How Healing Generational Trauma Helps You Become the Parent Your Child Really Needs

You don't have to give your child a perfect childhood. You just have to be willing to heal your yourself.

A cherished moment with my daughter in 2008.

At a certain point in the trauma healing journey, especially for those who are parents, you’re inevitably faced with the reality of generational trauma, not only how it shaped you, but how it may have impacted your children. When this moment comes, I often tell my clients…

Generational trauma isn’t just what happened to us; it’s what didn’t get healed.

It’s the silence we grew up in. The things we weren’t allowed to feel.

The coping mechanisms that got us through but now get in the way.

Trauma doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers through the choices we make without realizing they’re choices at all.

We pass it on, not because we want to, but because it’s what we know.

And ironically, the wounds we’re trying to avoid.

For example:

If you grew up in a household where your voice didn’t matter, you might bend over backward to make sure your child always feels heard.

But in the process, you may struggle to set limits. You might walk on eggshells. And suddenly, your child isn’t feeling safe, they’re feeling in charge.

Or maybe you grew up in a home where emotional pain was ignored, dismissed, or met with cruelty.

You might overcorrect by trying to protect your child from any kind of distress. You soothe every tear, fix every problem, rescue them from every disappointment.

But in trying to spare them pain, you unintentionally rob them of the tools to handle it.

They grow up thinking discomfort is dangerous, instead of something they can move through.

And sometimes, we don’t even realize we’re passing anything down.

We say things like “That’s just how I was raised,” and carry forward the very patterns that once hurt us.

The rigid roles, expectations, emotional distance, and high-functioning perfectionism.

We don’t question them, because they feel normal. But what’s familiar isn’t always healthy.

It’s not bad parenting. It’s reactive parenting. And it comes from a good place, a loving place.

But the healing doesn’t come from doing the opposite of what hurt us.

It comes from doing the work of understanding why it hurt and how it shaped us.

When we heal, we interrupt the transmission.

We become less reactive, more intentional.

We model repair instead of perfection.

We teach boundaries without shame.

We normalize emotions instead of fearing them.

We stop swinging from one extreme to the other and start living from a steadier center.

Our children don’t need us to be flawless. They need us to be self-aware.

It changes theirs.