. It is simply a steri strip on an elbow cut open. It might reattach part of the skin but the scar is forever. The event can never be undone.

To heal is to unpack it. To dig deep into those boxes, past the clouded and blacked out memories, to relive the moments, to truly allow the pain and suffering.

And to let your inner child know that they are good and loved.