Survivors Who Are Parents
A gift of healing to our kids and to ourselves
Hello Friend,
So good to be back with you! It’s been a whirlwind, the good kind. Opportunities for healing surprise me at seemingly every turn. I’m trying not to lose my balance with how quickly things are falling into place. It’s challenging, a lot of work, and oh so rewarding. I’m really enjoying it.
I’ve been working with my speech pathologist who is out-of-this-world wonderful. Unfortunately, my last session with her is coming up—insurance.
But just this past week another opportunity opened up for me to work with a vocal coach and teacher, Elissa Weinzimmer of Voice Body Connection. She specializes in healing voice-loss. My first week with her was … rather mind-blowing. I know I’m in my right place.
Serendipitously, I, also, started exploring somatic writing with
from Writing in the Dark. She writes:Our bodies remember. Our cells hold records of the past, awareness of the present, and imaginings of the future. These embodied sensations form the basis of writing that electrifies the primal exchange we continually experience with the world.
By weaving this strong, intentional container, the Visceral Self will help participants access stories that are sometimes more difficult to tell, as well as the ordinary sensations that, when precisely observed, can awaken our prose in ways no other process can.
The writing and vocal practices support one another. They share similar philosophy, to release tension or obstacles in and through the body to connect with the stories we hold within our body, freeing ourselves to give them voice through our chosen creative expressions.
I take everything that is gently unearthed, or rises up from the deep, or comes crashing down to my trauma therapist in the later part of the week.
It’s an incredible confluence of energies, a powerful integration of healing and hanging on for dear life.
I’m so grateful for all these opportunities. After receiving so much for my healing, I want to focus in this correspondence, and the next, on offering the gift of healing to others—specifically, survivors who are parents
Survivor with children
If you are a survivor and have children, I want to meet with you, heart to heart. I have a special place for you at my kitchen table, a kettle of water on the stove and tea mugs of various sizes and shapes for your choosing.
I understand the situation you are in. I feel the grief you feel for what your children may have gone through with you. I empathize with the regrets you may hold while grappling with your trauma wounds, because you know they not only affected you, they affected your kids.
I understand how you, with your gentle and loving heart, wanted something better for your kids than what you went through. You had such high aspirations to give them a better life. And in many ways, you undoubtedly did.
But if you had children, while being abused or struggling from that abuse, chances are your children were impacted by those experiences and by the impact those experiences had on you.
Because pain knocks you off center, and manipulation makes you feel like you’re going crazy, and trauma swallows up your attention.
Then there’s the logistics of living, of surviving, of making money, putting food on the table, paying the rent on top of the abuse, or memories, or flashbacks.
How to be there for the kids? How to play with them, lead them, teach them, truly, fully be present, responding to their needs, their requests, their desire that you be happy?
Sometimes you do and are. But often you’re not fully there. You’re too exhausted and your mind is a thousand miles away.
Maybe you’re not the abusive partner in your relationship or directly abusive as you struggle in your trauma bonds, but that doesn’t mean your kids don’t get hurt in this environment.
And you, being caring and empathetic, know this, and you feel the heavy burden of guilt. Ironically, the more you heal, the more judgmental you may become for your failure. And sometimes, when the scales fall off your eyes, you may wish you could glue them back on.
I want you to stop. Here’s some honey, put some in your tea, or spoon out some sugar from the porcelain sugar bowl. And turn on this video.
Dr Ramani's video, Feeling ABANDONED by your non-narcissistic parent (embedded below) addresses this issue with so much compassion. It’s mostly for the adult or older child, but she does talk directly to the parent at the 11:35 mark. That’s where I have the video set to start, but I think, afterward, you should watch the entire video. And then you can listen to the part where she talks directly to you again. Let her words sink in.
If you don’t know her, Dr Ramani is a clinical psychologist. She’s devoted years of her life to the study of narcissism, and she’s fierce and compassionate in her advocacy for those in narcissistic relationships. She’s been instrumental in much of the healing I’ve experienced in the past two years. I can’t recommend her enough.
So, I’ll watch this video with you, and then I’ll meet you when it’s over.
So, are you that parent?
I was. I am. I have been fortunate and privileged to have been given the opportunity to experience a healing that continues with my now grown children. It’s a work in progress. It took time.
Dr Ramani describes a situation that consists of one narcissistic parent and the other, non-narcissistic. However, abusive partner or no, I think the fallout of past trauma can have a similar impact on your children, too.
It’s not uncommon for people to have childhood trauma resurface when they have children of their own. You may start opening doors to the past or they open themselves. You may start looking at your own childhood as you study new child-rearing ideas, or a part of you may just be ready.
If you start poking around, you can, inadvertently, wake up those sleeping dogs and get bit… hard.
I didn’t even begin to acknowledge my childhood incest, never mind deal with it until after I had my two older children. They were two and five. My marriage was already on shaky grounds at that time. This did not help.
I had flashbacks through the end of my first marriage and eventually new relationship and third child. I had them through various living arrangements in between those relationships and after. I had them when I was homeless with my two kids and when I was finally able to rent an apartment for us.
When my oldest daughter was a young adult, she told me she remembers witnessing me suffering through a flashback in our apartment. She was around ten.
It took decades to climb out of that sinkhole of my past.
Meantime, I’m raising kids. Your children are impacted by your level of health, by your state of mind and emotional well-being, no matter your intentions or desire for better.
Yes, we had good moments together. There are also gentle stories, “I love you’s”, quiet talks at night, and walks in the park. There were moments we laughed, and bounced, and wrestled on the mattress—our own mattress—and that time we bounced so hard, I peed myself. Such a strange memory to cherish but for the sound of subsequent uproarious laughter, cascading over itself, as my kids and I lost ourselves laughing even harder.
To lose yourself in genuine joy and love. What a wonderful thing to get swept away in.
I wasn’t always caught in a whirlpool of disorientation or panic and overwhelm. I grew in healing. There were times I was able to be more centered, more grounded.
But that didn’t erase the times I wasn’t. And there were many of them.
Whatever my issues that were hurting me, they also hurt my children.
And regardless the reasons, that plate of responsibility belongs to the parent, no matter how cracked that plate is.
Good News
Look at it this way.
Holding responsibility also means holding the key to helping your adult or older child heal.
As Dr Ramani says, it’s not the same for every family, because there are so many variables involved in different situations.
Maybe your children are okay and your relationship is fine, or maybe they went no contact and you’re estranged, or maybe they’re oh so polite but emotionally distant. Whatever your specific situation, we can explore ideas to address it, ideas that you can roll around in your head, or use to fit your reality.
I want you to know I’m just as eager to learn from you as you might be from me. I don’t have all the answers, just some ideas. So, I hope you will share yours here.
We can explore this further in the coming days, and I already have the next part to this correspondence in first draft, so I will post it, and post it soon.
I just wanted to let you know in this letter, that if you are in this place, you’re not alone. A lot of us are. Just know it’s not hopeless and we are not helpless.
Believe that.
From my heart to yours,
Demian Elaine’ Yumei
Are you a survivor and a parent? Do you know someone who is? Introduce yourself, say hello, share your thoughts or an experience or two if you’d like. I’d love to hear from you!
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Oh gosh. The details of your story differ wildly from mine, but when you started describing the type of parent you are addressing, my eyes got wide like when I am triggered. But this, as my counselor would say, was a glimmer. To be seen and heard in your words and attention.
My children are young. Two and three. My husband is attentive and kind. But I'ver suffered some crazy complex medical trauma that's left me looking inward much of the time, trying to heal. I feel very inattentive to the needs of my family, though I try and am gaining energy in the trying.
Very excited to be hear, to learn and listen.
I’m knocked out by your ability to communicate so clearly! I feel like I am walking beside you just talking, taking all that you are in. It is such a gift! You and your strength give me such courage ❤️