Your grief about your own childhood may be triggered after becoming a parent.
Your grief about your own childhood may be triggered after becoming a parent.
Emotional Regulation & Nervous System • May 29, 2022
SUMMARY
You may find yourself grieving your own childhood in a way that surprises you, especially as you face the gap between the parenting you needed and what you’re now able to offer your child. This triggered grief is often tied to relational trauma—early emotional wounds that remain alive beneath the surface and become activated through your experience of parenting, reshaping how you connect with your child and yourself. Understanding that this grief will come in waves and isn’t a problem to be fixed quickly allows you to hold your complex feelings with compassion and seek parent-focused trauma therapy that meets you where you are. When you become a parent, you may find yourself unexpectedly grieving your own childhood — mourning the parenting you never received and the gap between what you’re giving your child and what was given to you. This grief often comes as a trigger for relational trauma, meaning the emotional wounds from your early relationships are activated by the very experience of caring for your child, bringing old pain into sharp focus.
Grief is the deep, often confusing emotional pain and sadness that arises when you lose something significant—whether a person, an experience, or a part of yourself. It is not a sign of weakness, nor is it something you simply ‘get over’ on a predictable timeline or by pushing it aside. For you, grief about your own childhood is triggered by becoming a parent, surfacing the painful gap between what you needed then and what you want to give your child now. This grief matters because it’s not just about mourning the past; it’s an active, ongoing process that shapes how you care for your child and yourself in this new role.
You may find yourself grieving your own childhood in a way that surprises you, especially as you face the gap between the parenting you needed and what you’re now able to offer your child.
This triggered grief is often tied to relational trauma—early emotional wounds that remain alive beneath the surface and become activated through your experience of parenting, reshaping how you connect with your child and yourself.
Understanding that this grief will come in waves and isn’t a problem to be fixed quickly allows you to hold your complex feelings with compassion and seek parent-focused trauma therapy that meets you where you are.
Relational trauma is the emotional injury caused by harmful or neglectful relationships in childhood that shape how you connect, trust, and feel safe with others as an adult. It is not about blaming your parents or labeling yourself as ‘damaged.’ Instead, it’s about recognizing that early relational wounds can remain hidden under the surface until something—like becoming a parent—pulls them forward. This matters deeply to you now because those old wounds aren’t just memories; they are living, active parts of your emotional experience that influence how you show up for your child and yourself in this new role.
When you become a parent, you may find yourself unexpectedly grieving your own childhood — mourning the parenting you never received and the gap between what you’re giving your child and what was given to you.
This grief often comes as a trigger for relational trauma, meaning the emotional wounds from your early relationships are activated by the very experience of caring for your child, bringing old pain into sharp focus.
Understanding that triggered grief is a necessary, ongoing part of healing allows you to hold your complex feelings without judgment and seek parent-focused trauma therapy to navigate this process with clarity and care.
Grieving your past isn’t linear.
SUMMARY
Becoming a parent often opens a door to grief you didn’t know was still there — grief about your own childhood, the parenting you didn’t receive, and the gap between what you’re giving your child and what was given to you. This is one of the most common and least-expected aspects of parenting for women with relational trauma backgrounds. This post explains why it happens, what it means, and how to metabolize it without letting it derail you.
As cute as that Australian phrase – “Done and dusted.” – is, grief doesn’t work like that.
Not with concrete, tangible losses (such as the death of a loved one) or with abstract, intangible losses (such as the loss of a capacity, the loss of an experience, etc).
Grief is not linear, nor does it necessarily have an endpoint.
We grieve and mourn and feel our feelings about the source of our grief for as long as it takes.
And, moreover, this grief and mourning can be triggered again and again. Long after we think we’ve done the bulk of our grieving for our childhood. And even when we become parents.
Specific to the abstract grief of our painful, adverse, and lost childhoods, I’ve written before about what small moments and experiences can unexpectedly trigger us, but in today’s essay, I want to explore what, perhaps, the biggest trigger of grief about our own lost childhoods can be: becoming parents ourselves.
Why is becoming a parent triggering my own sadness about my childhood trauma?
DEFINITIONGRIEF
Grief is the multifaceted response to loss, encompassing emotional, physical, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions that unfold over time. In the context of relational trauma, grief often involves mourning not only what was lost but what was never received: the childhood, the parent, the safety, or the version of oneself that might have been.
“Why is having my own child making me feel so much more rage and anger towards my parents? I thought I was done feeling angry but now I can’t even answer their Facetimes because I feel so much anger. What’s wrong with me?”
Triggered Grief
Triggered grief refers to grief that surfaces in response to a present-day experience that mirrors or contrasts with a past wound — in this case, becoming a parent and witnessing what your own child receives activates mourning for what was absent or harmful in your own childhood. It is not a sign that something is wrong; it is a sign that something real is asking to be acknowledged.
If you’ve felt surprised by the resurgence of your sadness and anger towards your own caregivers after becoming a parent yourself, there’s a very good reason for this.
Most people who become parents experience a sense of unconditional love, devotion, and fierce protectiveness towards their child – feelings that, hitherto in life, nothing has ever rivaled.
Becoming a parent is a profound experience.
To love someone so much and to feel the gravitational orbit of your psyche and life shift from wrapping around you, to wrapping around them, it’s literally life-changing.
Becoming a parent is the biggest and richest human experience many of us will ever have.
And for many new parents, the love and devotion that they feel for their own child can kindle within them a greater appreciation for their own parents and how well they were loved.
But for those of us who come from relational trauma backgrounds, this experience of loving someone else so wholeheartedly can sometimes trigger different feelings for the people who raised us: renewed anger and grief.
How can becoming a parent retrigger old wounds from your own childhood?
When you feel such profound respect, care, and concern for your child and attempt to do everything – literally everything – in your power to make them feel loved, safe, accepted, respected, and well-cared for, this can evoke explicit and implicit memories about how you yourself didn’t have these very things you’re working so hard to provide for your child.
And as these memories are evoked, as this contrast is highlighted, thoughts and questions may bubble up:
“How on earth could they have possibly done that? I would NEVER let my child experience that.”
“I don’t remember her ever cuddling with me the way I cuddle him – that’s so sad.”
“In a hundred years I would never leave my daughter alone with a strange man in a room. Where were they? How did they let that happen?”
Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
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“If this is what love is, did they even love me?”
Experiencing love, devotion, and fierce protectiveness for our own children can painfully, acutely highlight the difference between what we experienced and what we hope to give to our children.
That contrast, that deficit, those questions and thoughts, all of it can trigger renewed sadness, anger, and anguish about our own dysfunctional, neglectful, or outright abusive pasts.
Grief that we honestly thought we were done feeling.
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. This quiz reveals the childhood patterns keeping you running — and why enough is never enough.
But being triggered, having this resurgence of grief, of anger and sadness, doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.
In fact, I think it can be a very good thing.
Why isn’t being triggered by parenting necessarily a bad thing?
“aw-pull-quote”
Being triggered after becoming a parent, having a resurgence of grief, of anger and sadness about your own childhood, may be uncomfortable, but it’s actually very important for your own healing.
Why?
Because experiencing a re-trigger and resurgence of grief and anger invites you to go a layer deeper in your healing process.
Back to the top of the essay, grief isn’t linear and it’s not one-dimensional.
At different points in our healing journey, we access grief in ways and layers that we have access to and that we’re equipped to confront at that time.
Becoming a parent and feeling a resurgence of your grief and anger is you at a different stage in your healing journey. Being invited to dive a layer deeper into your grief again. So that you can feel all your feelings, metabolize them in your mind and body. And heal even more from your painful past.
Why is it true that we cannot heal what we cannot feel?
And so when renewed grief is evoked – as it so strongly is when we become parents ourselves – this is your portal, your doorway into feeling more and thus healing more.
Feeling and experiencing a strong resurgence of grief – of anger and sadness – after becoming a parent is, of course, uncomfortable and painful.
And I have to mention that you’re probably feeling this emotional pain about your past in tandem with the physical pain so many of us new parents experience. Pain that comes from sleep deprivation, vaginal birth and c-section recovery. Breastfeeding, pumping, and other biological deprivations and strains.
And you may even be experiencing the emotional pain of grieving your past on top of postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. (If this is you, I want you to reach out to a therapist ASAP.)
The emotional pain on top of the physical pain of new parenthood can be a lot to handle.
The physical pain parts of new parenthood are fairly inevitable, and they will pass.
But I honestly genuinely wish that you – like myself and so many others – didn’t have grief about lost childhoods on top of that unavoidable new parent pain.
If I had one wish from a genie I would wish that every child on the planet had the experience of a safe, stable, loving, and emotionally nurturing childhood.
But the reality is that many of us didn’t get that kind of childhood experience.
And now we have to grieve that now and for as long as it takes.
Doing this – actively grieving our past – will better equip us to give ourselves the best adulthood possible (despite our adverse early beginnings).
Moreover, this will better equip us to show up for our own children with more regulated nervous systems. And more capacity to act from a place of choice versus emotional reactivity as we parent them.
Navigating Retriggered Grief Through Parent-Focused Trauma Therapy
When you sit across from your therapist, exhausted from night feedings yet overwhelmed by rage toward parents you thought you’d forgiven, you’re experiencing one of parenthood’s most profound complexities—the love for your child that simultaneously heals and wounds, proving that learning how to actively grieve your past becomes even more crucial when you’re breaking generational cycles.
Your trauma-informed therapist understands that becoming a parent doesn’t just change your present; it fundamentally alters your relationship with your past, creating new access points to grief that wasn’t available before you knew what parental love actually felt like. Together, you explore the specific contrasts triggering you: the patience you show during tantrums versus the violence you received, the co-sleeping that feels natural versus the isolation you endured, the fierce protection you provide versus the exposure to danger you survived.
The therapeutic space becomes essential for processing this grief without it overwhelming your capacity to parent—your therapist helps you create boundaries between processing time and parenting time, teaching you to metabolize these feelings in doses your nervous system can handle while caring for an infant. Through approaches like EMDR to reprocess activated memories, somatic work to release grief held in the body, or narrative therapy to integrate your story, you learn to hold multiple truths: that your parents failed you profoundly AND you’re capable of providing differently, that you can grieve what you didn’t receive WHILE celebrating what you’re giving, that feeling triggered doesn’t mean you’re broken but rather brave enough to feel what needs feeling.
Most powerfully, parent-focused trauma therapy helps you understand that this retriggered grief is actually a gift to both you and your child—by processing these wounds now, you’re clearing inherited trauma from your lineage, ensuring your baby won’t carry the unmetabolized grief you’ve carried. Your therapist witnesses you doing the heroic work of simultaneously grieving your past while creating your child’s secure future, understanding that every tear shed in session is both mourning what was lost and watering what’s growing—a new family tree rooted in consciousness, choice, and the kind of love you always deserved.
Wrapping up.
One of the things I’m most passionate about in the world is supporting those who come from relational trauma backgrounds. To heal from their adverse beginnings. So that they can have a beautiful adulthood, yes. But also so that the next generation of children after us doesn’t have to experience what we ourselves went through.
And now, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below:
Did you relate to today’s essay? Did your sadness and anger about your own childhood get triggered/re-triggered when you became a parent? What helped you cope with those big feelings?
Please, if you feel so inclined, leave a message in the comments below. Our monthly blog readership of 20,000 plus people can benefit from your wisdom and experience.
And please, remember this:
If you came from a relational trauma background and didn’t have a good childhood yourself but are doing everything in your power to give your own child a childhood they won’t need to recover from, you’re a hero in my eyes.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
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). Cautioning health-care professionals: Bereaved persons are misguided through the stages of grief. OMEGA &#
; Journal of Death and Dying.Feldman, R. (
). The adaptive human parental brain: implications for children&#
;s social development. Trends in Neurosciences.Levine, A., &#
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). The Attachment Bond: Affectional Ties Across the Lifespan. Praeger Publishers.Lieberman, A. F., &#
Why do I feel so overwhelmed and sad about my own childhood now that I’m a parent, even though I thought I’d processed it?
It’s incredibly common for parenthood to unearth unresolved feelings about your own upbringing. The intense love and responsibility you feel for your child can shine a spotlight on what you might have missed or experienced differently, triggering a natural and often painful re-evaluation of your past. This isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather a profound emotional response to a significant life transition.
I’m a successful professional, but becoming a mom has made me feel like I’m failing at everything, especially when I think about my own parents. Is this normal?
Absolutely. driven, ambitious women often internalize a strong drive for perfection, and when the unpredictable reality of parenting clashes with that, it can feel like a personal failure. Reflecting on your own parents’ struggles or perceived shortcomings can amplify these feelings, creating a cycle of self-doubt that many accomplished individuals experience during this transformative time.
How can I stop my own childhood experiences from negatively impacting how I parent my child, especially when I feel triggered?
The first step is acknowledging that these triggers are valid and stem from your own history. Practicing self-compassion and understanding that your reactions are often rooted in past wounds, not your child’s behavior, is crucial. Seeking support, whether through therapy or a trusted community, can provide tools and strategies to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively, breaking intergenerational patterns.
What does it mean if I find myself resenting my child for having a childhood I didn’t, even though I love them deeply?
This complex emotion, while difficult to admit, is a common manifestation of unresolved grief for your own childhood. It doesn’t diminish your love for your child; instead, it highlights the pain of your past losses. Recognizing this resentment as a signal of your own unmet needs can be a powerful catalyst for healing, allowing you to process your grief and cultivate a more present and joyful parenting experience.
I feel guilty for grieving my childhood when my life now is so good. How do I reconcile these feelings?
Guilt often accompanies grief, especially when your current life is filled with blessings. It’s important to remember that grief isn’t about what you have or don’t have now, but about what was lost or absent in your past. Allowing yourself to feel and process this grief, without judgment, is a vital step towards emotional integration and can ultimately deepen your capacity for joy and connection in your present life.
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.
The following statistics provide important context for understanding this topic:
Women who experienced childhood trauma were 59% more likely to experience antenatal depression and 39% more likely to develop pregnancy-related diabetes — the embodied legacy of childhood trauma intensifies across the perinatal period. (BMJ Research, 2023)
About 1 in 8 women with a recent live birth reported symptoms of postpartum depression — and for those with childhood trauma histories, this risk is compounded by the retriggering of unresolved grief. (CDC Reproductive Health, 2024)
Research confirms intergenerational transmission of trauma from both mothers and fathers to their children — becoming a parent consciously surfaces these patterns, which can be a painful but powerful healing opportunity. (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022)
Becoming a parent highlights the stark contrast between the unconditional love you feel for your child and what you didn't receive. This contrast naturally evokes anger—"How could they have done that? I would NEVER"—as you realize the depth of care that was missing from your own childhood.
Absolutely. Parenthood is one of the biggest triggers for unresolved childhood grief because it provides such vivid contrast. The devotion you feel for your child illuminates what was absent in your own upbringing, inviting you to process grief at deeper levels than were previously accessible.
No—it means you're ready for deeper healing. Grief isn't linear or one-dimensional. Different life stages give you access to different layers of grief. Parenthood positions you to process wounds from a new vantage point, with greater capacity and understanding.
Acknowledge that you're managing emotional pain atop physical exhaustion from birth recovery and sleep deprivation. Seek therapy support, especially if experiencing postpartum depression/anxiety. Remember that feeling these emotions, though difficult, is part of metabolizing old wounds to show up more regulated for your child.
Yes. Actively grieving your past frees up somatic, mental, and emotional energy, allowing you to parent from choice rather than emotional reactivity. Processing these feelings helps you see reality more clearly and make conscious decisions to protect both yourself and your child.
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