Grieving The Debt Your Parents Left You With.
Parents are not optional influences. They are your first nervous system architects. When they fail to install basic human rights and instead install rules that punish self-respect, they create a structural deficit that the child must later pay themselves to correct. You may never get these things from your parents. If that is your truth, I’m sorry to break it to you straight like this. But it is time to grow up. Naming parental debt is a step toward taking account of your adult needs now by realizing what’s missing, grieving your loss + learning to reparent yourself like the guide you needed.
You Were Owed Assumed Worth
Assumed worth means you were meant to be treated as legitimate and welcome to their positive attention simply for existing. That assumption should have made your existence non-controversial, your needs expectable, and your presence non-burdensome.
Instead, you were taught the opposite: that self-respect was a violation, that centering yourself was rude, that valuing your own mind was arrogance. That teaching is not neutral. It is a direct sabotage of dignity. When a child is trained to believe that respecting themselves is disrespectful, they are being trained to be available for extraction.
You Were Owed Nourishing Inner Self Development
You had the right to have your thoughts treated as meaningful, your perceptions treated as real, and your inner life treated as a source of important information rather than unwanted noise. This is how a person learns to trust their intelligence, believe their feelings, define reality for themselves, and become their own authority without terror. When that doesn’t happen, the result is epistemic injury. You end up doubting your right to decide, to define, to say no, to disrupt, to change.
You Were Owed Protection Of Your Energetic Center
A healthy parent organizes around the child enough that the child learns it is normal to be central in their own life. This is how someone grows up expecting to choose nourishing environments, protect their energy, orient their life around their own wellbeing, and let others rise to meet them. When instead the child is required to orbit adult needs, adult fragility, adult authority, or adult image, the child learns that self-centrality is dangerous. That lesson is false, but it becomes embodied law unless consciously revoked.
You should have been taught that having your energy respected is a baseline and that you have the right to dictate who has access to it. This is how standards form naturally. Without this, you were left to reverse-engineer dignity as an adult, which is costly, exhausting, and destabilizing.
You Were Owed Language To Own Yourself
The other day my nephew came to me and he told me that when he’s stressed + I give him a hug he can feel the tension release from his body. I wanted to cry. Not just because I deeply enjoy being his safe space…but the language he used. He is able to articulate what his body is experiencing and has awareness of what helps him to feel regulated. This is wealth.
I have been teaching him how to connect with inner world. Listening to him use words to describe his emotions + energy is such an honor to me.
I did not have that. I was taught that respecting myself was disrespectful. I had to pay the iron price to get to a place where I felt my body belonged to me, and I’m still learning!
You were owed language to own yourself because without it, obedience replaces identity. Language is how a child can learn this sensation is mine, this feeling means something, this need is allowed, this choice belongs to me. Without that vocabulary a child develops a self that doesn’t feel safe to exploring the world or benefitting from their own life. You don’t learn how to desire, decide, or enjoy. You learn how to monitor, anticipate, and submit.
Alchemizing Grief Into Play
Grief is not a fun emotion so that might seem like an impossibility. But I don’t believe in impossibilities, I fear. Let it be painful that you did not receive these fundamental dignities as a child. You don’t have to fix the fact that it hurts. But an opportunity to metabolize this pain into medicine is available with a hint of creativity.
Naming what you never had, gives you the opportunity to give those things to yourself now. Perhaps you weren’t taught how to perceive yourself as worthy…you can learn + teach your brain now. Perhaps your sense of self is really wobbly…you can explore who you are now.
I have a practice I do with myself called “Adult Kindergarten” where I intentionally learn or experience things little Britnei didn’t get to. It’s a way of making reparenting feel light, curious + fun. There is no rule that says healing has to be heavy just because it hurts sometimes.
Book Coaching With Me
Coaching is a great way to invest in your self respect, self repair + growth. If you are ready to say yes to the best version of you…Let’s do this! Book your 1:1 time with me below.