No one tells you that becoming a parent can help heal your own childhood trauma.

“Do you think parenting has brought up anything from your childhood?” the social worker asked.

“Yes.” I paused, figuring out where to start. “In short, I just wish that I had a parent like me. And I wish the social workers had taken us into care that day.” I choked back tears. The last few weeks had been hard. Heavy. I’d not been managing ‘life’ the way I used to pre-parenthood. I’d known something wasn’t ‘right’ with me for a while. All my usual techniques weren’t working. Meditation. Reflective journaling. Calming homegrown herbs I’d dried into teas. Identifying new plants. Reading psychology books.

The social worker began tippy tappying away. As a foster carer, I knew better than to be honest, but I couldn’t help it. Truth leaked out of me these days, like milk from my new maternal mental mammary glands.

“It’s just for your records, you can speak honestly”. She lied.

“There was just so much that should’ve been handled differently, that could’ve changed the outcome of my life. And now that I’m parenting myself, it really isn’t that hard to keep your kids safe.”

This was definitely going on my records now. I’d be flagged on the system as ‘needing support’, and if at some point in the inevitable future a spiteful birth parent complained about me, it would be off with my head. I’m not joking.

“Hmm yes” she said, slowly sipping her tea. “I read your case notes, it’s bizarre how they just dropped everything and never got involved again despite you still being at risk, isn’t it? That must bring up a lot for you?”

She was probing now and I was taking the bait. I can’t hide from the fact that since I became a parent, flashbacks of my childhood – once tightly packed away in steel boxes with bows on the top – had returned in force. No one warns you about that.

And worst of all, I was having happy memories too. Albeit, they were the ones where I’d run away somewhere and spend the day reading books, or times I’d get lost wandering fields – hunting for fossils – before phones and social media and responsibilities. They are reminders of the innocence and purity that childhood should feel like. Tiny moments my brain says ‘ah, yes, here’s a part that looks right!’. They are few and far between, but they are there nonetheless.

Normally with a mental health anomaly such as this, I go full ‘investigation’ mode. My inner soul detective yells ‘WHO STARTED THIS?’ and ‘FIND THE SOURCE, FIX THE PROBLEM!’ and ‘WHERE’S THE LEAK?’. She storms around my brain in a Type A flurry, desperately trying to patch up the holes that are leaching the peace I’ve worked incredibly hard to claim.

But something feels different this time. I don’t think I’m meant to fix this ‘problem’. I kind of think I’m meant to just sit and watch it flow past. Like a twisted Disney parade in slow motion, where no one talks. The memories are meant to ‘be there’. They are asking me to let them move on now that I know how it should have been. Now that I know what childhood can look like.

I almost feel like I’m simply a witness to it all now, rather than a participant. Like when a ghost walks through people in the movies, and it makes them all uncomfortable for a minute, like their organs have been temporarily rearranged, but also like they’ve just experienced something deeply profound – that’s me.

The ghosts of my past have come back to heal me. With a little haunting in the process. I aspire to be as patient as these old memories are encouraging me to become.

And in the meantime…she is recovering…she is healing.