Heal Before You Create: Why Parenting Awakens Childhood Wounds
- Madhukar Dama
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
INTRODUCTION
No one is ever truly ready to be a parent.
Not because parenting is too difficult — but because it is too honest.
The day you hold your child, your body remembers what it was like to be helpless.
Your mind replays what it meant to be scolded, ignored, controlled, humiliated, abandoned.
You may think you have moved on from your childhood —
but children are ruthless mirrors.
They awaken every unhealed bruise you have locked away.
If you do not face your wounds first, you will unknowingly pass them to the ones you love the most.
Healing is not optional before parenting.
It is the very foundation of being worthy of that sacred responsibility.
---
WHY TRAUMA POPS UP AFTER HAVING CHILDREN
1. Children Echo Your Helplessness
Your newborn’s absolute dependence mirrors your own childhood vulnerability.
You begin to relive what you did not get:
Affection withheld.
Safety denied.
Voices unheard.
2. Children Break Your Control
A baby cannot be “managed” like a job, or a marriage.
Their raw needs stir the frustration and helplessness you once swallowed.
3. Children Trigger Your Old Programming
You open your mouth to discipline your child — and hear your own parent’s anger spill out.
Without realizing, you replay the patterns you hated.
4. Children Force You to Face Powerlessness
Parenting reminds you that love is not control.
This can terrify those whose childhoods equated love with obedience, approval, or fear.
---
THE SILENT CHAIN OF UNCONSCIOUS PARENTING
Pain denied is pain transmitted.
When you do not confront your own abandonment wounds, you smother or neglect your child emotionally.
When you do not heal your shame, you project perfectionism onto your child.
When you bury your fear, you create controlling parenting.
What is not healed is repeated.
Unhealed parents create unfree children.
Unfree children grow into wounded adults.
And the cycle becomes the invisible inheritance passed down, generation after generation.
---
BENEFITS OF HEALING BEFORE PARENTHOOD
1. You Stop Seeking from Your Child
You no longer demand validation, success, obedience from your child to fill your own emptiness.
2. You Raise Children Who Feel Safe to Be Themselves
Children of healed parents are freer, more authentic, more emotionally whole.
3. You Break Ancestral Trauma Chains
Your healing is not selfish. It liberates not just you — but your entire future bloodline.
4. You Live Parenting Consciously
You respond instead of reacting.
You guide instead of controlling.
You love without needing to be repaid.
---
HOW TO START HEALING
Accept that you are wounded — without shame.
Therapy, counseling, or deep reflective work — facing the original pain, not suppressing it.
Conscious couple dialogues — open, raw, without defensiveness.
Learning emotional regulation — calming your nervous system daily.
Inner child work — reparenting your forgotten younger self.
Seeking guidance humbly — not trying to fix yourself alone.
Healing is not about becoming perfect.
It is about becoming honest.
---
CONCLUSION
Parenting is not something you do to a child.
It is something you do to yourself first —
and the child blooms naturally from the soil you tend inside.
Before you create a life,
heal your own.
Before you demand obedience,
heal your own rebellion.
Before you give advice,
heal your own silence.
Because the most profound gift you can offer your child
is not a rich house, not a good school, not even wisdom —
but a parent who has dared to heal.
—
II. HEALING DIALOGUE
"Our Child Was Born — and So Were Our Wounds"
---
Characters:
Madhukar — the healer, late 60s, calm, grounded presence.
Aditya — husband (32), engineer, logical, emotionally shut off.
Meera — wife (30), freelance designer, sensitive, anxious, controlling.
Baby — 6-month-old (symbolic, silent but present).
---
(Scene: A small sunlit courtyard with mud walls, mango trees whispering in the breeze. Madhukar sits cross-legged. Aditya and Meera sit opposite him, holding their baby, faces tired, eyes carrying invisible wars.)
---
Madhukar (gently smiling):
"You have come with more than your child in your arms.
You carry yourself, your childhood, your battles — all bundled together.
Tell me."
---
Meera (voice trembling):
"I don't recognize myself anymore.
I'm always angry.
Anxious.
I snap at Aditya.
At the baby.
I…hate myself."
---
Aditya (flat voice):
"I thought having a child would bring us closer.
Instead, it’s tearing us apart."
---
Madhukar (softly):
"No.
It is not tearing you apart.
It is tearing apart your masks.
And showing you the wounds underneath."
---
(The couple looks at each other — guilt, sadness, fear mixing.)
---
Madhukar (continuing, voice like rain):
"Children are not born into the present.
They are born into our unfinished past."
---
Meera (whispers):
"I hear my mother's voice when I scream.
I swore I would never become her.
And yet..."
---
Madhukar (nodding slowly):
"The mother you fought to escape…
still lives inside you,
whispering when you are tired,
shouting when you are afraid."
---
Aditya (stiffly):
"I feel like I’m failing.
Like no matter what I do, it’s not enough.
I try to stay strong.
But…I shut down.
I feel nothing."
---
Madhukar (voice thick with compassion):
"Who taught you, Aditya, that feeling was weakness?"
---
Aditya (looking away, jaw tight):
"My father.
He never cried.
He never spoke gently.
Only orders.
Only judgment."
---
Madhukar (softly):
"And now you cannot hold your child
without fearing you will break him with your silence."
---
(Aditya buries his face in his hands. Silent tears. Meera squeezes his knee.)
---
Madhukar:
"You see, my children,
this child you birthed —
he has also birthed your truth.
Not the story you tell the world.
But the aching, unfinished, beautiful truth you buried inside."
---
(The baby coos lightly. A moment of fragile grace fills the air.)
---
Meera (whispers):
"How do we heal, Madhukar ji?
How do we not destroy what we love?"
---
Madhukar (leans forward, eyes fierce yet kind):
"You must raise two children.
Not just this one in your arms.
But also —
the scared little Aditya
and the anxious little Meera
still trembling inside you."
---
(Silence. They listen as if hearing their real names for the first time.)
---
Madhukar (gently):
"You must cradle your anger,
your shame,
your loneliness,
as you cradle this infant.
Not with judgment.
But with wonder.
With patience.
With forgiveness."
---
Aditya (broken):
"But where do we begin?"
---
Madhukar:
"Begin where it hurts most.
When you shout —
pause and ask,
'Which old wound is bleeding right now?'
When you shut down —
breathe and say,
'Which small boy inside me is afraid to cry?'
When you panic —
hold your heart and ask,
'Which abandoned girl inside me needs my hand?'"
---
(Tears pour now, freely, silently.)
---
Madhukar (smiling warmly):
"Your child is not a project.
He is a partner in your resurrection.
He will trigger you not because he is wrong —
but because your soul begged for a chance to finally heal."
---
Meera (voice full of quiet awe):
"Maybe...maybe this child saved us."
---
Aditya (nodding, voice breaking):
"Maybe we thought we created him…
but he came to recreate us."
---
Madhukar (chuckling softly):
"Yes.
That is the real parenthood.
Not control.
Not perfection.
Not pride.
But the willingness to be shattered,
to be remade softer,
braver,
truer."
---
(The baby gurgles happily.
The leaves rustle overhead.
Something ancient and sacred moves between them.)
---
Madhukar (whispering):
"Now go home.
Not to fix each other.
But to sit together in the sunlight of truth.
Hold your wounds.
Hold your child.
Hold each other.
Everything else will follow."
—
---
"the sins you never buried"
(a poem for the broken parents)
---
you thought you were done with it.
done with the shouting.
done with the silence.
done with the begging in your chest
that no one ever heard.
---
you thought
changing your city,
changing your job,
changing your last name,
changing your furniture
would erase the fires you carried.
---
and then you had a child.
---
and the bastard truth came clawing out of your throat.
---
the old screams,
the old punishments,
the old dead-eyed silences,
the cold backs turned to your tears,
the hunger for an apology that never came —
they came back.
---
only this time,
they didn't hit you.
they hit your child.
through your voice.
through your hand.
through your rage.
through your fear.
---
you realized,
too late or maybe just in time,
that the monsters were never under the bed.
they were in the blood,
in the bone,
waiting.
---
you held your baby,
tiny, screaming, helpless,
and instead of love
you felt panic,
rage,
terror,
shame.
because nobody held you
when you needed it.
---
you tried to be better.
you swore you would be better.
you watched videos,
read books,
attended workshops,
bought soft toys,
painted the nursery pastel blue.
---
but the old wounds don't give a damn about your Pinterest boards.
the old wounds are patient.
the old wounds drink your good intentions like cheap wine
and spit back fury.
---
you sit there at night,
child finally asleep,
your hands trembling,
your eyes red,
your chest a hollowed-out cave of self-hatred.
---
you whisper:
"i swore i would never be them.
and i became them anyway."
---
but listen.
listen, goddammit.
---
there is a way back.
---
not by pretending it didn’t happen.
not by blaming your parents until you rot.
not by buying more baby products.
---
you save your child
by saving the small, broken child still weeping inside you.
---
you hold your own hand first.
you whisper to your own ribs first.
you cradle your own forgotten terror first.
---
you weep your ugly weepings.
you confess your dirty secrets.
you rage against the gods of silence.
you forgive the dead if you can.
and if you can't,
you forgive yourself for not forgiving.
---
and then,
and only then,
you can hold your child
without bleeding all over them.
---
you can kiss their forehead
without swallowing your own rage.
---
you can let them laugh
without fearing they will become fools.
you can let them cry
without punishing their softness.
you can let them grow
without cutting their roots short.
---
this is the ugly beauty of it all:
your child was never born to save you.
but if you are brave enough,
you can save yourself —
and by saving yourself,
you finally set them free.
---
bury the sins now.
under a tree,
under the sun,
under a goddamn broken sky.
---
bury them.
and water something new.
—
