When our Unknown wounds do the talking....

I remember the moment when it all dawned on me.......

"F*ck, i never wanted to parent like my my mum parented me, and yet all this time, unbeknown to me, i have been, just in a very different way!"

That's the thing with not knowing. You don't know, what you don't know......I was unintentionally creating wounds in my children like my mum had done to me. And what makes that even harder to digest is, whether pain is inflicted unintentionally or not, the body reacts in the same way. Creating the same stress responses, then creating the same wounds. Remember, a chronic stress response in a child shapes the brain, the nervous system, and in time, creates a trauma wound that becomes their personality.

It's no secret that my denial of the damage my childhood had created in me, , made me an emotionally unavailable mum. Which is absolutely crazy to say because i always told my children i loved them, and i did. However i couldn't feel in them what i wasn't prepared to feel in myself. This meant i wasn't attuned to their feelings. I couldn't pre empt what they could potentially feel and i would shut down emotions that i unconsciously couldn't handle. “You’re fine.”“Don’t be silly.” I would say...........Thinking i was being very reassuring when i actuality, i was invalidating, dismissive and creating confusion, fear, and shame in my children, not to mention suppression. I still can't believe the very thing i didn't want to do, i was doing unintentionally. My words, or lack of them, were creating shame.

Even my tone could be scary when i was in a bad mood..........I would justify myself with...."I NEVER HIT MY CHILDREN. THEY KNOW THEY WOULD NEVER COME TO HARM". Yet my bad moods were creating fear in them.

Tonality goes beyond words spoken. It's the nonverbal aspect of communication that conveys emotion, intent, and context through the way the voice is used.

Let’s get one thing straight—kids aren’t born knowing which feelings are “too much.” They are born feeling and crying and getting their needs met loudly. So it's safe to say.......They learn what's too much. Often from us. And not because we’re awful parents. But because we’re carrying wounds no one ever helped us name, let alone heal.

So we repeat what we were taught:“You’re fine.”“Don’t be silly.”“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Not because we’re cruel, but because their feelings bump into parts of us we had to shut down a long time ago just to survive. And without even knowing it, we start parenting on autopilot—leading with our pain, not our presence.

Dr. Bruce Perry drops a truth bomb we all need to sit with:“Children are not resilient. They are malleable.”

Let that sink in.

We love to romanticise the idea of kids being little warriors—bouncing back, soldiering on, “so strong” after everything. But what Bruce Perry is saying is this: they don’t bounce back. They adapt.

Their brains and nervous systems rewire around the environments they’re in. If those environments are emotionally unsafe, they’ll learn to hide their feelings, disconnect from their needs, or become who they think they need to be to be loved.

That’s not resilience. That’s survival.

And when we confuse the two, we risk praising kids for emotional suppression—“Look how brave you are!”—when really, they’re just terrified no one can handle their truth so they push it down and create a person they think their parents want to see. The performer, the comedian, the overachiever, the very helpful child, the responsible empathic child. There is nothing wrong with these at all, as long as they are being their authentic self and haven't created these personalities to ensure attachment.

So when we talk about raising resilient kids, we have to ask ourselves: Are we actually building emotional strength? Or are we teaching them to mask their feelings because we haven’t made peace with our own?

This isn’t about blame. The last thing we need is more shame in the world..... It’s about awareness. Because the second we start healing the parts of us that were never allowed to feel, we stop passing that sh*t down.

And that, right there, is how generational healing begins.