becoming a parent has made me realize how traumatizing my own childhood was

my daughter is one year old, and the love I have for her is just indescribable. You all know what I’m talking about, so I won’t harp on about it in the name of keeping this post as short as possible.

I think parenthood forces us to look in the mirror, and see the things we need to improve on. And I’ve been doing a tonne of reflection on why I am the way I am - and it always seems to come back to just being completely ignored - a punching bag - love bombed as a child.

My mom and me have a better relationship since I’ve moved out (I’m not there to scream at or hit or make homeless when she’s stressed or sad) and she seems to be doing better than she was back when I was a child/teen.

My mom always asks me questions like “was I a bad mom?” or “did you have a good childhood?” and I always lie and say you were a good mom, yes I had a good childhood. There‘s no point in being honest, she can’t take accountability and honesty is an attack to her.

Worst of all she keeps saying to me since I had my daughter “now do you see how much I love you?” and it makes my blood f boil. Because there’s no world in which I would treat my daughter the way she treated me. I could list 10000’s of terrible things she did that I would NEVER dream of doing.

My daughter will be completely different to me in the best way, she won’t live in survival, she won’t be so insecure & have an anxious attachment style in romantic relarionships & friendships. She will always have a strong foundation to fall back on throughout life.

It’s healing to be the type of mom I never had but I really want to continue to work on this, therapists in my area are hard to come by so I wonder if anyone has any podcasts/books/material recommendations surrounding childhood trauma?