By Ariana Friedlander | Updated Sep. 24, 2026
Welcome to Motherly’s series, Can I Be Honest?, where moms share the fears, fails, and triumphs we’re often afraid to post in the group chat. Because being a mom is hard work, but it is a lot easier when we can talk about it openly.
Growing up, I always knew I was deeply loved. My father was an exuberant man who made sure I felt his affection in grand, unmistakable ways. I remember him dropping me off at school, waiting patiently until I had walked twenty-five feet away from the car, and then rolling down his window to yell out that he loved me for everyone in the vicinity to hear. That affection was loud, visible, and constant.
When I became a mother myself, I felt that exact same effusive, rushing tide of love the moment I first held my daughter to my chest. I could not stop kissing her, snuggling her, and whispering declarations of my love into her hair. She was an easy baby who rarely fussed for long, and we shared a powerful, intuitive connection from the very beginning. I could look deep into her eyes and understand precisely what she was thinking or needing.
Then, she became a toddler, and everything shifted.
The behaviors she exhibited were entirely normal for her developmental stage—she would throw an occasional tantrum or display sudden bouts of clinginess. The problem was that I did not understand these behaviors were a standard part of growing up. Lacking that context, I responded by becoming hypercritical and controlling, which only served to dysregulate her nervous system even further.
When my daughter reached the age of three, my father came to visit while she was recovering from an illness. Naturally, she was tender, vulnerable, and heavily focused on me, her primary caregiver. Instead of recognizing this as a normal phase for a sick toddler, my father made critical comments about how she was actively rejecting him. He openly criticized how emotional she was being and expressed overt disappointment that she was still acting like she was stuck in the "terrible twos."
At first, a wave of deep shame and embarrassment washed over me. I felt an urgent desire to mold my daughter into the kind of grandchild who would make my father happy and proud, echoing the exact performance standards I had grown up with. But as I sat down later to process the visit in my journal, something entirely unexpected surfaced—an old, heavy truth I had buried and ignored for the vast majority of my life.
When I was a child, if I ever expressed anger, frustration, or overwhelming emotion, my dad would roll his eyes in exasperation and tell me he did not want to be near me if I was going to "act that way." He would frequently threaten me for crying, and then shut the door to my bedroom, leaving me entirely alone with my distress.
As those long-suppressed memories resurfaced, I forced myself to sit with the physical discomfort instead of automatically pushing it away. I realized that his harsh criticism back then had made me feel fundamentally invisible and utterly worthless. Sitting with those feelings in the present moment, I experienced a profound sense of loneliness—one that felt ancient, heavy, and heartbreaking.
What the body remembers
That was the exact moment I understood a painful truth: my father’s love had always come with invisible conditions. More importantly, I realized with absolute clarity that I did not want my daughter to ever feel that same cold disdain from me.
I received yet another stark reminder of my inherited emotional patterns just a few weeks later. My daughter experienced a major emotional meltdown while we were busy packing our home for a move, and I completely lost my temper. I exploded in anger, frustrated that her emotional distress was making an already difficult task harder for me.
Struggling and feeling utterly defeated, I called my mother for guidance. During our conversation, she recalled the single major tantrum I had thrown as a young child over a Barbie doll I could not manage to dress. She explained that, completely unable to reason with my toddler brain, she had simply closed my bedroom door and walked away, leaving me to deal with it on my own.
I felt as though I had been struck in the stomach by a sucker punch, suddenly remembering how deeply that strategy had wounded me as a child. I realized I had never truly learned how to manage my own massive emotions; I had only learned how to stuff them down forcefully until they reached a boiling point and exploded. My heart ached as a wave of sadness drained from my head while hot anger rose straight up from my sternum.
I was fiercely determined not to shame my daughter’s emotions the way my own parents had shamed mine. Yet, simply knowing that intellectual truth did not make it any easier to execute in the heat of the moment. Her outbursts continued, and my anxiety flared, convincing me that something must be terribly wrong. Instead of remaining present with her and attempting to co-regulate my own surging feelings, I felt a compulsive need to "win" the argument.
That was when I realized I needed professional guidance and began working with a somatic therapist.
What is somatic therapy?
Somatic therapy reaches far beyond traditional talk therapy by engaging the body directly as a primary doorway to deep emotional healing. Developed extensively by trauma researchers, this modality is rooted in the understanding that our lived experiences—particularly emotional wounds and relational stress—are physically stored within the tissues of the body, entirely independent of our conscious memories. These stored experiences can effectively rewire our nervous systems, leaving us perpetually trapped in survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
For parents, somatic therapy offers a practical pathway to rewrite deeply ingrained reactive patterns. It allows us to show up in our daily lives in true alignment with our core values, rather than continuing to run an outdated biological operating system that relies on fear and shame as its primary motivators.
Sitting in my therapist’s office, awkwardly picking at the loose stitching on a patchwork armchair, I slowly began to acknowledge the profound hurt I had carried for decades. That acknowledgment was immediately followed by a sharp spike of shame, fueled by the lingering belief that I was supposed to be blindly grateful for everything my parents had provided.
Over the course of our sessions, my therapist helped me learn how to stay present with the difficult emotions I had spent a lifetime stuffing down. She taught me to meet those feelings with genuine compassion instead of harsh self-judgment. As I gradually learned how to extend kindness to myself during my own hardest moments, I discovered an entirely new internal capacity to remain truly present with my daughter during hers.
I eventually realized that I could not simply think my way out of an embodied generational pattern. True safety had to become a physical sensation I could actually feel in my body, not merely a concept I understood intellectually.
I now recognize this exact dynamic mirrored in many of the parents and professionals I work with today in my own practice as a somatic practitioner. Their minds possess a crystal-clear understanding of what needs to change in their parenting approach. However, their nervous systems and physical bodies are still desperately running an old, automatic program.
To interrupt that automatic cycle, we often utilize practical somatic tools, such as a framework known as the 3 Ns: notice, name, and navigate. First, you notice what is physically happening inside your body in real time—perhaps a clenched jaw, a racing heart, or a sudden rush of heat in your chest. Next, you name it, even if only silently to yourself: "I am activated right now." Finally, you navigate the moment by consciously introducing a deliberate pause. This might involve taking a slow, deep breath, stepping outside for fresh air, splashing cool water on your face, or simply scanning the room to consciously notice neutral objects and sounds in your immediate environment.
The 3 Ns serve to interrupt the old biological pattern before it entirely takes over. By training the brain to recognize physical activation that used to drive automatic reactions, parents can create a vital choice point in moments of high stress.
Becoming a calmer, steadier presence
Today, the dynamic in our household looks entirely different. When my daughter climbs into the car after a long day at school and begins telling me about a difficult moment or her hurt feelings, I no longer rush in to fix the situation or react defensively. Instead, I remain entirely present, curious, and quiet. I can physically feel her body soften against mine as she speaks, her nervous system visibly settling because someone is simply witnessing her experience rather than trying to control or manage it.
She is a tween now, navigating the complex waters of growing up. I have fully accepted that healing is an ongoing, lifelong journey, and my ultimate goal as a mother is not to achieve some impossible standard of perfection. My goal is simply to stay in a close, authentic relationship with my child.
Just a few weeks ago, we had a particularly tense morning centered around household chores. Frustration took the wheel, and I ended up losing my temper and saying some harsh things I instantly regretted. Afterward, as the dust settled, I immediately noticed the familiar undercurrents of shame and anger driving my actions. I took intentional steps to process the hurt I had projected onto the environment. Then, rather than deflecting or blaming her for the escalation, I walked back, offered a sincere apology, and took full accountability for my behavior.
That specific piece of emotional repair was something my parents were never able to show me. And it remains the foundation of what I am deeply committed to giving my daughter every single day.
