“Children who don’t feel safe in infancy have trouble regulating their moods

and emotional responses as they grow older. By kindergarten, many disorganized

infants are either aggressive or spaced out and disengaged, and they go on to

develop a range of psychiatric problems.

They also show more physiological

stress, as expressed in heart rate, heart rate variability

stress hormone responses, and lowered immune factors

Does this kind of biological dysregulation automatically reset to normal as a child matures or is moved to a safe environment? So far as we know, it does not.

Parental abuse is not the only cause of disorganized attachment: Parents who

are preoccupied with their own trauma, such as domestic abuse or rape or the

recent death of a parent or sibling, may also be too emotionally unstable and

inconsistent to offer much comfort and protection

While all parents need all

the help they can get to help raise secure children, traumatized parents, in

particular, need help to be attuned to their children’s needs.

Caregivers often don’t realize that they are out of tune.” The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

This is painful. I look back on the state of my mind when I was a young mother, overwhelmed by the aftermath of my own childhood, and I see my children. They need so much. I have so little to give. I gave all I could. It was never enough because what they needed most was me and mentally and emotionally I was stuck in another time and place.

Or rather, another time and place was stuck in me. Flashbacks and nightmares and paranoid days occupied me, and the fear of being “found out” and losing more people from my life.

People say we cannot blame our parents or our childhoods. People say we make our own choices, make our own beds and must lie in them. People say we are old enough now to know better.

I say we pass down our own damage in ways we cannot imagine or bear the pain of. It must end, but how? I do not have an answer. I begin by not blaming my children for their reactions to a family system too disturbing for words and in particular a mother too busy battling old demons to be a steady, nurturing presence in her children’s lives.

That is not enough. It is enough for this day.