Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

You say to your inner child, look how this is possible.

Yes, we are.

We wished we would have had supportive adult attention.

And now we're experiencing what supportive adult attention feels like from the perspective of the adult giving supportive attention and something heals like we start to get better.

And when we do that, we really do heal our own attachment for our inner child.

We're not our kids are not responsible for healing us.

We are responsible for healing us.

But at the same token, in raising our kids, we can heal ourselves, too.

And I think that's the most hopeful thing about post-traumatic parenting, that parenting is the most opportune time for healing yourself and rewiring your own brain.

So yeah, it's great for the kids and we do it for their sake.

That's the engine.

That's the why.

That's the mission.

It's the only thing that may have gotten us to be willing to do this hard work and look at ourselves and examine ourselves.

But then it's for us.

In the end, it benefits us as well.

And I think that, to me, was the most hopeful thing from the book, that you're not finished just because, yeah, my childhood was terrible.

So that's it.

I'm damaged irretrievably.

I can heal.