Adoptive Mama: Handle Your Stuff

Hey mama, if your children do not see you handling your own emotional burdens, they will not trust you can handle theirs.

Our kids have emotional burdens, no matter how wonderfully we (think we & want to) show up for them. Our kids are wise & intuitive.

They can sense if we are not handling our own stuff, and we ALL have stuff. None of us have arrived.

I’ll never forget one of my kids (who is no longer with us) saying she wanted to go home; then asking me why she wanted to be with me (foster mama) AND her {adoptive} mama AND her birth mama? “I want to go home, to mama & baba, but I want us to all live together, can we do that?” Another time during an intense dysregulation moment she screamed about how much she hated me. Multiple of my kids have done this.

If I am not secure in my own stuff + spot in this world, it’s easy to take this personally + react.

Our kids have a lot warring inside of them, & we’ve got to take care of our own STUFF so we can show up for them in their pained, scary spaces of questioning + confusion.

You hear about kids not born to us screaming “I want to be with my REAL mom!” in a parents face in the thick of conflict. If we as their mama aren’t working thru our own STUFF, we will take these moments & make them about us instead of seeing what’s actually happening in our kids hearts & minds.

Are any of us perfect? Noooope. Will our hearts ache along the way? For sure. Can we continue to show up & dig into different pieces of ourselves? Yes & we must!

Do you feel you have enough support unpacking your stuff on a consistent basis? What’s your favorite way to work through your own pain & childhood traumas?