What Your Grandmother Would Say To You If She Could…
SUMMARY
You carry the weight of early maternal wounds and relational trauma that quietly shape your self-worth and make the climb of adulthood feel isolating and overwhelming, especially when you lack that steady, loving elder presence in your life. Relational trauma from inconsistent or emotionally unavailable caregiving leaves a gap where gentle, wise guidance should have been, and this post offers a way to find that missing voice by imagining what a grandmother’s love and perspective could hold for you now. Healing this wound means learning to nurture your inner elder wisdom—invoking the strength and comfort of nurturing ancestors like Moana’s grandmother—to hold you through your hardest moments when no one else is there to speak the words you needed long ago. You may be carrying relational trauma rooted in early maternal wounds that affect your self-worth and relationships. You deserve the gentle, wise guidance that a loving elder figure would offer during your toughest moments.
What Your Grandmother Would Say To You If She Could…
Emotional Regulation & Nervous System • July 25, 2021
Few of my readers who come from relational trauma backgrounds in which there was intergenerational trauma, abuse, and dysfunction have someone like this in their lives. And so today’s post is meant to fill in that inner parenting gap.
Sometimes the words we needed most when we were young need to be spoken to us now.
Relational trauma is the emotional harm that happens within your closest relationships, especially early caregiving relationships, when those connections are marked by neglect, inconsistency, or emotional unavailability. It is not about a single traumatic event like an accident or a natural disaster — it’s the slow, often invisible injuries to your sense of safety and trust that come from ongoing relational strain. This trauma matters to you because it quietly shapes how you relate to others and how you see yourself, often creating a push-pull between craving connection and fearing it. You are not damaged beyond repair; you are carrying the echoes of pain that your younger self endured without the support you deserved. Recognizing relational trauma is the first step in reclaiming your capacity for intimacy, compassion, and self-trust in a way that feels real and earned.
Definition: Maternal Wound
The maternal wound is the emotional and psychological injury that occurs when the care and attunement you needed from your mother as a child were missing or inconsistent. It is not about blaming your mother or labeling her as bad or uncaring; rather, it’s about recognizing a gap between what you needed and what was available to you. This wound matters deeply because it lives at the core of how you see yourself—your worth, your body, your ability to connect—and it quietly shapes patterns in your relationships today. You’re not broken or defective because of it; you adapted to survive, but those adaptations can feel like both armor and prison. Naming this wound allows you to begin treating yourself with the gentleness and understanding you never received then, starting the work of healing that feels both necessary and possible.
You carry the weight of early maternal wounds and relational trauma that quietly shape your self-worth and make the climb of adulthood feel isolating and overwhelming, especially when you lack that steady, loving elder presence in your life.
Relational trauma from inconsistent or emotionally unavailable caregiving leaves a gap where gentle, wise guidance should have been, and this post offers a way to find that missing voice by imagining what a grandmother’s love and perspective could hold for you now.
Healing this wound means learning to nurture your inner elder wisdom—invoking the strength and comfort of nurturing ancestors like Moana’s grandmother—to hold you through your hardest moments when no one else is there to speak the words you needed long ago.
Definition: Maternal Wound
The maternal wound happens when a child doesn’t receive the loving, consistent care they need from their mother, which can affect how they see themselves and relate to others. It often impacts feelings of self-worth, body image, and the ability to form close relationships.
Definition: Relational Trauma
Relational trauma refers to emotional harm that happens within close relationships, especially early in life, affecting how a person connects with others. It can result from experiences like neglect, inconsistency, or emotional unavailability from important caregivers.
Sometimes the words we needed most when we were young need to be spoken to us now.
Quick Summary
You may be carrying relational trauma rooted in early maternal wounds that affect your self-worth and relationships.
You deserve the gentle, wise guidance that a loving elder figure would offer during your toughest moments.
Healing involves recognizing and nurturing your inner elder wisdom through intergenerational healing therapy.
Like Moana, you can find strength and comfort by internalizing the supportive voices of nurturing elders.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEFINITIONRELATIONAL TRAUMA
Few of my readers who come from relational trauma backgrounds in which there was intergenerational trauma, abuse, and dysfunction have someone like this in their lives. And so today’s post is meant to fill in that inner parenting gap.
Sometimes the words we needed most when we were young ne
The maternal wound refers to the psychological injury that occurs when a child does not receive the attuned, consistent, emotionally available mothering they needed — whether due to mental illness, addiction, narcissism, emotional unavailability, or circumstances beyond the mother’s control. This wound tends to live at the core of self-worth, body relationship, and the capacity for intimacy, and is one of the most significant — and often least discussed — threads in relational trauma work.
My toddler can’t count to 20 yet, but she knows every word to How Far I’ll Go and will nap strike on the weekend by sitting in her bed singing it to herself and her stuffies.
SUMMARY
This post imagines what a wise, loving grandmother figure would say to you — an older, weathered voice of experience speaking directly to the driven, ambitious woman who came from hard circumstances and is still figuring out how to be gentle with herself. Sometimes the words we needed most when we were young need to be spoken to us now.
And because my toddler is obsessed with this movie, I’ve come to know it quite well, too.
And one of the most beautiful aspects of this wonderful movie is, I think, the relationship between Moana and her grandmother.
I watch this movie as a parent and therapist, feeling touched by the love between the two characters, the wisdom Moana’s grandmother imparts and seeing how Moana internalizes her as a source of wisdom, comfort, and strength.
Would that we all had grandmothers (or grandfathers or elders) like Moana’s grandmother in our lives!
Someone to turn to during life’s tough times. Who can hold a wider and deeper perspective than, perhaps, our own parents. And certainly more so than us.
Someone no longer burdened by day-to-day parenting who has decades-earned wisdom and mindsight to share and to guide us.
Someone to call on those days when we wake up, feeling like adulthood is a mountain in front of us that we don’t feel equipped to summit.
Few of my readers who come from relationaltrauma backgrounds in which there was intergenerational trauma, abuse, and dysfunction have someone like this in their lives.
And so today’s post is meant to fill in that inner parenting gap, to be another essay in the pep talk series that you can bookmark and turn to on the days when you’re so overwhelmed but can’t pick up the phone to call a member of your actual family-of-origin for comfort.
Read these words when you need some extra support, and internalize an imaginary elder, a wise inner grandmother as part of your own re-parenting and re-familying on your relational trauma recovery journey.
What Your Grandmother Would Say To You If She Could…
My dear one.
Talk to me, tell me what’s going on. I’ve been thinking about you.
Sweetheart.
I know you feel overwhelmed and worried and worn down.
That makes sense. Anyone who holds what you hold would.
I imagine you feel like an overly full cup of water, getting bumped and rattled and spilling over the edge every day.
You feel like it’s too much because it is too much.
That probably doesn’t feel helpful to say because there’s no clear way out of it all… you can’t quit all your obligations right now.
But my goodness I understand why you’d want to!
I hope what you’re hearing me say is that I get it.
That I get what you’re going through. I remember it well.
I remember it well and I want to tell you something:
A long chapter of your adult years can and will often feel like each day you wake up, and you don’t feel strong or capable enough to do all that you have to do, all those adult responsibilities, but having no other choice but to do it anyway.
Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
Take this 5-minute, 25-question quiz to find out — and learn what to do next if you do.
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There’s no magic solution here. There’s no silver bullet.
There’s only one day after the next, feeling like you’re standing at the base of a mountain, hiking it all day long, only to wake up and have to summit another mountain.
It feels never-ending.
And it won’t change. For a time at least.
Not when you’re raising small children, trying to buy a home, pay down the student loans, establish your career, preserve your marriage in the gruel of it all, and keep the house stocked with food and toilet paper.
It’s a blur of work, responsibility, facing more and new challenges, getting some sleep, and doing it all over again.
Honey, these days are not easy. They’re probably some of life’s most intense times.
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I remember it so well. But I also remember it changed.
It’s so much right now, but at some point, it will feel like you’ll stop summiting the mountains of your days so much.
The daily climb will get easier, the peaks less steep.
I don’t know exactly when it happens or exactly why, but I think it’s because we all become proverbially stronger climbers from the year upon year of daily mountain climbing.
I promise you: there will be a time in your life when things don’t feel so hard.
I know because that happened for me and it’s happened for most people my age.
I trust it will be true for you, too.
And please remember this: because of this daily summiting, because of how you’re not quitting and how you keep showing up even when you feel like you can’t, you’re becoming a strong, wise future elder precisely because of the climbs and hard times you’re going through now.
And I am so, so proud of you.
Ever since you were born, ever since you smiled at me and I felt like you were a piece of my soul in a baby body, I’ve been proud of you.
Simply because you are who you are.
You are my dear one, a little piece of my heart, my pride.
Having you as my grandchild has been one of the great gifts of my lifetime.
Watching you grow up, become who you were meant to be, watching you listen to your soul, trust your instincts, and move towards a life that’s authentically yours gives me goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes.
You have overcome so much. You’ve worked so hard. You are so strong, so capable, so resilient.
I know you don’t always feel that way. And that’s okay.
Sometimes you’re not the best judge of yourself.
I see something different than you feel on your hard days.
You feel like you’re barely holding on, and I see a fine human, earning her mettle through the struggle.
I am so proud of you, honey.
And you don’t have to be “strong” and “perfect” with me.
You can tell me what’s actually going on for you, how scared you are, how overwhelmed you are, how angry and sad you are about some of your life’s choices.
You can tell me all of this and it won’t change my high opinion of you.
You can share all of your feelings, all parts of you with me.
I want to be that person you can call when you can’t call your partner, when you can’t call your best friend because she’s overwhelmed, too, when you can’t call your parent because they can’t give you what you need.
Let me hold space for you, honey.
I can’t solve and fix everything for you.
But I can be with you while you climb those mountains, and tell you more about how I climbed them, too.
I wish I could hold and hug you right now, honey. Just like I did when you were little.
You deserve that — a big warm hug.
I love you and I miss you.
And I am so, so proud of you.
Remember how much I love you and how highly I think of you when you’re summiting your proverbial mountains.
Remember there is one person here on Earth who loves you beyond words, who thinks the world of you, and who is holding hope and knowing that there will be easier times ahead for you.
Recall my words, imagine that I’m there with you, and carry me in your heart if it brings you any comfort.
I love you, honey.
Building Inner Elder Wisdom Through Intergenerational Healing Therapy
“aw-pull-quote”
When you tell your therapist how you watch Moana’s grandmother with an ache in your chest, recognizing the wise elder love you never had and never will have from your actual family, you’re identifying a profound absence—but therapy helps you understand that learning how to remother yourself extends to creating inner grandparent figures who offer the perspective and unconditional love intergenerational trauma stole from you.
Your trauma-informed therapist recognizes that lacking supportive elders isn’t just missing advice but missing the unique gift grandparents offer—perspective beyond daily parenting struggles, decades of earned wisdom, and love untainted by the immediate stresses of raising you. When dysfunction spans generations, you’re orphaned not just from parents but from the entire lineage of support that should have been your birthright.
The therapeutic work involves actively constructing these inner voices through guided imagery, writing exercises, and experiential practices. Your therapist might have you write letters from your imagined grandmother, voicing the validation you crave: that life feels impossible because it IS impossible sometimes, that you’re becoming strong precisely through these daily climbs, that someone sees your resilience even when you feel broken.
Through consistent practice, this imagined elder becomes increasingly real in your psyche—available for internal consultation during overwhelming moments, offering the long view when you’re drowning in daily minutiae. You learn to ask, “What would my inner grandmother say?” accessing wisdom that transcends your immediate panic.
Most powerfully, intergenerational healing therapy teaches that you can break trauma’s chain not just by being a better parent but by becoming your own wise elder—offering yourself the unconditional pride, patient perspective, and unshakeable faith that should have flowed down through generations but stopped before reaching you.
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A: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
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Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
Intergenerational trauma means dysfunction often spans multiple generations. If your parents were traumatized by their parents, those same grandparents likely can't provide the wisdom, stability, and unconditional love that healthy elders offer. The dysfunction continues through the family line.
Internalizing an imaginary wise elder creates new neural pathways of support and validation. Reading or writing loving grandparent messages helps build the inner voice of unconditional acceptance and perspective that trauma survivors missed, providing comfort during overwhelming times.
Absolutely, especially during intense life phases—raising young children, establishing careers, managing finances. The grandmother voice validates this isn't weakness but reality. These years ARE objectively difficult, and feeling overwhelmed by overwhelming circumstances makes complete sense.
While there's no exact timeline, the elder perspective suggests that years of "daily mountain climbing" gradually make you a stronger climber. The peaks become less steep not because life's challenges disappear but because you develop strength, skills, and perspective through surviving the climbs.
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Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. If vacation makes you anxious, if praise feels hollow, if you’re planning your next move before finishing the current one—you’re not alone. And you’re *not* broken.
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Five minutes to understand what’s really underneath that exhausting, constant drive.
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