Generational Dehydration Is a Thing: Why Chronically Ill Latch Key Kids Don't Drink Enough Water | #159

Do your houseplants get watered better than you do? If you grew up unsupervised, have one or more chronic illnesses, and have always struggled to drink enough water — there may be a reason that goes deeper than bad habits.

In Daily Dose of Dawn #159, Dawn coins the term "generational dehydration" and traces her own lifelong struggle with hydration back through childhood neglect, environmental trauma, and the way chronic sleep deprivation hijacks executive function. This one connects dots that most people have never even thought to connect.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

Do your house plants get watered better than you do?

Attention chronically dehydrated people. If you also have these criteria, you were a latch key kid or otherwise unsupervised for the most part as a child. You are dealing with one or more lifelong chronic illnesses. It took you a long time to get diagnosed or you still have yet to be diagnosed and you have a really hard time getting yourself to drink enough water every day.

If all those things fit you and you're fed up with yourself and really ready to create solid change in this area of hydration of your life, welcome in to your daily dose of Dawn at Dawn — videos designed to expand your thinking.

So why think about this? My awareness of my chronic dehydration came to me in phases. If you don't think about these things or hear someone else talk about them, we can miss out on healing just ripe for the picking.

The first bit — there are three key bits, so stick around.

Have you seen a hose water meme? Like, did it give you the ick thinking about drinking out of the hose as a kid? Not exactly inviting the want for hydration.

Next, I watched some documentary about public water and bottled water lies. And I grew up six blocks from Love Canal, which was the worst ecological disaster in the history of the USA. And in the documentary, they talked about kids getting sick from drinking water from the hoses. So all those things came together in my mind to equal water is bad — scary.

And if you don't feel water is safe, guess what? You're a lot less likely to consume it.

All right, I'm not going to get into filters or bottles or any of that stuff. Those are personal decisions that you need to make for yourself. What I want to highlight is if you perceive water as something negative, that needs to go on your to-do list to change that.

In 2025, I almost died of sepsis, and it highlighted just how chronically dehydrated I was, and I decided to make a conscious effort to change that for the first time in my life at 55 years old. Moral of the story is, it's never too late to start and you can teach an old adult new tricks.

The second bit of this awareness literally just happened this week, which is why this dose is being made. I finally connected the dots that because I never got on the hydration bus, never learned its significance, I also dehydrated my kids. They always had access to water, but I never made it a big deal to drink it because I didn't. I drank coffee all day.

I just apologized last night. Fortunately, they found their way to making that a habit on their own.

Okay, the third bit also just came to me this week and I thought, "Wow, I can't believe I just realized this now." When I would go to the doctor complaining about my sleepiness like for 11 years, they would tell me to drink more water. And because no one ever taught me the importance, the significance, the effects of dehydration on the body, it felt like dismissal. Like just take some Robitussin. Water? Please. I've got widespread body pain. What is water going to do?

Who knew? I didn't. It would hydrate my fascia so I didn't hurt as much. My stubbornness kept me from hearing that. It took me so long to get on the hydration train. And that's a testament to the way that chronic sleep deprivation affects the executive functions of the brain.

So, in looking at why I was chronically dehydrated, I had to change my perception of water, I had to correct the learning of why drinking water was so important. I had to create behaviors that encouraged me to stay the course and then go and heal the generational trauma by sharing that information with my kids.

And this is why I say healing is not an all or nothing thing. We heal in bits all the time. And it's only through exposing ourselves to these kind of conversations that these thoughts come into our head and we're able to shift our perspective and reconcile them and move on.

Together, we all win.

🔗 Want to go deeper? Get Dawn's 14-Day Self-Love Boot Camp: How to Be on Your Own Side — and if you can't afford it, reach out. She means it.

👉 https://howtobeonyourownside.com

📲 Ready for 1-on-1 coaching? A weekend slot is open. Text or call Dawn directly: 805-870-9740