Parenting Parents

#tbt to some time maybe in 1985

I was always told by family members of how great of a child I was…kind, caring, very easy going & never asked for anything

Anyone who knew me as a teenager knows that things changed dramatically as I got older. Since I didn’t get the attention I needed by being good, I started to look for any type of attention I could get even if it was negative. I became defiant, a rebel, extremely defensive and sometimes quite offensive too

Sometimes I wonder about that little girl, little Sarah…was I really that easy going or was I like that to protect myself and my mother because she wasn’t well? who is the real me? Even though I’ve come a long way, I am still searching

My mother has a lot of unresolved trauma & for as long as I can remember she had migraines, was exhausted, & either crying her eyes out or enraged. I knew I had to behave or else…

I also wanted her to be well, I feel like I often had to suppress my emotions to protect her…so it’s hard to know who I really am, who I was before the trauma if there ever was a before

One of the things that has always bothered me & still bothers me today is that I never had & still don’t have the mother that I needed because she refuses to do her healing work. I grieve having a wise mother who can guide & protect me to this day. To make things worse, I still have to be like a parent to her, often to my own detriment, by ensuring that she is ok just like when I was a kid.

My inner child doesn’t like it & so I tell myself that she is a grown woman and needs to learn to take care of herself….it’s my turn now, I need to focus on what’s best for me and make sure I take care of my needs that weren’t met as a child

And that is why I do my work, to make sure that I am the mother to my children that they need me to be, even as they become adults…I will love them unconditionally & guide them with my wisdom for as long as they need for me to do so because that is how it should be.

I refuse to continue to pass down the intergenerational trauma, it stops with me