What childhood baton are you handing over to your children?

Looking back at my childhood, I had a lot of my parents batons handed over to me, and as a child you don’t realize you carry these batons with you into adulthood, into your relationships whether it is good or bad. You sub-consciously carry them with you.

Now, as a child there isn’t much you can do about the different batons handed to you but as an adult you have the choice to continue carrying these batons of hurt and trauma with you and as a result you hand this over to your children and the cycle simply continues. I ask again, what hurt and painful batons were handed to you as a child? that today you still carry with you every day, willingly or unwillingly?

Which ever it may be, as an adult you now have the option to do better by yourself, and for your children. And I too had to deal with these batons. How I dealt with these is, I had to be intentional about my healing and by being intentional I had to deal with childhood pain, childhood rejection and childhood trauma that was placed on me and it was not an easy journey, at times felt like I was ripped open but I had to do it for myself and most importantly for my children. I do not want my children and my grandchildren walking around with my childhood pain batons. I had to start by telling myself that it was not me. It was nothing I did wrong, I was just a child.

I realized that my parents projected their childhood pain and rejection onto me. How I dealt with it? By starting off telling myself, that it was not my fault and it is not mine to carry and most importantly I needed to release this and give it back to my parents by having conversations with them. I released it all and gave it back to them not because I needed an apology or because I needed them to feel bad but purely for me. I needed to release for me. For my well-being and the well-being of my marriage and my children.

I had to tell my parents how they made me feel as a child, what the pain and traumas were they passed onto me and how it made me feel as a child. How by them dropping the ball as my parents impacted me. I had to open up and let them know so that I could be free and so that my children did not suffer as a result of my childhood traumas. My parents also did not realize that they passed on their childhood pain and traumas onto me, it was done sub consciously. But, once we know better we need to do better.

I refused to hand over a baton of pain, of trauma, and of rejection to my children. I had to make a conscious decision and be intentional about my healing. Healing is a hard thing to go through sometimes we need to have hard, uncomfortable and brutally honest conversation, oh but trust me. The freedom that comes thereafter is Incredible, I felt so much lighter and free. The going through process is extremely hard but once to get to the end you look back and say, the process was worth it.

Today, simply want to say if you have been handed a baton of pain, rejection or trauma whether it is from your childhood or past or present relationships don’t let it continue. It is not too late to drop that baton, stop the race and take time to deal, you must deal with it so that it does not become a trigger in your life. Deal with everything, every bit of emotion because at the end of the day you are worth it, you are worthy of a life of peace and freedom and your children deserve only good batons handed over to them.

One needs to get a point in your lives where you are able to let people know how they make us feel, good or bad. We need to be able to release and deal with things because we cannot go through life bottling things up and one day we just have this massive explosion because of built up emotions. Let people know how you feel and leave it there, we cannot manage peoples emotions at our expense.

Let us be intentional about our healing. Be intentional about our mental health.

Be intentional about raising a strong and healthy (physically, emotionally and mentally) next generation.

You are worth it.

Let it go.

Give it back to the whomever it may belong to.

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