Ep.26: The Power of Your Love

In this episode, I talk about the power of your brand of unconditional love. How vital this is for your child, even if they are currently aligned with their abuser. It's a short but powerfully impactful episode. 

Want to learn more about to empower your children? My next masterclass, How to Empower Your Children, is February 12th, from 12:00-1:30 pm PST. It's live and recorded. You'll leave with 15 actionable tools and strategies you can actually start using that very day, to help educate and empower your children. To help them navigate a lifetime with a narcissistic parent. You will leave feeling more confident, empowered and hopeful. 

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Visit: https://chantalcontorinescoaching.com to learn how to work with me. 

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. 

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:01

Welcome everybody to The Survivors Playbook. I'm your host, Chantal Contorines and this is the podcast for every survivor of abuse. If abusers can have a playbook, then why can't survivors also have a playbook so that you can start to live a life you love despite what the abuser in your life does or doesn't do? And today I'm gonna talk about something that needs to be addressed, and this is. Love, specifically a protective parent's unconditional love for their child. So if you are listening to this as a protective parent, I wanna start by saying something very clearly. What you are doing absolutely matters. Even when it feels invisible, even when it feels futile, even when it feels like nothing you do is actually landing. Protective parents often come to me carrying a very specific kind of pain. It's the pain of loving deeply so deeply and unconditionally while feeling completely helpless, hopeless, and powerless. Powerlessness against an act of counterpart, powerless against manipulation, powerless against lies that seem to spread faster than truth. Powerless against a system that doesn't understand coercive control, powerless against the heartbreak of watching your child pull away, change or align with their abusive parent. And if that's where you are right now, I want you to know something important. Feeling helpless does not mean that you are actually helpless. It means that you are up against something that was designed to make you doubt yourself. Because what you are dealing with is not normal conflict. It's not mutual dysfunction. It's not two sides of a story. It's not, it takes two to tango. It's a dynamic that intentionally targets the bond between a child and their safest, most loving parent. And that kind of dynamic is meant to make you feel hopeless. But hopelessness is not the truth. It's a symptom of prolonged emotional warfare. A protective parent's love is one of the most powerful forces in a child's life. And paradoxically, it's powerful precisely because it doesn't manipulate. It doesn't coerce and it doesn't demand allegiance, and there's zero pressure. Protective love is quiet, it's steady, it's regulating it's safe, and safety leaves a lasting imprint. Long before your child could speak, long before they could understand motives or dynamics long before they had the language to name what was happening. Your nervous system taught theirs what calm feels like. Your presence taught theirs what consistency feels like your love taught theirs what connection feels like. That learning does not disappear because someone else tells a louder story. One of the most damaging lies protective parents internalize is the idea that love must be visible to be effective, that if your child doesn't acknowledge it, it must not be working. That if they align with their abusive parent, your influence must be gone. That if they reject you, your bond must be broken. That is not how attachment works. Alignment is not attachment. Alignment is simply survival. When a child aligns with an abusive parent, they are not choosing love over you. They are choosing the path that feels safest in the moment, the path of least resistance. Children are biologically wired to adapt to power. Not kindness, not empathy, not emotional maturity, power, and when love from one parent comes with fear, volatility, or emotional consequences, children learn to comply. It's simply too much pressure. They learn to appease. They learn to perform loyalty. They learn to silence parts of themselves to stay safe. That doesn't mean it erases their attachment to you. It suspends it. It buries it. Not because it's weak, but because it's precious. I want you to hear this clearly. Your love is not erased. It's not overwritten, it's not deleted. It's encoded. Protective love is imprinted in the body, in the nervous system, in memory, in the felt sense of what home feels like. even if they push it away, even if they speak to you in ways that feel unrecognizable, right? So much of a child who is dysregulated comes across as mimicking your ex. Their word, their verbiage, their intonation, their mannerisms oftentimes feel exactly like abuse from where your ex left off. Love that is safe does not disappear. It waits. This is where the long game comes in because protective parents are always playing the long game, even when they don't realize it. The long game is not about winning today. In fact, you might actually lose some battles today, but you're going to win the war. A war that you did not enlist in or sign up for. It is not about convincing. It's not about proving. It's not about competing with manipulation, using louder manipulation. The long game is about planting seeds in soil. You may never see bloom. It's about modeling emotional regulation when dysregulation is everywhere. It's about consistency in the face of chaos. It's about truth without urgency, love without conditions, boundaries without punishment. That kind of love rarely shows results immediately, but it shows results eventually. Many children who grew up with narcissistic parents don't begin to question the narrative until later, oftentimes, until they're safe, when they're geographically distant from this parent, sometimes even much later when they gain distance, when their nervous systems mature, when their lived experiences no longer matches what they were told. When the mask slips in ways, it can no longer be ignored. And when that moment comes, the body remembers. The body remembers who felt safe, who listened, who didn't demand loyalty, who didn't punish honesty, who didn't pressure them, who gave them high love, low pressure, who allowed them to be themselves, and that's you. Even if they can't say it right now, even if they can't feel it consciously, even if they're actively rejecting you in this season of their life and your lives, your love is still a reference point. And this is why the grief for protective parents is so deep. Because you were asked to love without evidence, to trust, without feedback, to stay regulated while being provoked, to show restraint, while being attacked, to hold space for a child who may not be able to hold space for you, and that's an extraordinary emotional burden. You're not weak for feeling exhausted. You're not dramatic for feeling brokenhearted. You're not failing because you are grieving. You're grieving a loss and you're grieving the loss of a child who's still alive, A loss that doesn't have closure, a loss that doesn't follow timelines, a loss that reopens again and again, and yet even inside that grief, you are still planting. Every time you choose to not bad mouth the other parent, you plant discernment. Every time you hold a boundary without cruelty, you plant self-respect. Every time you regulate your emotions instead of exploding, you plant nervous system safety. Every time you love without conditions, you plant the blueprint for healthy attachment. Those seeds do not rot in the ground. They wait. Protective parents often underestimate how much children are watching, listening, and feeling even when they appear to be disengaged. Children, notice who stays consistent, who doesn't collapse, who doesn't retaliate, who doesn't demand loyalty at the cost of their authenticity. They may not have the words for it yet. Remember, they're still developing. Their brains are still incredibly immature and still developing, but the imprint is there. This is why the long game requires so much courage, because the long game asks you to anchor yourself in who you are rather than who you are being painted to be. It asks you to choose integrity over urgency, truth over control, love over fear. That is not passive, that is quiet leadership. Even on the days you feel invisible, even on the days you feel erased, even on the days you wonder if any of this matters or if you're doing it all wrong or if you should just give up. It does. It does matter. What you are planting now may not bloom today. It may not bloom this year. It may not bloom while you are watching closely, but love that is safe, steady, and unconditional has a way of finding its season. So if today, all you can do is breathe and survive, let that be enough. If all you can do is to hold your values, let that be enough. If all you can do is keep loving without proof, let that be enough. You are not parenting for applause. You're not parenting for the Instagram reel. You are parenting for impact. You are playing the long game here, and the long game is built on love that does not abandon itself. That love does not harden. Love that does not become what harmed it. Love that remains rooted even in drought. One day when your child is safe enough to look back, your love will still be there waiting, recognizable, familiar. Exactly where it has always been. So I want you to take away. How powerful you actually are, no matter where you are in this journey, whether you are still attached with your child and seeing them regularly, or if your child has been aligned with their abusive parent to survive in an incredibly inhospitable environment, I want you to know how you are, how you're processing, how you're regulating, how you're healing, how you're growing, how you're learning to thrive, despite all this. Is so important for your children, and when you're steady and when you're calm, and when you're determined, and when you remain open and engaged and unconditionally loving, no matter how they treat you, doesn't mean you don't have boundaries, but it means that you still love them no matter what. Your children notice this, and this is the power of your love. It is literally what will help them either stay on track and thrive or come back to you when they're able to. Thank you for listening to the Survivor's Playbook. If today's episode helped you feel less alone, more clear, confident, and empowered, and more educated, please share it with somebody else who might need it. And if you're ready for deeper support, you can join my monthly membership. Or Grab free tools and resources on my website. All links are in my show notes. Please remember, your clarity is your power. Your calm is your resistance. You are not crazy. You are not alone, and you are not powerless. Until next time, keep going. I see you.