How to Heal Childhood Wounds as an Adult (You Don’t Need a Time Machine) | #106

Healing childhood wounds doesn’t require rewriting the past—it requires showing up differently in the present. In this Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn, Dawn Super shares how unmet childhood needs can be addressed in adulthood through awareness, compassion, and self-leadership. By learning how to “reparent” yourself, you can soothe old wounds, reclaim your sense of worth, and make life feel lighter - without needing a time machine.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

If you could go back and fix things from your childhood, would you?

This is for anyone who feels a gap in the way that they were raised.

This is the daily dose of Dawn at Dawn, number 106, videos designed to expand your thinking.

So, why do we want to learn this? Because our childhood wounds can keep us from living up to our full potential. Because even if you don't realize it, you can do something about the past, now.

Welcome back to my happy matters collective. If you're new here, thanks for joining us.

How did this come into my awareness? Well, if you've watched my content for any length of time, it's no secret that I didn't have a happy childhood. I was picked on for seven long years and that led to me not liking myself for the first 35 years of my life.

My parents did not have the capacity to be parents at all really and their best fell dramatically short of what anyone would call loving. That's not to say my parents didn't love me in their own way. It's just a descriptor.

So, going back to yesterday's dose, both my parents had it worse than I did. And that doesn't make it okay, but the improvement does get a nod.

I made a lot of mistakes raising my own kids like every parent does. You don't need a time machine to make it up to yourself.

So, what did I do about it? I got the majority of my healing raising my own kids. Taking them through the things I didn't get, teaching them social skills I never learned, giving them bath time and story time and volunteering in the classroom and going on field trips and being present, being loving, family dinners, lots of laughter.

My marriage might have been miserable, but I loved being a mom.

I never had any idea how my healing would come about, but looking back now, I can see that when my oldest child made it past the age where I started getting picked on, it made a huge difference for me.

At that point, both of my children had several friends and were liked by teachers and classmates alike. So even though it wasn't happening to me, it was happening through me. And that really helped Little Dawn inside of [laughter] me feel better about it all.

As my kids got older, I realized I had a lot more things I needed to work on. Lifetime of trauma will do that to you.

I started really working on my social skills and by the time my child was a teenager, I started to have real relationships with people.

I was finally starting to see real progress in my personal growth and and that's what led to happy bonking me on the head at 41 years old. Better late than never.

My point is that it's never too late to go back and try and make your little self feel better.

I was determined to hold on to my newfound happiness. So, that's why I coined happy matters and I started talking to myself. "Well, that was hard, but you did it."

And confronting the whispers in my mind that say nobody likes you because I had plenty of evidence that that wasn't true anymore.

When I would have my moments, the ghosts would be whispering. I would just comfort myself. "Yeah, that sucked, but it's over now. And you learned so much from it."

When I would screw up, which was often, I would hold my own hand through it, loving myself like a mother would.

I realized I would never berate my own child because they didn't know how to do something. I would just teach him how to do it or find someone else who could teach him how to do it or a book or a video or some resource.

So why should I do any less for myself?

And so I discovered last year that all these things I had been doing and encouraging myself and holding my own hand and and giving myself grace, that's actually a thing. It's called reparing yourself. I call it moming yourself. [laughter]

But yeah, it's reparenting and it's going back and like soothing over the rough spots. There's no reason you can't do that.

And and there are no doovers in this life. There's no extra man at 10,000 points. Life is a one and done.

If you didn't get something that you needed as a kid, give it to yourself now.

Your inner child will thank you. Your soul will thank you. And life will get a little bit easier.

If you need more help coming to terms with the way that you were raised, you can check below for what to do when Mother's Day is hard. Good for any holiday, either parent.

Wanna go deeper? Check this one out:

Go through How To Be On Your Own Side with Dawn!

Coming soon!

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