We carry our earliest years the way we carry our skeletons: invisibly, constantly, everywhere we go. The good that was handed to us, and the harm that was handed down.
A great-grandmother learns the world isn't safe, so she holds her children a little too tightly. They learn that love comes with worry, so they pass the worry down as if it were the love.
By the time it reaches you, no one can say where it began, only that it's always just been in the family. Most of us are on the receiving end of cursed heirlooms no one remembers buying.
It’s Infant Mental Health Awareness Week. We’re skipping the usual newborn fare (sleep training, pacifiers, milestone charts, etc) to make this an intervention, instead, for you.
Because this is the strange power of growing up: you now get to decide. As a former baby, you can pass all the heavy along, or finally drop that ugly china.
A QUICK CHECK-IN
Deciding you're going to break a generational cycle feels powerful right up until you remember you also have emails to answer, groceries to buy, and a password you've been meaning to reset since February.
So before we talk about healing the kid inside, let's check on the grown-up who is currently running the show.
How's adulting going today?
- Crushing It (who is this competent adult and where did they come from?)
- Busy, But Fine (my calendar is concerning, but manageable)
- One Day at a Time (let's not get ahead of ourselves)
- Treading Water (most of my energy is going toward staying afloat)
- Respectfully, No (please lower the difficulty setting)
Wherever you landed, it's worth remembering that growth rarely happens under ideal conditions.
Most of us don't get a quiet retreat, a few years off, and unlimited emotional bandwidth to sort through everything we inherited.
We do it in between meetings. During commutes. After difficult conversations. While raising kids. Caring for parents. Trying to remember what's for dinner.
The work happens in the middle of ordinary life.
Which means if you're showing up, paying attention, and trying to do a little better than yesterday, you're probably doing better than you think.
More than that, you're becoming the adult your younger self never got to have.
AN AFFIRMATION
For the profound relief of realizing that the rescue party is not coming, because you are already here:
I am both the child who needed someone in their corner and the adult who finally is. I've got us.
You cannot give yourself a better childhood, but you can loosen the grip of the one you had. Do so, in small moments —
spilling coffee and not calling yourself an idiot
saying no without guilt
choosing rest when you’re exhausted
That's the whole of reparenting: doing, on purpose, the small good thing that was once withheld.
A FEW PROMPTS TO SIT WITH
Think of these questions as a conscious audit of your emotional inheritance: what's worth keeping, what's worth unlearning, and what's still missing.
Open your ReachLink journal and let the capable adult type, while the former baby answers.
What expectation was placed on me as a child that I no longer want to carry?
What's something I’m only learning now that I wish someone had taught me years ago?
What about my life now would surprise the child I used to be? Would it reassure them, or break their heart a little?
What am I able to give myself today that no one gave me then? And what makes it hard to take in, even from my own hands?
What version of me, or of whoever comes after me, am I quietly helping into being, just by doing this now?
SOMEONE WHO GETS IT
On episode 3 of Therapist Voices, ReachLink therapist Lee Shadeck was reflecting on people at opposite ends of life: the very young and the very old.
On one end, his young nieces, one of whom could go from sad over nothing to delighted by a dog within minutes. On the other, a neighbor he's been doing hospice work with, and his own dad.
From both ends, he keeps arriving at the same thing:
We're the same people we were when we were little kids… I think understanding that is very important. That's a hard thing to hear and digest.
It's hard because we'd love to believe we graduated. That somewhere back there, we traded the fast-shifting, easily delighted, easily wounded kid for someone composed and finished.
You didn't. You're still them, toddler and teenager and whoever's reading this, the whole way through. Either daunting or the best news of your week, depending on how you hold it. We'd vote best news.
The child you used to be isn't a liability. They're the part of you that can still be ambushed, in the good way, by a dog.
The right therapist helps you get to know that kid, instead of only managing them.
IF YOU WANT TO GO DEEPER
For anyone planning to be the one who breaks the cycle, a few reads that are worth your attention:
Signs your childhood wasn't normal, even if it felt fine. For the harm that wore a perfectly ordinary face: the stuff that just registered as "how things were."
Protective factors that can help children thrive, with examples. The other half of the inheritance: the strengths and safeguards that get passed down right alongside the wounds.
Child temperament and mental health. Why some of us arrived sensitive, cautious, or bold, and how to tell the wiring you were born with from the marks that were left.
Attachment parenting and the 7 baby B’s approach. The blueprint for what helps a baby feel secure, handy whether you're raising one or re-raising yourself.
Play therapy for adults. Turns out the kid's medicine works on the grown-up too. What it is, and why it's less silly than it sounds.
You are someone's good ancestor in the making.
The fear you metabolize is fear a future child never has to. The love you're finally learning to give yourself is love that will, one day, have somewhere to go.
Most of the people you're doing this for haven't been born yet. You won't get to watch them grow up lighter than you did. You just get to trust that they will, and that it counts.
And that, former babies, is how we win.
— The ReachLink Team
P.S. Are you a former baby who feels completely misled by the brochure for adulthood? Excellent. You'll fit right in. ReachLink Groups can connect you with others who would also like to speak to a manager about this experience.
