Save Yourself: Mothers, Trauma and Denial

Hi community. I was on vacation last week and had a few revelations on mothering, trauma and overall denial of truth. Let’s dig in.

TOOLS

If you have a mother, are a mother, are a partner to a mother, want to be a mother, or do not want to be a mother… it’s hard. I also hope that whatever came your way last weekend, you found some glimmers of peace.

But there’s something about mothering, or women in general we need to address as a culture.

And that is that mothering is not martyrdom.

Mothering is not the ultimate sacrifice. Mothering is not to be applauded as a selfless act.

These beliefs and conditioning have led mothers to suffer and suffer hard. In that suffering trauma occurs. Trauma from what mothers are willing to put up with, go through and swallow. Trauma that comes from what she believes she’s supposed to be, expected to do and to be good.

The traumas our mothers, our mother’s mothers, and so on get passed down. In our dismissal of trauma, in our avoidance of truth and in our belief that this is how it’s supposed to be, we set models for the next generations.

This is the cycle of generational trauma. When a mother fails to deal with her traumas in healthy ways she models ineffective coping mechanisms for her own children. She may also detach, creating attachment issues with her own children. She may react to life more intensely and lead her children to believe she doesn’t love them, approve of them or think they are good enough.

Now, if you are reading this being like, “So you’re telling me I’m a terrible mother and I’ve royally screwed up my kids and it’s all my fault?”, I hear you. But I’m not saying that.

The Mother Role has let you down. The Mother Role of being sacrificial, selfless, obedient, demure, attractive, compromising… also a cook, camp counselor, teacher, cleaner, nurse, taxi driver, therapist and receptionist has let you down.

We’ve been told we must lose ourselves for the sake of the children in order to be good. We’ve been taught that a mother’s suffering is acceptable.

And in that suffering, we re-create and create more trauma.

Our kids do not need us to save them, they need us to save ourselves.

And so, I challenge you to look at how you’ve been conditioned to view the role of mother. Read some of the below blog posts and use the tools below to ask yourself some important questions:

• What trauma did previous generations in my biological family face?

  • Examples include: war, famine, exile, poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, suicide, tragic death, disease, injury, violence, sexual assault, abuse, racism, discrimination, relocations, job loss, financial loss, health scares…

• How did my ancestors cope with these traumas? Are there examples of avoidance, degradation, recklessness, anger, workaholism, anxiety, perfectionism, eating disorders, depression, substance abuse, violence, toxic positivity, adultery, abandonment, incest, suicide in my family?

• How might these coping styles have impacted my own biological parents and their childhoods? What might have been expected from them?

• Did my own parents cope effectively? Did they pass down any unhealthy modeling?

• How did my own childhood reflect the lessons of previous generations and past traumas? What beliefs did I make about myself and the world that I have been operating from?

This might mean taking a deep look into family history, asking questions and really getting curious. But uncovering some of the perhaps hidden dark secrets within your family is a form of liberation.

GRATITUDE

This week I am grateful to have experienced an “ah ha” moment. I was able to witness myself getting hit by a car last January on video.

It was in seeing the impact that I finally validated my trauma. I realized, holy sh*t, that was intense and I was minimizing it for months. I was following my conditioned culturally taught motherhood - be strong, carry on, take care of others, don’t let anyone down. I knew I’d been feeling lousy but not until actually witnessing what happened to me did I give myself permission to appreciate the severity.

We minimize our own trauma. We deny how impactful it was. Through our denial we continue the messages that lead to destructive behaviors.

INNOVATION

You see, biologically we denounce traumatic events simply because we were conditioned to survive. How could we possibly keep on living if we actually took account of each and every horrible, traumatic event that happened to us? Or that happened in the world through secondary trauma? It would be SO MUCH to handle, how could we go on?!?

But…I’d argue that our biologically conditioned way of (not) addressing our trauma isn’t going so great. So I’m proposing a more innovative approach.

FEELS

Due to generations of “Be a man”, “Carry on" and “Just keep going”, we’ve denied each other the permission to feel.

It’s in that absence of feeling that we suffer. We avoid, cope ineffectively, model unhealthy behaviors, react to loved ones, and push our hurt on those around us. We also don’t allow people to see our struggle and so we suffer alone and feel too much shame for not being able to just pull ourselves up and continue on.

What if we did it differently? What if we give each other the permission to FEEL FULLY - to then RELEASE the pain so we do not continue to pass on our suffering?

I remember being told once, “Hurt people hurt people,” and being SO ANGRY. It’s not an excuse to have been hurt to continue to hurt others.

It’s our responsibility to save ourselves. Each of us has the duty to do the work to stop the cycle.

Our kids, our country, our humanity and our Earth demand it.