Hi.
I said I’d keep this space real — and this is one of the hardest truths I know.
I don’t have this part of parenting figured out. Not even close. The part where your toddler is mid-tantrum, her voice piercing the air, the world closing in around you. Where your body tenses, your breath shortens, and everything in you is begging for calm — but calm feels miles away.
Some days I manage it.
Some days I don’t.
I love my little girl more than I can ever put into words. But when she’s screaming — red-faced, furious, sobbing over something small — I can feel something heavy rise inside me. It’s not anger at her. It’s panic. It’s my body remembering what it felt like to be in noise that meant danger, in chaos that never ended.
Because parenting with trauma in your body is different.
It’s not just patience and deep breaths. It’s wrestling with the ghosts that live in your nervous system — the ones that don’t understand this noise is safe.
When she cries, it’s not just her sound I hear — it’s echoes of the past. My body reacts before I can tell it not to. My chest tightens, my heart races, my thoughts blur. I’m no longer just the mum trying to calm her daughter — I’m the child I used to be, trapped in sounds I couldn’t escape.
It’s not anger at her. It never is.
It’s survival — my body remembering, tightening, bracing. Wanting to rid us both of all pain — even though she’s just three and heartbroken because I didn’t hand her the pink pencil.
And sometimes, I shout.
I hate admitting that, but it’s true.
Sometimes the noise becomes too much — her screams, my thoughts, the ache for it to stop. And I burst. I shout for silence, desperate for relief, desperate for calm.
It’s not rage — it’s desperation.
A plea for everything to just still, even for a second.
And then it’s quiet.
She looks at me — startled, small, confused — and the guilt crashes in. The silence I wanted suddenly hurts.
I drop down beside her. I hold her. I breathe. And then I do what I never received growing up — I explain.
“Mummy got very frustrated and very sad. I shouldn’t have shouted. I’m sorry. I love you. I will always try my best.”
And she always forgives me faster than I forgive myself.
That’s the hardest part.
She’ll wipe her tears, climb into my lap, and rest her little hand on my cheek. And in that moment, I know she’s learning something different — that love doesn’t disappear when it’s tested. That even when voices rise, there can still be softness after.
But I still sit with the ache. I still replay it later — the noise, the guilt, the shame. I still question if I’m enough, if my past will always have a say in how I mother.
Parenting while healing feels like walking a tightrope.
You’re balancing your child’s emotions in one hand and your own history in the other — both fragile, both real, both demanding compassion.
I try to remind myself: my triggers don’t make me a bad mum. They just mean I’m healing in real time. They mean I’m trying to raise my daughter in a world softer than the one that raised me.
I keep trying to notice the burn before it becomes a blaze — to take a breath before the shout, to lower my shoulders, to ground myself. I don’t always catch it, but I’m learning. Slowly.
Sometimes when she’s asleep, laying on my lap, I stroke her hair and whisper promises into the dark:
That I’ll keep trying.
That I’ll keep healing.
That I’ll always make it safe to come back to love.
Because that’s what I’m really trying to do — to turn the noise that once hurt me into something that teaches her gentleness, even when it trembles.
If you’re a mum reading this — if you’ve shouted, cried, and felt the deep, quiet guilt that follows — you’re not alone.
You’re not failing.
You’re healing while parenting. And that’s an act of courage.
The goal isn’t to be perfectly calm.
It’s to come back to calm.
To repair. To model softness after rupture.
Maybe that’s what motherhood really is —
learning to hold your child’s chaos and your own pain, and just keep going.
Speak soon,
Lia
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