Healing as a Parent: Breaking Cycles While Holding Space for Yourself

Parenting while healing is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Some days, it feels like it's actually impossible—the responsibility of showing up fully for my daughter while I'm barely able to show up for myself.

Recently, my three year old got really sick. The kind of sick where her little body couldn’t keep anything down, where the hours blurred into each other between cleaning up puke, holding her close, and waiting for her fever to break. The kind of sick that left me helpless, just watching her suffer, doing everything I could but knowing it wasn’t enough to stop her pain.

And in the middle of all of that, my body threw me somewhere else. Before I knew what was happening, I was back in the hospital with my mom the days leading up to her death. I was watching her body fail, smelling the same smells, feeling the same helplessness. The past came rushing in, overtaking the present.

And I had to mother through it.

I wanted to be the mother who could hold my baby's sickness with steadiness, who could offer comfort and calm without being swallowed by my own pain. But in those moments, it felt impossible. The past was loud, my body was reacting before my mind could even make sense of it, and I felt myself slipping into survival mode. I was reliving something my nervous system had stored as trauma. I was moving between two timelines, my body responding to something long past while I was actively trying to parent in the present.

The hardest part of breaking cycles is that sometimes, the past crashes into the present without warning. And in those moments, healing doesn’t look like having it all together. It looks like awareness. It looks like catching myself before I completely disappear into the memory. It looks like saying, I see what’s happening. I’m here, and I am not there anymore.

I didn’t handle it perfectly. I panicked. I fell apart. I had to ask for help and step out of the room to give myself space to cry. But I let myself feel the weight of it all instead of pushing it down, instead of telling myself I had to just power through. I let myself be human, even while holding space for her.

I’m choosing to accept that my body did what it was wired to do. That I wasn’t weak—I was overwhelmed. That falling apart for a moment didn’t mean I wasn’t holding it together when it mattered.

Healing as a parent doesn’t mean never getting triggered. It doesn’t mean always having the perfect, regulated response. It means choosing, over and over, to return to the present. To catch yourself before slipping too far into the past. To let yourself feel what needs to be felt while still showing up for the child in front of you.

It means learning how to hold both—your past and your present, your grief and your love, your pain and your resilience.

If you’re navigating your own triggers while parenting, you’re not failing. You’re healing while holding. And that is some of the hardest, bravest work there is.

It’s okay to have moments where the past feels too close. It’s okay to take a breath, place a hand on your heart, and remind yourself that you are here, now.

Every time you choose acceptance instead of shame—every time you offer yourself grace—you are breaking a cycle.