I froze. Even at four-years-old, I knew that danger lurked behind every corner. My home, a minefield of attack, never rested. Each day began as a slow burn, then turned into a pressure cooker until the explosion occurred—sometimes, when my father got home, sometimes at the dinner table. Often it happened after several days of escalation, but one thing was for sure — it always occurred. 

On this particular day, my mother employed her usual daylong diatribe. Why had I wet the bed?—yet again. Why couldn’t I stop sucking my thumb? Only bad girls did that. Why was I so “hard-headed?” Besides being unusually stupid, I couldn’t behave myself, couldn’t be quiet enough, couldn’t move quickly enough, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t. The look of hatred she gave made me crawl behind the sofa, hoping it might afford me some respite. She was going to be angry all day, and I was resigned to it. I would probably get a beating when my father got home. The goal that day was simply to try to avoid a prior beating by my mother. Most days, I was unsuccessful. 

That was my early life at home. I can point to many traumatic events over the years, but the real damage wasn’t done by a single event. CPTSD, and the terrible trauma I suffered, was born from unrelenting terror and hatched in the furnace of developmental trauma. 

What is Developmental Trauma?

The field of trauma recovery is just beginning to talk about this powerful and insidious form of childhood abuse. While trauma recovery literature often addresses similar symptoms–anxiety, hypervigilance, dissociation, emotional dysregulation–it frequently misses a crucial distinction: developmental trauma is not the aftermath of something that happened. It is the result of growing up inside danger itself. Many trauma approaches assume a nervous system that once knew safety and is trying to return to it. Developmental trauma survivors often had no such baseline. Their nervous systems were shaped in the absence of protection, which changes both how trauma forms–and how healing must unfold.

More common than people realize, developmental trauma is tied to the child’s environment. Traumatic events may be part of that environment, but it is the environment itself that shapes a person’s nervous system, identity, and emotional life over time.

Unlike event trauma–such as an accident, assault, natural disaster, or single frightening experience–developmental trauma forms when a child grows up in ongoing conditions of emotional danger without protection, safety, or reliable attachment.

It happens when fear is not temporary — it is daily life.

Most often, the central abusers are either one or both parents. The child is, in essence, held captive to a system from which they cannot escape. Forced to be dependent on the very people that are harming them, the child tries to bond and adapt in distorted and unintegrated ways in order to survive. 

Developmental trauma forms through experiences such as:

• Emotional neglect
• Chronic fear or unpredictability
• Manipulation or psychological control
• Conditional love
• Parentification (the child caring for the adult)
• Walking on eggshells
• Shame-based discipline
• Emotional invisibility
• Attachment wounds
• Living with volatile, narcissistic, or emotionally unstable caregivers

In these homes, the child does not have a safe place to land–inside or outside themselves.

There is no consistent comfort. No reliable protection. No adult who helps to regulate fear.

And because children cannot leave, fight back, or understand what is happening, the nervous system must adapt.

The child does not break–the child adapts.

This is one of the most misunderstood truths about developmental trauma.

Children are biologically wired to survive and to attach. When safety is absent, the body reorganizes itself around survival instead.

The developing nervous system learns:

• Stay alert
• Don’t upset anyone
• Read the room constantly
• Suppress your needs
• Be good. Be quiet. Be useful.
• Don’t draw attention
• Don’t make mistakes

These are not personality traits. They are survival strategies. And they work–at first. But they come at a cost. When survival becomes “normal,” when danger is chronic, the nervous system never learns what safety feels like.

Instead of developing around curiosity, play, rest, and exploration, the child’s system develops around:

• Hypervigilance
• Freeze or collapse
• People-pleasing
• Emotional numbing
• Chronic guilt
• Fear of getting in trouble
• Internalized shame
• Difficulty resting
• Panic under pressure
• Confusion around boundaries

By adulthood, these patterns often feel like “who I am.” But they are not identity. They are biology shaped by experience.

Developmental trauma is not pathology. This is crucial to understand. Developmental trauma is not a character flaw. It is not weakness. It is not mental illness. It is not a defective personality.

It is the normal response of a child’s nervous system to prolonged fear without protection.

What later gets labeled as anxiety, codependency, perfectionism, dissociation, or emotional dysregulation began as intelligent attempts to survive an impossible environment. In other words, the symptoms were solutions. They simply outlived the danger.

Why it’s so hard to recognize!

Many survivors say:

• “Nothing that bad happened.”
• “Other people had it worse.”
• “My parents tried their best.”

But trauma is not measured by what happened on the outside. Trauma is measured by what the nervous system has endured without relief.

A child who is afraid every day–even quietly–carries trauma.

A child who never felt emotionally safe carries trauma.

A child who had to disappear to survive carries trauma.

Developmental trauma lives in the body, not the story.

Because this trauma formed before language and reasoning were fully developed, it is not stored primarily as memory.

It is stored as:

• Bodily reactions
• Emotional reflexes
• Unconscious beliefs
• Nervous system patterns

This is why insight alone doesn’t heal it.

You can understand your past perfectly–and still feel afraid, tense, or overwhelmed in the present. The body learned danger long before the mind could explain it.

Healing begins with safety–not self-improvement. Healing developmental trauma is not about fixing yourself; it is about teaching the nervous system something it never learned:

~That it is safe now
-That rest is allowed.
~That mistakes are not deadly.
~That you are not in trouble.
~That your needs matter.

Over time–and gently–the body can release the old adaptations that once kept you alive. And as that happens, something remarkable occurs. You don’t become someone new.

You become yourself. Defy Trauma Embrace Joy. For more similar content, go to https://rebekahlaynebrown.com/

Stay tuned for the rest of this series: 

“When Survival Becomes Normal: How the Nervous System Adapts to Ongoing Fear”

“The Invisible Messages We Absorbed: The Inner World of Developmental Trauma”

“Why Insight Alone Doesn’t Heal Developmental Trauma”

“When the Wounded Part Emerges: Why Healing Can Feel Harder Before It Feels Better”

“What Healing Actually Looks Like (And What It Doesn’t)”

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

I had made it all the way from Europe to the United States, landing at JFK International Airport in New York City with a newborn baby in tow. I was a wreck. My husband, stationed in Germany with the Air Force, couldn’t get leave, so I boarded the seven-hour flight alone. Of course, the flight had arrived late, and I was stranded in New York overnight.

Exhausted, I finally located the United Service Organization (USO) office in the airport. They helped me navigate the maze at JFK and set me up with a hotel for the night. Terrified I’d oversleep and miss my connecting flight to Virginia, I did not rest. The responsibility of my first baby, the long journey alone, and the reason I was coming home towered like a dark, ominous wall.

My father had called to say my mother was having a “nervous breakdown,”  triggering my scapegoat conditioning to rear its ugly head. I had no choice but to go home. My father didn’t even need to ask; he knew my response would be automatic. Everything rested on my shoulders. It didn’t matter that I would have to make a transatlantic flight alone, or that I had just had a baby.  

I arrived to find my mother despondent, and that many of the cards I had so carefully crafted and mailed from Europe were unopened and thrown in the trash. 

It was the same old message: fix me, this is your responsibility, and by the way, nothing you do will be enough. No acknowledgment of my long journey, and barely a hello to my baby. This was the way it had always been, and how it would continue to be until my parents’ death. 

Such is the dilemma for survivors of childhood trauma. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, also known as the double bind. This is a core reason as to why the holidays can be so difficult for us.

Christmas and the holiday season trigger emotional collapse. We experience the return of old roles, old wounds, old obligations, and old versions of ourselves we worked so hard to escape.

The holidays don’t just stir memories. They awaken the parts of us that were frozen in time: the child or adolescent who once believed it was their job to hold the family together, rescue the adults, or absorb the emotional fallout.

And so every December, survivors all over the world feel dread they can’t explain, guilt they didn’t earn, and emotional activation that feels out of proportion to the reality of the moment.

If this sounds familiar, nothing is wrong with you.
Your nervous system is remembering.

Why does Christmas trigger childhood trauma so intensely?

1. Christmas is an attachment holiday–and attachment is where the trauma happened

Christmas is built around:

• family togetherness
• belonging
• stability
• warmth
• predictable love

But if your childhood home was filled with chaos, neglect, manipulation, or emotional abuse, Christmas becomes a mirror reflecting everything you never had.

This alone can trigger profound grief, dread, or emotional activation.

2. Frozen-in-time parts wake up

Trauma survivors carry younger “parts” inside them—child selves who never got to grow up because the environment was unsafe.

Christmas awakens those parts.

The smells, the music, the rituals, and the pressure all connect directly to childhood. Suddenly, you may feel:

• small
• helpless
• responsible for everyone else’s mood
• guilty
• anxious
• terrified of disappointing someone
• obligated to perform

You’re not regressing.
Your nervous system is remembering.

3. Old roles snap back into place

Every dysfunctional family assigns roles:

• The Scapegoat
• The Golden Child
• The Peacemaker
• The Invisible One
• The Responsible One

Even at 50 or 60 years old, walking through your parents’ door can make your brain revert to the role it learned at age four.

It’s automatic.
It’s somatic.
And it’s profoundly triggering.

4. Holiday guilt is a weapon in dysfunctional families 

Statements like:

• “You’re ruining Christmas.”
• “Family is everything—you owe us.”
• “If you loved us, you’d be here.”

These are not expressions of love.
They are tools of control.

And the holidays are when manipulative families use them most effectively.

5. Religious trauma intensifies everything g

If faith was used to:

• control
• shame
• silence
• manipulate
• pressure you into compliance

Then Christmas doesn’t feel holy.

A spiritual holiday becomes an emotional trigger.

6. The cultural myth of the “perfect family Christmas” deepens shame

Movies, commercials, and church services all push one message:

“Everyone has a warm, loving family at Christmas.”

Survivors think:

• Why couldn’t my family be like that?
• What’s wrong with me?
• Why can’t I tolerate them?

This shame is not yours.
It comes from the collision between reality and fantasy.

7. Even no-contact survivors feel the echo of old conditioning 

Going no-contact removes the danger.
However, it doesn’t immediately erase:

• guilt
• grief
• longing
• old neural pathways
• the fantasy that “maybe this year will be different

The holidays can stir these emotions even years after leaving the family system.

This is normal.

What You Can Do to Navigate the Holidays

1. Set boundaries beforehand

Decide ahead of time:

• How long you’ll stay
• who you’ll sit near
• What topics are off limits
• when and how you will leave

Boundaries are preventative medicine–not emergency care.

2. Stay in your adult self

Before you walk in, gently remind yourself:

• “I am an adult.”
• “Their reactions are not my responsibility.”
• “I can choose what I engage with.”

Your childhood instincts may activate, but your adult self is in charge now.

3. Spend less time than you think you should

Two hours can be healthier than an entire day.

Quality is more important than endurance.

4. Don’t be alone with the most manipulative people

This one simple choice prevents half of the emotional ambushes survivors experience.

5. Have an exit plan

You do not need permission to leave.

Your well-being matters.

How to Navigate Christmas If You’re No-Contact

1. Remember why you chose no-contact

Write it down if needed:

• the abuse
• the manipulation
• the gaslighting
• the emotional toll
• the years of harm

You didn’t leave because you were weak.
You left because you finally became strong.

2. Understand that guilt is conditioning, not truth

Guilt in dysfunctional families is:

• taught
• reinforced
• expected

Feeling guilty does not mean you did anything wrong.

3. Allow grief

Grief for the family you never had is not a sign that you made the wrong choice.
It is a sign your heart is healing.

4. Create new traditions

This rewires your nervous system.

New traditions can be:

• Rodeo on Christmas Day
• quiet dinners
• staying home in pajamas
• candlelight and prayer
• movies
• volunteering
• baking
• going out into nature

Your traditions don’t have to resemble anyone else’s.

On the surface, these lists seem simple. I know from personal experience how much suffering, sorrow, and struggle they represent. It takes time to recover from your holidays, and it takes patience to reclaim peace. You deserve to be able to defy trauma and find joy this holiday season–and all through the year.

Download “How to Spot ‘The One,’ A red flag/green flag roadmap for anyone who wants a love that lasts.” Use the hidden freebie link at:         rebekahlaynebrown.com/freebies

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Photo by Tim Graf on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

Severe, ongoing childhood trauma can cause a person to live with the sense that they are moving through life in a fog. The past overlaps the present. You have no sense of place. You have no sense of the present. You have no sense of time. Decades after leaving your family of origin, emotions do not make sense or connect with reality. You cannot control or regulate them. In my home, I was attacked from both sides. My father, a covert narcissist, ruled with an iron fist—literally. My mother, a borderline, engulfed us with her emotional instability and mental illness. There was no place to turn. The assault on the soul was devastating and total. 

I remained in contact with my parents for a long time. Their warped system and abusive demands never changed. I learned to dissociate. When I came near the system, I played their game. When I was away, I functioned the best way I knew how. The problem was, the same survival mechanism that enabled me to live through abuse was the same one that created the feeling of being frozen in time. 

How Does This Happen?

Let me see if I can illustrate. A house in our neighborhood burned to the ground, and construction to rebuild continues. I noticed the plumber beginning work today. The outside of the house looks perfectly fine, but the inside is still gutted and covered with black soot. No one looking from the outside would have any idea how much work still needs to be done. Being frozen in time is an inside problem. My inner life was torched, and though on the outside, I seemed fine, trauma had frozen my emotions at the point of impact. 

Why Does This Happen?

Ordinary experiences get stored in the brain’s “timeline” (hippocampus) and feel like “that happened back then.” Trauma overwhelms that system and instead stores memory in the amygdala and body as raw sensation, emotion, and image. Because trauma memories are not stored in a linear fashion, when triggered, the body doesn’t recall the past — it relives it as present. 

Our survival brain has no clock. The nervous system isn’t built to timestamp danger. If something felt life-threatening at age five, the body carries it as “still happening now.” That’s why I feel something that happened thirty years ago as vividly as if it happened today. Until I began to heal, I moved through life as if no time existed at all. 

Trying to Make Sense of Chaos

Another aspect of feeling “frozen in time” is repetition and ruminating, feeling stuck and unable to let go of events. I often returned (consciously and unconsciously) to the past to “work it out.”It’s like the mind circling the scene, searching for meaning, hoping that if you replay it enough times you’ll finally feel resolution. Living in the past can also be a way to manage the unbearable present. If “now” feels unsafe, retreating to “then” feels paradoxically familiar, even if it is painful.

The Healing Truth

What my parents communicated was not the truth — it was their own shame and distress projected onto me. They were cowards. Instead of taking responsibility for their own lives, they used coercion and blame in order not to have to face their own pain. Working toward integrating the different parts of dissociation allowed me to reclaim the core my parents tried to erase: the self they told me had no right to exist. Trying to understand what happened, working out grief and feelings of terror takes a long time. There were days when I thought I would not make it—but I did. Is it ever over? I will never be the person I would have been had abuse not marred my life, but I have gotten to the place where peace and joy are possible and where understanding melds with healing. I can defy trauma and embrace joy. You can get there too.

For more from this author or to sign up for a free newsletter, go to: https://rebekahlaynebrown.com/

Photo by Justin Kauffman on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

I watched as the rage my father always carried washed over his face. Turing red, he stared at me with threatening eyes. I immediately looked for a way to back down. I had stepped over the boundary and committed the unpardonable sin—I had expressed a personal opinion that didn’t agree with his. My words were seen as a challenge, and he communicated total compliance without saying a word. 

When that covert narcissist happens to be a parent, the damage they do has lifelong consequences. 

If you have ever had a run-in with a covert narcissist, you will be familiar with this type of behavior. Whether it be a boss, a friend, or a family member, the covert narcissist has an amazing ability to communicate threat in a quiet but clear way. And when that covert narcissist happens to be a parent, the damage they do has lifelong consequences. 

My father laid down total compliance throughout my childhood. In those years, it was easy to assault my personhood using physical, verbal, and emotional abuse because I was trapped with no way to escape. Totally dependent on him, he used my vulnerability and innocence as a way to extend his control. 

Later, as an adult, he used tactics like questioning my decisions, behaving like a gatekeeper of approval, controlling the narrative, and acting as the moral authority to undermine any sense of independence I gained. Whenever I attempted something new, or stumbled into his orbit by sharing my plans, he would predict failure, imply collapse, and undercut my safety—unless, that is, I shored up his narcissistic system. Even then, his approval was doled out in crumbs. I snapped them up like a starving animal, oblivious to what he was up to.

How a Narcissist Tries to Annihilate Their Adult Child

In my adulthood, my father used manipulative behavior to express his displeasure. My son’s graduation from college was another opportunity for my father to ruin an otherwise happy occasion. Having barely survived childhood, I was so relieved and excited to have arrived at such a milestone and could not wait to see my son receive his engineering degree from a prestigious university. Instead of joining in the celebration, at the last minute, my father decided not to show up. I spent the entire ceremony wondering where he was and scanning the crowd in hopes that he had simply sat in the wrong seat. Afterwards, we hastily drove to his house, where he pouted in his bedroom, refusing to come out and speak to me. I cried the entire three-hour drive home. 

You are nothing. I am the center, and you revolve around me

Weeks later, he told me flippantly, “I felt left out, but I was just having a bad day.” No apology, no self-awareness, no understanding of what his behavior had cost me, not to mention the entire family that day. After decades of tolerating his abuse, my emotional life was filled with anxiety and distress. On this day of all days, my father had decided to once again communicate the message: “You exist only in relation to me; without my approval, guidance, or control, you are nothing. I am the center, and you revolve around me. If you step out of my control, you will collapse into nothingness. I will always have the ability to destroy your happiness.”

As a child, survival depended upon appeasing this man. As an adult, I believed my safety and survival still depended on him. After that incident, I finally began to realize that nothing I ever did was going to be enough. Disentangling myself would become a mission. He wasn’t going to change, but I could.

Why Do Narcissists Do This?

Why do narcissists behave like this? It is complicated, but knowing a few reasons why can help alleviate blaming yourself. (Which is what the narcissist wants you to do.)

Fear of Losing Control

-Narcissists see their children as extensions of themselves. When a child grows up and asserts autonomy, the narcissist experiences this as betrayal or abandonment. 

-Threats of annihilation become weapons to keep the child psychologically tethered.

Power Through Fear

-Narcissists lack empathy, so fear is their most reliable way to maintain dominance

-This keeps the adult child in a cycle of anxiety, hesitation, and self-doubt

Projection of Their Own Terror

-Deep down, narcissists live with an unacknowledged fear of annihilation themselves. They fear being irrelevant, abandoned, or exposed.

-They project these fears onto the child and use attacks, threats or emotional blackmail to unload their own inner chaos.

How Covert Narcissistic Tactics Work

Knowledge is power, and nowhere is this truer than in breaking free from the power of a narcissistic parent. Understanding what they are up to is the first step in the healing process. The following may help you distinguish the types of tactics a narcissist uses to establish their destructive dominance, especially toward their children.

-Undermining Confidence and Questioning Reality: “Are you sure that happened?”  Planting doubt so you second-guess yourself.

Minimizing success: “That’s nothing special, anyone could do that.”

Shifting credit: Quietly taking credit for your achievements or framing them as their doing. (My father wanted credit for my son’s achievement. He later came out and said so.)

Withholding & Silent Control, Stonewalling: Refusing to engage, making you feel like you don’t exist unless you comply. Withdrawal of affection. Coldness or indifference as punishment. Strategic silence. Using non-response to keep you uneasy and seeking approval.

Subtle Power Moves, Positioning Themselves as the Expert: Correcting you constantly, even in small ways. Backhanded compliments. “You look good — for once.” Mocking or smirking. Nonverbal ways of belittling that keep them on top without a word spoken.

Playing the Victim, martyr narrative: “After all I’ve done for you…” Fragility as control. Acting wounded by your independence, so you feel guilty for separating. Inverted blame. You are “selfish,” “ungrateful,” or “cruel” if you assert yourself.

Covert Threats forecasting failure: “You’ll regret that” or “You’ll never make it without me.”Implying collapse. Suggesting that your choices will “ruin the family” or “destroy everything.” Undercutting safety. Quietly reminding you that no one else will care for you the way they do.

Placing Themselves in the Seat of Power, Gatekeeping Approval: Making you earn small crumbs of validation. Controlling narratives. Telling others your version of your life so you look unstable or dependent. Acting as the moral authority. Subtly elevating themselves as more righteous, smarter, or “wiser.”

My father never said the words, “I’ll annihilate you,” but that was the hidden message driving his interactions with me. Recently spending time in deep, inner healing work, my therapist asked me, “Can you remember a single time your father ever did anything out of love for you?” I thought for several minutes, and to my shock, I could not think of a single time. Even things that appeared good were done to shore up his narcissistic system or make himself look better. If you find yourself trying to break free of a powerful narcissistic parent, don’t give up. It is difficult, but possible, even necessary in order to reclaim the life that should be yours. Defy trauma, embrace joy.

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Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

Survivors of childhood trauma have an additional burden—the burden of the past.

Life takes a toll on everybody, whether you are a survivor of childhood trauma or not. Some days, I feel like I am juggling ten thousand different balls, desperately trying to keep them all in the air. Responsibilities press in, and before I know it, I am underwater, unable to deal with one more thing. Do you ever feel like that?

Survivors of childhood trauma have an additional burden—the burden of the past. Childhood trauma is not only attached to our memories; it lives in the present, actively influencing our choices, feelings, and relationships right now.

As a twelve-year-old, I remember the feeling of dread whenever I was around my mother. She was an unpleasable tyrant. Spewing her emotional damage onto me, she used every tool available to unload her shame and communicated a kind of learned hopelessness to her children. No matter what you did, it was never enough. Life was dark and dreary to her, and she forced her children to agree with that assessment. Was it a conscious choice? I do not know. I only know that everywhere she went, the dark cloud of dread and fear went with her.

She used every tool available to unload her shame and communicated a kind of learned hopelessness to her children.

Out shopping at the local department store one day, my mother’s brows drew into a frown as she assessed my twelve-year-old choice of a new outfit. “That’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen,” she growled. I wanted to look like the other kids and hoped my mother would finally allow me to adopt a more middle-school age-appropriate outfit. That was not to be. Choosing from a different rack, she held up a dress that would make me look like a giant toddler. My face flamed in embarrassment at the sight of it. “This is what we’re going to get.” And that’s exactly what happened.

A narcissistic covert family system is a place where people are broken in spirit

Ever seeking to keep me under her thumb, she exerted control over every aspect of my life. She did everything in her power to make sure I was ostracized and shamed. In and of itself, a disagreement about clothing doesn’t sound very traumatic or even that unusual. But the covert nature of childhood trauma is just that—covert. It isn’t about one seemingly insignificant incident. It is about the silent message. “You don’t matter. I am the one in control, and I am going to shame you whether you like it or not.” These small encounters day after day, year after year, add up to thousands upon thousands of demeaning, insulting attacks on personhood. It is incessant, it is powerful, and it is destructive.

This is why inner healing is so important. A narcissistic covert family system is a place where people are broken in spirit. In the deepest places of the heart, it is the goal of this type of family system to make people feel like life is a threat and will always be unmanageable. You will always be a failure, and giving up is your only option. The narcissist wants you to give up because it gives them the power they so crave, as well as temporary relief from their own emotional turmoil. All this without having to take the slightest personal responsibility for anything they do.

When you delve into the depths of inner healing, it will be the hardest thing you ever do, and the most wonderful. Used to dealing with surface behavior and feelings, inner healing goes to the heart of the matter. What link do my feelings have with the past? Why do I feel so much threat when there is nothing wrong in the present? Why does this situation trigger me into so much despair? These are the types of questions inner healing seeks to answer.

I chose an example of covert abuse when I was twelve for a reason. It was at the age of twelve that I split off and began coping with the trauma of my family by shifting all of the sorrow and suffering onto the shoulders of my twelve-year-old self. I lived a separate life at school and let the twelve-year-old carry the burden of all the early childhood trauma and all the trauma that would continue through high school, college, and into adulthood. Whenever I couldn’t cope, I would send all those emotions to that split-off part. Splitting gave me the ability to survive, but there came a time when the twelve-year-old had had enough. And that was when inner healing had to begin.

Instead of piling more abuse onto that twelve-year-old, I had to listen to what she had to say. Instead of hating her, I needed to thank her for helping me survive. I needed to make friends with her and tell her that she didn’t need to carry all that suffering anymore. She wasn’t alone. And more than anything else, I needed her to understand and believe in the deepest part of her heart that she was no longer living in that abusive house. Her parents had been liars, and they did not have any power over her anymore. It was safe to come out into the sunshine.

That’s what inner healing looks like. I wish it for every survivor with all my heart. We deserve to be well. We deserve to be at peace and most of all, we the joy that comes with inner healing. Defy trauma embrace joy.

Inner healing resources:

Forward Facing Trauma Therapy, by Eric Gentry, available on Amazon

Trauma Coping System, dissociation as a response to pain and intolerable conflict, by Melissa Finger, available on Amazon

Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

My father finally died a few months ago. Survivors will understand the word finally. I thought he would never die. Billy Joel’s song “Only the Good Die Young” was certainly true in this situation. I had gone no contact about seven years before, but the shadow of power this man wielded over my life continued, whether I was in contact with him or not. I even moved all the way across the country to put space between me and him. Space between the present and the past. The constructed reality he demanded everyone agree with, the dominating presence where no voice save his was heard, the judgmental pronouncements of doom and gloom over your life, the complete lack of understanding or empathy. These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

And when he died, instead of the relief I felt at my mother’s passing, a terrible door that had been shut for over sixty years was opened. The parts of me from childhood that had split off and carried the load felt free to come forward, and it was hard. Hard to face them, hard to talk to them, and hard to become an ally to them instead of an enemy. 

There are no words to describe the damage and loss that occur when your parents choose the path of narcissism. To their very grave, my parents never had the slightest inkling of self-awareness or took any personal responsibility. In fact, my sibling and I were “disinherited.” The old threat to keep me within my father’s orbit finally came true. For me, I could understand it; I walked away years ago. But for my sibling who provided for my father financially and took care of his ex-wife, our mother, who otherwise would have been homeless, it was a low blow. Yet again, the narcissist showed his true colors. It did not matter what you did for the man; he did not know how to do anything other than hurt us. His final message? “You are worthless.” 

But I survived, and guess what? My father was wrong. It took everything I had to slog through the twisted spider web of lies he had spun. I spent decades trying to understand, reaching toward the truth that seemed to dissipate into mist at the slightest stress. To quiet the dissonance in my mind, heart, and soul. I used every technique and read every book I could get my hands on, but you know what? I made it. I have written a new chapter, established new relationships, and I walk in truth. What does the Bible say? The truth will set you free? Yep, that’s what it says. I can wonder at the joy in life, pursue dreams and goals I never thought reachable, and more than anything else, I can finish well, leaving a legacy of peace, encouragement, and kindness to my children. 

I pity my mother and father. They never knew how wonderful life could be. It is still hard sometimes, I suppose I will always bear the scars to a certain degree, but I made it. I made it out, and I am so thankful I did not give up. Defy trauma, embrace joy. It is worth it.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

~The Intractable Nature of Fear and Anxiety in the life of a childhood trauma survivor

Since I can’t possibly know what life is like through another person’s eyes, I can only speak for myself. Having said that, childhood trauma survivors have a lot in common. It doesn’t matter what our particular brand of abuse was; the effects are universal. And two of those effects are fear and anxiety. I hate them. I hate dealing with them. I hate feeling them. Just when I think I’ve put them to bed, up they pop…yet again. It is frustrating to work so hard on healing only to find the same old twin struggles still getting in the way of living life.

The usual trigger, stress, isn’t the only catalyst. Happiness can be just as bad. In my childhood, happiness was a signal that something terrible was about to happen. 

Why do abusive narcissists constantly try to snatch happiness away? Why does a celebration, holiday, achievement, or happy event become a chance to create chaos, fear, and anxiety among family members? 

Sitting on my back porch in southern Arizona, contemplating these questions, I looked up into the beautiful Arizona sky. There is no sky like it on Earth. A huge, unobstructed horizon, blue a robin’s egg and filled with glorious, puffy clouds, greeted me. My porch faces the back of a set of boring duplex housing units like my own. A few scattered bushes, orange trees, and blades of grass dot the landscape. I live among the retirement set. No one plays loud music, has a dog off-leash, or ever creates a ruckus. Status quo peace and quiet are the name of the game around here. 

For the last two days, the monsoon season broke the monotony. Kicking up the wind, storms brought that rarest of desert treats—rain, along with brilliant sunsets and sweeping cloud cover. Having passed us by, all that was left was the wind. It continued to whip up my porch curtains and set the mesquite trees atremble. 

Suddenly, I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. From out of nowhere, far down and to the right, a giant beach ball rolled between duplexes and into the common area. The size of a Volkswagen, the ball was clear but covered in bright swirls of color. I sat straight up. Who in the world owned a beach ball like that? Especially here? Lifted on the wind, it bounced high into the air and disappeared behind a ficus tree. I’ve got to get a picture of that! Hurrying to the carport, I jumped into my wheelchair and took off toward the back of the house and down into the common area. There was no beach ball to be found. I looked around. An old lady sat in the sun, oblivious to the world, much less to rogue beach balls. 

The joy that had made such a sudden appearance now left only questions. Where was the owner? Where was the beach ball? Joy in the life of a childhood trauma survivor is just about as big an anomaly as a giant beach ball in a retirement community and just as elusive.

At the center of my heart is a core of fear and anxiety that I have found extremely difficult to dislodge. In my morning meditation, I came across the following: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Punishment-exactly what I lived under in the home I grew up in. My parents hated joy. My father, ever filled with gloom and doom, always wanted to crush any feeling of happiness anyone might have. My mother hated a celebration more than anyone I have ever met. When asking my brother to put his finger on what was wrong with our family, he summed it up to the lack of love. I think he was right.

Just like that beach ball, the harder I chase joy, the more elusive it becomes. I cannot force fear and anxiety to leave me alone. Instead, I must be willing to release control. When I do that, fear and anxiety lose their platform and up pops the joy. It seems counterintuitive. 

Why do abusive narcissists snatch happiness away? Because controlling everything gives them a false sense of power. It doesn’t matter who they hurt or how much they destroy. They must have control at all costs, and if I want to send fear and anxiety to the pit of hell where they belong, I must release control and let the joy come quietly bouncing into life. Sounds simple. I know it isn’t, but I’m going to catch that beach ball if it’s the last thing I do. Defy trauma, embrace joy.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

I opened the top of my prescription bottle and looked inside. There were only three little, round pills left. Xanax was more valuable to me than gold. I was seeing a psychiatrist for depression, and besides the anti-depressants that didn’t seem to be working, he had prescribed a miracle drug—Xanax. I could be in the middle of my worst anxiety attack, mind racing, stomach churning, heart thumping, and one little Xanax made it all disappear. Setting the bottle on the kitchen counter near the trash can, I went to get dressed. When I started to walk out the door, I couldn’t find my pill bottle. Panic shot through my stomach. Where had I put them? I thought I had left them on the counter! Where was my Xanax? There were only a few left, and I had already been planning how to dole them out. I couldn’t lose them altogether. Where was my Xanax! 

I heard my husband turning on the shower. “Matt!” I screeched. “Did you see my pill bottle on the counter?”

“I dunno,” he said nonchalantly. “I cleaned up the kitchen this morning and took out the trash. Maybe they accidentally got thrown away.”

Racing to the curb, I hefted the trash bag from the bin and ripped it open. Glops of spaghetti, old coffee grinds, and filters mixed with disgusting potato peels covered everything. I didn’t care. I had to find that prescription. I began taking out wadded pieces of paper, old cereal boxes, and plastic lids, littering them along the driveway. Finally, all the way down at the bottom, I caught a flash of white. It was the top of my pill bottle. Breathlessl,y I grabbed it and held it close. I heard the comforting chink of the pills inside. Thank God I had noticed they were missing before the trash guys came by.

That was the day I realized I had a problem. I would have done anything to get those pills. The fact that I had gotten so upset was an indicator of just how dependent upon them I had become. A worse indicator was the fact that they were losing their oomph. I was upping the dosage and mixing them with alcohol to get that smooth, sustained relief, and even that wasn’t working anymore. I knew I was reaching dangerous levels, but I couldn’t stop. Therein lies the problem. Benzodiazepines give temporary relief to anxiety, but as soon as the drug wears off, the anxiety comes roaring back. In addition, benzodiazepines lose their potency over time. 

When you’re in a really bad place, medication can save your life. But if you are not careful, it can also kill you. Imagine suffering from constant, torturous terror and finding one little pill that will instantly turn it off. No wonder I thought I had discovered a miracle.

Looking back at one of my journal entries from that time, I know why I was beginning to be swallowed by the vortex of addiction. 

“I feel so depressed this Christmas,” I wrote. “Why do I have to have such a screwed-up family? I’ve been having thoughts of taking my life a lot, lately, everything feels hopeless. How I wish I’d never been born. I just don’t know how I’m going to do life. I’m just no good at it. I feel so bad all the time. I’m afraid. I’m afraid all of the time. Things will never be any different for me.”

The holidays have a way of bringing angst and sorrow to the surface. The holidays put us back in the past with all of the abusive demands and expectations. One way survivors of childhood trauma try to cope is by using outside sources to soothe all those raw emotions, in effect, numbing them out. We use drugs, alcohol, food, busyness, work, and a thousand other things to keep us from feeling. In the end, those things are only a temporary fix and are not only emotionally dangerous but can also be physically dangerous. 

Eventually, numbing will not work, and if you are engaged in healing, addictions and numbing habits only get in the way. Instead of numbing out this holiday season, try to put in protective boundaries. Don’t participate in the usual crazy. Know going in that your family is not going to change, but you have the power to make a different choice. You can limit the time you spend with them or cut it out altogether. You can choose safe and uplifting friends to spend time with. You can host a holiday party or dinner for people who don’t have family. You can create your own family. Allow yourself time to grieve what you do not have, but don’t stay there. Look around. Perhaps there are opportunities you never thought about to change the way you approach the holiday season. It’s important to your spirit to celebrate in a real way. You deserve a holiday season filled with joy and it is possible to make small steps toward that. Defy trauma, embrace joy. 

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

Wait a minute, weren’t Thanksgiving and Christmas just last week? Here they come again. Celebration doesn’t mix well with trauma. Everyone talks about the busyness of the season as a source of stress, but for survivors of childhood trauma, the struggle with the holidays has much deeper implications.

Memories from the past come to the surface. Emotional damage and conditioning push our default button. While everyone else is drinking hot cocoa and eating turkey, we are filled with despair and hopelessness. The loneliness of our childhood is only exacerbated by all the togetherness. If we are still in contact with our family, there is the additional stress of figuring out how to deal with them without going into a major depression. If we have gone no contact, we must deal with the guilt and obligation made worse by holiday expectations.

My family of origin had so many strange demands and behaviors associated with the holidays that the “celebration” became nothing but a source of dread. Even when I broke away from the family system, it took a long time not to be haunted by the memories and the brainwashing. We had everything backwards.

By rejecting the giver, gift-giving was a way to pile on more abuse. I once dragged a framed page from a book printed in the 1500s all the way from Europe as a present for my father. Knowing he was a history buff, I thought I had found the perfect present. He returned it to me, saying he didn’t have room for it on the wall. The silent message was always, “You’re as worthless as your gifts.” Nothing is ever the right size or the right color or the right choice. 

You can never do enough. You didn’t help enough with the dinner. You didn’t stay long enough at the party. You didn’t do enough to make me happy, and on and on and on. The same old abusive pattern goes on steroids during the holidays. No wonder childhood trauma survivors struggle with celebrations. 

I enjoy paper crafting. I recently found a wonderful YouTube channel called “Treasure Books.” They’ve given me so many ideas that I can’t stop myself. Because they take a lot of creativity and time to make, I’m having a hard time giving any of them away. But what am I going to do with twenty crafted “treasure books?” Keep them for me so they can go to waste?

That’s exactly what narcissists do with the holidays. They keep everything for themselves. Using manipulation and harassment, they demand control. What they want is narcissistic supply, and they will get it no matter how much it costs. Feeding off your confusion and sadness, they like to create an uproar.

Abusers take and take and take, thus destroying the holiday for what it should be. As survivors, we don’t have to live like this anymore. It’s not too late to take your celebration back. In fact, it’s high time you did!

We can be at peace with the way our family behaves by not participating in the old expectations anymore. Separate yourself from the system. I like to think of ways I can serve safe people who are willing to receive what I have to give. I no longer try to please an unpleasant master. Everyone was a loser when I participated in that game.

No matter how beautiful my crafted treasure books are, they don’t do anybody any good sitting on my desk. It is in giving that we receive. We must be careful with whom we entrust the most precious gift of all…the gift of ourselves. Don’t waste your holidays on people who only want to hurt you. Create a new holiday, and celebrate with all your heart. You’ve suffered long enough. Let this year be different. Defy trauma embrace joy

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

I twirled around, causing the skirt of my best Sunday dress to flair out in a way that delighted my four-year-old sensibilities. It was 1966, and my black patent leather Mary Jane’s made a wonderful clacking sound on the creaky oak floors of the sanctuary. The problem was I was supposed to be sitting in my seat. My father scowled at me from the pulpit. Mrs. Wagoner, a wonderful, kindly old widow, had been tasked with watching me that Sunday morning, but try as she might, she couldn’t convince me to sit down. For some reason I cannot remember, my mother was not in attendance at the service that day. 

I did not want to sit in the hard pews and listen to another one of my father’s long, boring sermons. I wanted to twirl and watch the pleated columns of my skirt float around me like the ballerinas I so admired. Mrs. Wagoner finally enticed me back into the pew with a stick of fragrant fun stripe chewing gum.

After the service, I stood on the stoop of the church in abject shame as, one by one, the congregation filed by, waiting to shake my father’s hand. “Good sermon,” a man said as he looked at me in pity. “Your little girl has a lot of spirit.” The man gave me a weak smile, but I only stared at the ground and tried to disappear behind my father’s black suit. 

As soon as the service had ended, my father had made a beeline straight for me. His familiar look of rage communicated just how much trouble I was in. Grabbing me by the arm, he gritted his teeth and growled into my ear, “You’re getting a whipping when we get home.”

I knew I deserved it. I was bad through and through to the core of my being. I was the most wicked girl that had ever lived. Why did I constantly cause so much trouble everywhere I went? I looked over at my older brother by eighteen months. He was perfect. Able to sit for interminable amounts of time without moving a muscle or saying a word, I could not understand why I could not be like him. Why was it so hard for me to get through the Sunday morning service? Not only had I failed to sit still, I had committed the unpardonable sin. I had made my father look bad, and I had done it in front of the people he most wanted to impress—the church congregation. 

One by one, the congregants filed by until it was poor Mrs. Wagoner’s turn. She tried to defend me as she placed her white-gloved hand into my father’s. “She’s just a little girl,” the old lady clucked. Reaching over, she gently touched my hair. “Don’t be too hard on her.”

Mrs. Wagoner could not imagine what awaited me when we got home. No one in the congregation could. I would get a beating within an inch of my life. I don’t remember ever moving during a church service again after that day. 

To outsiders, we were the perfect family—my father, gregarious and socially adept, covered for my mother’s awkward introversion. Pillars of the community, my father was a bi-vocational pastor and a successful businessman. My mother, an elementary school teacher and avid homemaker, was famous throughout the community for her amazing rose garden and specialty Christmas cakes. But underneath the surface, a boiling rage ran through our household. My father was a monster, and my brother and I were terrified of him. Beatings were dispensed at the slightest infraction. No emotion, expression, or individuality was allowed. He and he alone ruled the household, and he did so literally as an iron-fisted tyrant. 

My mother was just as dangerous. Perhaps more so. Unstable, you never knew what might set her off. Filled with unexpressed anger from my father’s dominance, she took her frustrations out on her children. In addition to physical abuse, my mother perpetrated the most damaging abuse of all. Warped from her own sexual abuse, she, in turn, abused us. Even your body was not your own in our household. She played endless mind games where emotional torture and threats were her favorite tools. Constantly fearing for our lives, my brother and I lived in the shadows, sneaking from room to room, hoping our parents would not notice our existence. Staying out of the way was the only way to survive. The trouble was that I couldn’t figure out how to do that. My brother, however, was stellar at it. No matter how much he tried to protect me, I somehow managed to be in the way. He would look at me with compassion while I took another beating or sidle up to me in sympathy as my mother, fists balled,  screamed at me for some small mistake. 

The abuse seems so clear as I describe it now, but I emerged from that home at the age of eighteen, still thinking we were not only perfect, we were better than other people. My father was the authority on all things. His opinion held special importance because he had more insight than anyone else. My mother couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t as wonderful as she was and why the accolades she deserved had never come her way. My home might as well have been called a mind-control cult because that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t until much later, when the wheels came off that I began to see the truth, and that truth would come to me in stages as my mind and emotions were able to handle it.

Middle-Knowledge

Dealing with childhood trauma takes time. When your mind is shattered and your emotions a wasteland, there is a place that trauma survivors live called middle-knowledge.(footnote 1, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy by William Wordan, pg 44). Middle knowledge means knowing and not knowing at the same time. Underneath the surface, I knew that my parent’s behavior was off, but I put that knowledge away. To fully embrace the truth was too great a threat to my existence. My father and mother and the constructed reality they ran held complete control over my thoughts and actions. To step outside of that system would be to call down the most disastrous consequences possible. Dread and fear are powerful ways to control other people, and my father and mother wielded those tools with exact precision. 

Underneath all these power plays lay the worst threat of all. The threat to withdraw love. Abandonment hung over everything my parents did. If I refused total compliance, I would be shunned, cut off, and thrown out with the dogs. Love was never unconditional, and the carrot of acceptance was like a disappearing vapor that I could never quite grasp. 

My abusers used a two-pronged approach. Do everything you can to undermine the self-confidence of your victim while at the same time convincing them they cannot live without the abuser’s control. 

I lived over half my life before I began to make significant strides toward healing. My twenties, thirties, and forties were spent in survival mode. By the time the suffering was so severe I was forced to address it, I had lost over five decades. So much time had passed. My children were raised, my career path chosen, all the major decisions of life had been made, and I had stumbled through it all with trauma undermining my every thought and decision. It was too late! Too late to be a better parent! Too late to be an encouraging partner! Too late to follow my dreams! Too late to be happy and too late to heal! Or was it?

We took my mother out to eat on one of my last visits with her. She was at the beginning of twenty years of institutionalization that would define the last years of her life. For ten years before that, I had tried to deal with her mental illness expressed through panic, rages, control, manipulation, blame, and coercion. Nothing I did made any difference. She was completely lost. Her life had fallen apart after my father left and divorced her, and though she lived in a beautiful home, she could not manage her money or her life. Inch by inch, the darkness completely took over. The torment of knowing her in the present was just as destructive as her abuse had been in childhood.

My husband, my two college-age sons, and I sat together with my mother in a booth at the restaurant. She had aged a hundred years since I’d last seen her. The wild-eyed hunted look that used to come and go had taken up permanent residence. My children looked at her in fear. She was so odd. Later, on the drive home, my oldest son commented. “That was the closest to meeting Gollum I have ever been in real life.” And indeed, that’s what she had become. A wizened, withered shell of a person existing but not living. I cried all the way home.

The eternal flame of hope that somehow, some way, my family of origin might return to that idyllic perfection I had been brain-washed to believe in finally began to die. My mother was never going to get better. Things were never going to return to the secure delusion I so longed for. She was never going to comprehend the destruction she had wrought in my life, and worst of all, I was never going to be released from the prison of trauma that so pervaded everything because both my parents were still participating in it and in fact would keep participating in it until the day they died.

I felt condemned to repeat the dysfunctional patterns forever. Terrified I would destroy the lives of my children and haunt their adulthood as she had mine, I began to consider what to do. I felt lost, just as lost as my mother had been. I couldn’t control my emotions or anxiety any better than she had. Terror ran my life, and I knew it had already had a major impact on my children. But I wasn’t dead…not yet. My mother had resigned from life. I, at least, was still in the game.

It is never too late to heal from trauma. In fact, it is imperative that you take up arms and heed the call to do so no matter what life stage you are in. You have been given a mission, and you alone are the only one who can fulfill it. Within your grasp is the ability to break the transfer of trauma from one generation to the next. Your choices have a profound influence on the world. Perhaps you think your little life doesn’t matter. I can assure you it does. You have the chance to be a blessing or a curse. To leave behind anger and hatred and give the gift of peace and kindness. It is a gigantic task and one that can feel overwhelming. Where in the world do you begin? You begin where you are. Whether you are eighteen or eighty, if you take one small step toward healing, you will be starting at exactly the right place.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.