Ep 181: Breaking the Chain- Parenting Your Children and Yourself

Do you ever catch yourself responding to your child in a way that stops you cold? I work with so many brilliant, self-aware, deeply caring women who are doing everything they can to be good moms—including investing in coaching and doing their own healing work. And yet, there are patterns so deeply ingrained in our nervous system that they surface without us even realizing it.

In this episode, I share three stories about women doing the difficult and courageous work of breaking generational patterns. These women are parenting their children differently than they were parented, and in doing so, they are learning to parent themselves as well.

When we heal ourselves, we change more than just our own lives. We change the trajectory for our children and the generations that will follow. This is how chains get broken, one imperfect, compassionate moment at a time.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there, welcome back to Your Favorite You. 

I'm still Melissa Parsons, and again, I'm so grateful that you're here again with me today. I want to talk about something that comes up in my coaching work over and over again. This is something that I see in brilliant, self-aware, deeply caring women who are doing everything they can do to be good moms. 

It happens the moment when you catch yourself responding to your child in a way that stops you cold. Because you just heard your mother's voice come out of your mouth, or you felt your father's impatience move through your body, or you recognize a pattern so familiar, it's almost invisible because it's been there your whole life. 

Today, I'm going to share three stories from my coaching work with names and identifying details changed to protect privacy about women who are in the beautiful, difficult, courageous work of breaking generational patterns. 

These women are parenting their children differently than they were parented. And in doing so, they are parenting themselves as well. Here's what I've learned. When we heal ourselves, we can change everything, not just for us, for our kids and for their kids after them. 

And this is how generational chains get broken. So I'm going to tell you about Janet. Janet is a brilliant, caring, and deeply self-aware woman who is doing her own healing work. She came to a recent coaching session with something that had been sitting heavily on her. 

She and her daughter Lily had been at a restaurant. Lily got hurt. It was nothing serious, but she was upset and needed comfort. Now, Lily was kind of being a little bit crazy at the restaurant, jumping around, not having typical restaurant behavior. 

And Janet's first response before she could catch herself was annoyance, not concern, not asking, are you okay, sweetie? Annoyance. And the moment she noticed it, she felt the shame wash over her because she knew exactly where that annoyance came from. 

When Janet was younger, when she was a teenager and struggling emotionally, as all teenagers do, her mother's response was, what's wrong now? Not curiosity, not compassion, just what's wrong now? As if Janet's emotions were an inconvenience, a burden, something to be managed rather than felt. 

Janet had spent years doing her own healing work. She knew this pattern was there, but she didn't know that she was perpetuating it with her daughter. And here it was showing up at the restaurant when her daughter needed her. 

Here's what I want you to hear. This is not failure. This is not proof that all the work that Janet has done so far means nothing. This is exactly how healing works. We don't just work on a pattern once and it's gone forever. 

We're human. These responses are wired into our nervous systems. They live in our bodies. They come out before our conscious mind even has a chance to catch them sometimes. What matters and what makes Janet extraordinary is what she did next. 

Here's the part that gave me chills when she shared it on our call. Janet didn't wait to be coached on this. She didn't bring it to our session and ask, what should I do? She had already done the repair on her own before we even got on the call. 

When they got home from the restaurant, she realized what had happened and she apologized to Lily. She explained the pattern. She was honest with her daughter in an age-appropriate way about where this response had come from. 

And do you know what Lily said? She asked Janet if this is how grandma treated Janet. Just let that land for a moment. A child, a 12-year-old, connecting the dots across generations, understanding instinctively that what happens to us shapes how we show up, and that her mom was doing the work to make sure that the chain stopped here. 

This is what I want you to hear about Janet's story and understand. The coaching isn't just what happens on our calls. It's who Janet's becoming between the calls. She has so deeply internalized the importance of rupture and repair in her relationships that she didn't need me to tell her what to do. 

She already knew. She already did it. That's what this work creates. Women who trust themselves enough to take action, women who love their kids enough to be humble and honest, women who are committed enough to break the chain that they don't wait for permission. 

In our coaching session, we then were able to work on developing compassion for the part of her that felt ashamed and embarrassed in that moment at the restaurant. That part makes complete sense. She grew up in an environment where her emotions weren't safe, where having feelings was a problem. 

Of course, a part of her learned to respond to emotional expression with annoyance. That part was just trying to do what she learned to do. The homework that I gave Janet was this. Try to go back to those wounded parts of yourself, the teenage Janet, whose emotions were treated as inconveniences, and offer her the comfort she needed then, but she didn't receive. 

Be with yourself in the ways your mom wasn't able to be with you. That conversation between Janet and Lily, that's what breaking a generational pattern looks like. It's not perfect. It's not clean. It's a moment of rupture followed by repair, followed by honest conversation, followed by growth. 

That's the work. And Janet is doing it beautifully. Now I'm going to tell you about Michelle. These, all three of these happened on the same call. So Michelle has a daughter named Emma who is big. She's loud. 

She's confident. She's unapologetically herself. She's not old. She's five, but she's big. She takes up space without apologizing for it. She knows what she wants. She says what she thinks, and she doesn't shrink for anyone. 

And Michelle, who spent most of her life doing the opposite, has complicated feelings about this. On one hand, she has a part that absolutely admires it. She sees in Emma the freedom she herself has never quite felt. 

The ability to be fully, completely, unabashedly yourself without constantly monitoring how you're being perceived. On the other hand, she has a part that's triggered by Emma's bigness and loudness and confidence. 

And this can make Michelle want to shrink even further, or worse, to try to shrink Emma. Here's what came up in our coaching. Emma was in a situation with a lady that she once knew when she was younger, but who's now a stranger. 

Emma didn't recognize this lady. And Emma chose not to be polite, quote unquote, in the traditional sense. She was appropriately cautious, setting a boundary, trusting her instincts. And Michelle's first instinct was to criticize her for it, not to celebrate it, not to say, I'm proud of you for trusting yourself, but to criticize her. 

And when we explored this in coaching, what we found is Michelle is at least in part, a part of Michelle is jealous of Emma. And I want to say that gently because being jealous of your own child sounds terrible. 

It sounds like something that we should be ashamed of, but it's actually incredibly human and incredibly understandable. You see, Michelle spent her whole life learning to make herself smaller, to be polite even when she didn't want to be, to prioritize other people's comfort over her own instincts. 

And here is her daughter, doing the thing that Michelle has always wanted to do and could never quite let herself do. Of course, that's complicated. The work for Michelle isn't to change Emma. 

The work is to get curious about what it would mean for Michelle to take up a little bit more space herself, to let Emma be her teacher, as all good kids are. They're our best teachers, right? To look at her daughter's boldness and instead of feeling threatened or triggered, think, look what I gave her. 

Look what I created. And maybe, just maybe I can learn from her too. The other piece of Michelle's work is this, learning to admire herself for being in the difficulty of parenting, especially during the ruptures, especially when she doesn't get it quite right. 

Here's the truth: Parenting can be hard. It doesn't always go perfectly. There are moments of rupture in every parent-child relationship. What matters isn't whether the rupture happens, because it will. 

What matters is the repair. And Michelle is in it. She's doing the hard thing. She's showing up even when it's messy and complicated and triggering. She's definitely not running away from the difficulty. 

The reframe I offered her was this. Instead of thinking, I should be better at this by now, try, this is hard and I'm doing it. Not I'm doing it perfectly, just I'm doing it. That's enough. That is the work. 

Okay, now I'm going to tell you about Stevie. This also happened on the same call. Stevie has a grown daughter. Let's call her Kate. Kate is very self-aware, confident, internally motivated. Stevie's daughter, Kate, doesn't need external validation to feel good about herself. 

She has an internalized sense of pride and self-worth that guides her. In our coaching, we were exploring where that came from. And what emerged was this. Kate has those qualities because it was the water she was swimming in. 

Stevie created an environment where self-worth and self-awareness were the air that Kate breathed growing up. And here's the thing that's really important. Stevie didn't receive that from her own mother. 

She grew up without that modeling. She grew up without that unconditional, internalized sense of worth. And she gave her daughter something she herself never had. And when that landed, and I mean really landed in our session, I watched something shift in Stevie. 

She hadn't fully claimed it before. She hadn't let her say, I did this. I broke this chain. I gave my daughter what I never received. And it worked. And that's because of who I am and the choices that I made as a mother. 

So I said it to her directly. You did an awesome job raising a very self-aware and wonderful young woman. And it's because of who you are. Let that sink in. Sometimes breaking the chain doesn't look like a dramatic moment of rupture and repair. 

Sometimes it looks like decades of quiet, intentional choices that you didn't even fully recognize you were making. One day you look back at your child and you see the evidence of all those choices reflected back at you. 

Stevie didn't know she was breaking a generational pattern. She was just trying to be a good mom. She was just trying to give Kate exactly what she herself had needed as a child, and she did it. Three women, three completely different stories, three different places in the journey, all happening Wednesdays at 1 p.m. 

Janet's in the middle of it, catching the pattern in real time, trusting herself to do the repair on her own, having the brave conversations. Michelle is in the thick of it, sitting with the discomfort, getting curious about her triggers, learning to admire herself for staying in the difficulty. 

Stevie's on the other side of it, looking back and realizing that she already broke the chain, claiming credit for the work that she did. They're all doing the same thing. They're all asking, what did I need that I didn't receive? 

How do I make sure my child gets it? And how do I then give it to myself too, even now? Because that's the thing about breaking generational patterns. It's never just about our kids. It's always also about us. 

When Janet goes back and offers comfort to her teenage self whose emotions were treated as inconveniences, she's not just healing for Lily's sake. She's healing for her own sake too. When Michelle learns to take up a little more space, she's not just modeling that for Emma. 

She's giving herself permission that she's never gotten before and never given to herself before. When Stevie claims credit for breaking the chain, she's not just honoring her relationship with Kate. 

She's honoring herself, the younger version of herself who decided things were going to be different in her family. When we parent our own children, we repair in ourselves. So what does this mean for you? 

Maybe you've had a moment like Janet's where you've heard your parents' voice coming out of your mouth and felt the shame of it. I want you to know that moment of recognition is not failure. It's the beginning of change. 

The question isn't whether those old patterns will show up. They will because they're wired in. The question is what you do when you notice them. Can you bring compassion to the part of you that learned that response? 

Can you do the repair? Can you have the brave conversation? And here's what Janet showed us. You don't have to wait for permission to do the repair. You already know what to do. You can trust yourself. 

Maybe you're more like Michelle in the thick of it, finding your child's qualities triggering or complicated. I invite you to get curious about that. What is your child showing you that you want for yourself? 

What would it look like to let them be your teacher instead of your trigger? Or maybe while they're being your trigger, let them be your teacher. And maybe you're more like Stevie, further along in the journey, able to look back and see the evidence of the work you've done. 

If that's you, I want to ask, have you claimed it? Have you let yourself say, I did this. I broke this generational pattern because of who I am. Because you definitely deserve to claim it if you've done that work. 

Here's what I want to offer you this week. Think about one pattern from your own upbringing, one way you were parented that you've always said, I don't want to do that with my kids. And ask yourself three questions. 

First, have I caught myself doing it anyway? Not with judgment, just with honest curiosity. Second, can I bring compassion to the part of me that learned that pattern? Because that part was just trying to survive, just trying to do what it learned to do. 

And third, what would it look like to offer my younger self what I needed back then and maybe I still need now? You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to be a perfect parent. Believe me, they do not exist. 

You don't have to have broken every generational pattern already. You just have to be willing to look, to get curious, to do the repair when you mess up, to keep showing up even when it's hard. That's how these chains get broken by having one brave, imperfect, compassionate moment at a time. 

Here's what I know after doing this work with women like Janet and Michelle and Stevie. You are not doomed to repeat what was done to you. You have more power than you think to change these patterns. 

And the work you do on yourself, the healing, the growing, the getting to know yourself, the getting curious, it doesn't just change your life. It changes your children's lives and their children's lives after that. 

That is the ripple effect of this work, and that is why it matters so much. If you want some support in breaking your own generational patterns and parenting your children and yourself with much more compassion and intention, I would love to work with you. 

This is exactly what we do on Wednesdays. This is exactly the work that we do in private coaching. Becoming your favorite you includes becoming the parent you needed, not perfectly, not all at once, but bravely and with compassion, one moment at a time. 

All right, folks, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!