Parenting Through Pain

When I became a mother at 13, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

How could I? I was still a child myself—one who had already been molested, abandoned, lied to, and thrown out into the streets. I had been hurt by the very people who were supposed to protect me. And now I was supposed to protect someone else?

I was terrified. I was terrified of my children encountering the kind of adults I had survived.

From the beginning, I overcompensated. I watched my kids like a hawk. I drilled them constantly on “good touch” and “bad touch.” I told them, “Even if I do it—you tell somebody.” I was so afraid that someone might hurt them… or that I might somehow mess them up, too.

I remember one day lining all three of them up in front of me—just little kids—and going over it again: “Has anybody touched you?” “Has anyone said anything weird?” “Do you know what to do if they do?”

To them, it probably felt like a lecture. To me, it felt like life or death.

I couldn’t take any chances. Not after what had happened to me. Not after being punished for telling the truth. Not after being ignored, silenced, and used. I was determined to break the cycle—even if I didn’t know how.

But that kind of parenting? That kind of fear-based love? It takes a toll.

I saw it in the way my kids reacted. How my son would look away if I wore a tank top. How they felt like they were doing something wrong just by growing up. How my trauma sometimes created fear in them, even when I was trying to love them.

That’s when I knew: I couldn’t heal them if I didn’t heal me first.

That’s what brought me to counseling.

Not some big revelation. I just wanted to love my kids from a place of freedom, not fear.

And as I went deeper into counseling, God met me there. Not with judgment—but with understanding. Not through a pastor I didn’t trust—but through slow, steady restoration.

Parenting through pain is hard. But parenting through healing is possible. To any parent reading this who’s been through hell and is trying to raise children. You're not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not doomed to repeat what was done to you. Get help. Get healing. Let God into the parts of you that still feel scared.

Because your children don’t need you to be perfect.

They just need you to be present—and whole.