my childhood wounds don't define me || unfettered

part 3

Last year, I cried about something that happened when I was 12. The trauma of our girls’ birth and NICU stay was beginning to surface and as I processed it in therapy, there were a quite a few ghosts from my childhood that came up. Things I wasn’t expecting. Things I didn’t know still hurt.

When everything started happening with my pregnancy, I intentionally disconnected myself from my children emotionally because I thought it would protect them. I didn’t want them to be scared or to feel unstable, so I hid from them. When the trauma was over and the first signs of PTSD were metabolizing in my body, I felt like I was in a constant state of emotional chaos. The smallest negative interactions with my kids would trigger the deepest self hatred. So I’d overcompensate by not disciplining them, or buying them things they didn’t need, or just trying to be the fun parent. I wanted to make up for the ways I’d emotionally neglected them and ended up neglecting them in other ways.

All of this, for some reason, dug up of some of the pain I experienced as a child. I realized that I was so absolutely petrified of allowing my children to experience any pain - or any emotional honesty at all - so I swung back and forth between two extremes : disconnecting from them completely to protect them from my emotions and overcompensating for my negative emotions by showering them with things and over-excitedness. Both were valid responses, but both were unhealthy ways of coping with what was going on inside of me. I needed to go toe to toe with the wounds I was running from.

Childhood wounds are a complicated topic. We all have them. Everyone. Even the people who grew up in healthy homes and knew nothing but love have had childhood experiences that wounded them and affected the way they developed as adults. It’s a side affect of being raised in an imperfect world. People will hurt you. Unexpected changes will happen. Kids will say mean things. Grown ups lose their temper. No matter how much someone loves you, that love won’t prevent them from being human and making mistakes. Not all of those mistakes will result in childhood wounds, but some of them will. And we’re left to carry the wounds and eventually, decide if we’re going to bypass them and deny the impact they’ve had on us or confront them and deal with them head on.

I chose to deal with them. Admitting that I had them was the hardest part.

 I always had a pretty wild imagination as a child and sometimes had a hard time deciphering between things that actually happened and things that happened in my head. I made up worlds and disappeared into them. I became different people and role played, sometimes without anyone else knowing I was doing it. I made up scenarios and conversations and spent so much time in my imaginary worlds that those worlds bled into my real life. Now that I have a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD, I know that what I was doing was maladaptive daydreaming and it’s pretty textbook as far as that type of ADHD in children goes. I didn’t just have an active imagination, I had an active mind and it was and is a beautiful and rare gift. But it was misunderstood. I got in trouble constantly. I was hyper independent, precocious, and rejected emotional intimacy. 

I rarely felt seen or understood. I didn’t understand social rules sometimes. I very often would just say whatever was in my head, without any kind of filter, because I didn’t understand how to know which thoughts are supposed to stay inside your head. I was a social liability! ha! In school, I was one of those kids who could give you the right answer but I couldn’t tell you how I got there. I would ignore whatever steps the teacher gave us to get the answer and I would find it my own way, but I wouldn’t be able to explain how I did it. Or, I would just think the assignment was dumb and do it my own way. Most of the time, instructions at home and in school and at church would “go in one ear and out the other.” I had zero spatial awareness and was always falling, bumping into things. People would say “She’s smart, but she doesn’t have a lick of common sense!” I had very little sense of danger to myself. But I was funny! I could make everyone laugh and I ate up being the center of attention, but I also picked up a lot of monickers that hurt. “Airhead” “Space Cadet” “Dumb Blonde” “Ditz.” It didn’t take long for me to understand that those names weren’t endearing. They were making fun of me. I thought they thought I was dumb.

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t figure out how to fit. And I wanted to so badly! All of the things that made me feel like a burden, a nuisance, unlikeable and unloveable are textbook symptoms of inattentive ADHD. I checked every box. Every. Single. Box. But no one knew that!  It was the 90s, and even though both of my parents were educators, inattentive ADHD wasn’t on anyone’s radar. I mean, ADHD in general was hardly on the radar and even then, the things people looked for were hyperactivity and rambunctiousness. I wasn’t like that and honestly, people just didn’t think about things the way they do now. Especially in the charismatic evangelical world I grew up in. Children rarely got diagnosed with much more than original sin!

I was just wired a little differently, but you don’t think like that as a kid. You don’t think “oh I’m just wired a little little different.” You think - I’m broken, I don’t belong in this world, I’m a burden. I wasn’t any of those things. And no one ever told me I was. It was just the way I interpreted my world. Those were the wounds I had to confront as I began to heal. I accepted that I couldn’t love my children the way they deserved to be loved if I hated myself. The hatred I directed at myself would be interpreted by them as hatred for them and I decided that for my kids’ sake, I would confront those wounds, however messy it might get.

And it got messy. 

When you look back to heal, you inadvertently invite all of the same feelings you felt as a child. For me it was shame, fear, feeling unloved, unwanted, dirty, sinful, alone. On the hardest therapy days, I would talk about certain memories, tell them in detail, and for the rest of the day I would feel all of those things. As if the thing I had talked about from childhood had happened that day. But as I felt those things, I processed them as an adult, with better understanding and emotional maturity. It helped me to close the loop, in a sense. Those wounds stopped festering, unseen in my soul somewhere. I brought them in the open and let the air hit them and they stung for a second but then they scarred over. I was able to move forward, without the pain I’d always carried.

Healing your childhood wounds is a gift to yourself. If you’re a parent, it’s the biggest gift you can give to your children. Each injury you heal is one less wound you’ll pass down to your kids. I heard someone say recently, “My mother healed what she could and I’ll heal what I can and hopefully my daughter will be left with nothing to heal.” I hope my kids can say that about me. That I healed what I could. That I didn’t abandon myself. That I didn’t abandon them. I faced painful things so that I wouldn’t pass my pain to them.

In releasing that pain from my childhood, I’ve begun to change the things I identify myself by. I hadn’t realized how much of my self identity was shaped by the negative messages I believed about myself as a child. I believed that I was unlikeable, so I accepted that I wasn’t somebody who could have friends. I believed that I was broken, so I accepted that I was a burden. As a burden, I made myself smaller, removed myself from tables, accepted less than what I deserved because I was just thankful for a scrap. I underestimated myself and undervalued my contributions and importance to my family, to the world, and to the Kingdom of God. 

Healing my biggest childhood wounds helped me change the narrative of my life.

As the narrative changed, my anxiety decreased. My depression alleviated. When I stopped believing the negative self image, I stopped having one. I look in the mirror and see someone beautiful. I look back on my childhood and am so proud of my creativity and independence and ability to make something beautiful out of my life, even though I didn’t believe I deserved anything good. I think about the years I spent fighting for validation and approval and acceptance and instead of regretting the years I wasted, I’m ecstatic that I no longer want any of those things from people who make me fight for it.

I’m comfortable, safe, loved and I am free. 

And now that little girl in the photo is too. When I began to understand myself better, I began to understand her better. And that understanding helped me view my childhood through a different lens. A more gracious, empathetic, and understanding one. Not just for myself, but for everyone who was around me too.

She was special. I think she knew that.