Untriggering Motherhood: Healing Childhood Trauma While Raising Kids

Welcome to Hard Beautiful Journey, where we embrace vulnerability as our superpower and let courage light our path. I'm Tiff Carson here to share heartfelt stories of healing grief and resilience. Each week, I'll talk with guests from experts to everyday heroes about their journeys through adversity.

Together, we'll uncover the beauty that emerges from life's challenges and how each experience can spark profound growth. Join us on this courageous journey of connection and transformation.  

Tiff Carson: Imagine this, you are holding your child after a long, exhausting day. They're crying. You're overwhelmed. And suddenly you are not just reacting to the moment in front of you, something stirs. it's a flood of emotions from your own childhood, a trigger that you never saw coming. And in that instant, you realize this isn't just about today. It's about everything that came before. My guest today, Emily Cleghorn, knows this struggle firsthand as an award-winning trauma recovery coach, author, and speaker. She helps moms who are healing their own childhood trauma while raising the next generation. She's on a mission to break cycles. Untrigger motherhood and create ripples of healing that lasts for generations. So, if you've ever felt like you are fighting battles that started long before you became a parent, this episode is for you. Let's dive into another episode of Hard Beautiful Journey with Emily Cleghorn. 

Tiff Carson: Hello, Emily. How are you?

Emily Cleghorn: Good. Good. Thanks for having me today.

Tiff Carson: I am really looking forward to this conversation because I have had some challenging parenting moments that I know are going to resonate with me, let alone my other listeners. So, but before we dive into your expertise and work, I want to start with something personal. Can you take us back to a moment in your life when you realized that your own trauma was showing up in motherhood, and what did that moment teach you?

Emily Cleghorn: Oh my, for that, I think I'd have to go back to the very beginning. I was maybe three or four days postpartum, and I was sitting on my couch looking at my daughter, sleeping in her chair, and this flood, I call it, the trauma freight train, washed over me and it was sheer terror of being the mom and hurting her. I had experienced, and in that moment my nervous system was telling me to run like hell as fast as my legs would carry me out of that situation because it wasn't safe. But somehow, I was able to discern that. If I did that, was going to be repeating the cycle.

Emily Cleghorn: And so through all of that is a very messy time me. Very heavy time. Probably some of the darkest days and weeks that I've think I've ever had. I knew that I had to make a choice. I could listen to that instinctual survival part of my nervous system telling me to run like hell. Or I could stay and face whatever it was that I needed to heal and be the mama that I never experienced for my daughter and later my son. And so, the choice I made was to stay, and that's what brings me here today and it's been an incredible journey

Tiff Carson: Was it a specific trigger that started this for you? Because you talk a lot about those triggers that come up as a mom. Those come outta nowhere. 

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah, and they're like time machines.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. Instant time machines.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah.

Tiff Carson: How did you first recognize that reactions weren't just in the moment, and that it was something about your childhood trauma?

What was that moment for you?

Emily Cleghorn: I stayed quiet for a long time how I was feeling after my daughter was born. I absolutely hated being a mom. I hated it. And it's not to say anything about my daughter or the relationship that we had. It was because every maternal example that I had had in my life was not a safe one.

Emily Cleghorn: I didn't want to be that unsafe person in my daughter's life.

Emily Cleghorn: And so it took me a really, really long time to understand that. I thought in that moment, I was just a bad mom or a bad human, and I went through infertility to achieve my daughter, so the level of guilt for trying so hard to achieve a healthy pregnancy. Now have this beautiful baby who actually looked like baby me which has another level of complexity to the situation.

Emily Cleghorn: It was so heavy, it was like carrying the weight of the world so I stayed quiet for a long time. I inherited my grandfather's research...You gotta learn as much as you can about the things that you're experiencing. So, I did a lot of research. Looking at the symptoms of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, baby blues, all of those types of things.  And I could check some of the boxes, but it wasn't everything. 

Emily Cleghorn: I was like, yes, but there's more to it. Not just postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety or baby blues, it's more than that. And it was, it was like every repressed emotion that I didn't deal with during my life previous to being a mother was right there. Center court demanding for me to deal with it immediately. And you know, postpartum, you're trying to figure out how to take care of this tiny human while being sleep deprived. I was completely triggered and I would say that I was probably triggered for the first year of my daughter's life. There was a lot that was demanding to be dealt with, and so it took a long time to untangle all of that and figure it out and I could say, oh, but it's, it's all good. I figured it all out. What I want listeners to understand is that if you are in this space, if you had a traumatic childhood or trauma happen, even birth trauma, because that's a real thing too, it takes time to process. Because especially with childhood trauma, the neuro pathways that developed in my brain as a child to protect me to sense the danger, were firing on all cylinders when I had my daughter, and so it took a long time to disarm for lack of a better term, that firing squad.  It takes a long time because your triggers have a neuro pathway. It didn't happen overnight, and so healing doesn't happen overnight.

Tiff Carson: First of all, I am so proud of you for recognizing that you were meant to go on a healing journey for yourself first so that you could be the mom that you are for your kids, and I'm just so proud of you for recognizing that and not shying away from it because it is hard work.

Tiff Carson: How hard was it for you to accept your healing journey and start doing that work?  Was that hard for you to say, I'm doing this, I'm going in?

Emily Cleghorn: I think the hardest thing for me to accept was that I couldn't do it my own.  From those really early days when I was awful and probably perhaps triggered the most when I felt like a horrible person because I hated being a mom. I couldn't carry that alone.  So from that early time realizing that I couldn't carry it alone and I had to let my husband in on what was going on, but then realizing that I couldn't keep trudging through and feeling like is just supposed to be hard.  And to my doctor and saying, Hey, I think I have PTSD.  

Emily Cleghorn: It took me 32 years to get diagnosed, or maybe it was 33. I keep forgetting how old I am. But it took 32 or 33 years to get diagnosed with PTSD from trauma that happened I was a little child. 

Tiff Carson: So you help moms become the mothers that they needed as children, just like you needed that when you were a child. And Emily, that is such a powerful mission. What did you need as a child that you've now learned to give yourself?

Emily Cleghorn: I needed someone to listen and not tell me that my feelings were wrong, not tell me that I just need to suck it up. And get over it and see me for who I am.

Emily Cleghorn: I understand that although life went back to normal quote unquote normal, after I stood up for myself as a 7-year-old child and said, I'm not going home they hurt me.  

Emily Cleghorn: Although life went back to normal the next day, and I use the term normal lightly…I was not normal.  Someone, a mama who how her actions and reactions impact me as her daughter and apologize.

Tiff Carson: There's a lot of emotions coming up right now for me too. That last one that you just said, acknowledgement.

Tiff Carson: And apologize.  Those two things. I'm sorry and acknowledging it is very powerful in a child's life and in your life because it releases shame.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah.

Tiff Carson: It releases shame for both people. 

Tiff Carson: So how do you help moms step out of that shame? When they've unconsciously repeated the patterns from their past, how do you help them say, wow, I need to recognize this, acknowledge it, say I am sorry, and then move on from the shame.

Emily Cleghorn: Well, the first step is building self-awareness because as trauma survivors, we are not connected to our bodies because it wasn't safe, and so we may not even be aware that we're triggered. When we're triggered, we may not understand what anger feels like in our body, or what sadness or disappointment or heck, what joy feels like in our bodies. And so, the first step is feeling safe to connect with your body and get curious about what those emotions feel like what elicits those emotions. And one of the tools that I give my clients is I encourage them to journal out their triggers because over time, first of all, it allows you to 

 to reflect on a situation.

Emily Cleghorn: How you handled it, what caused it, all of that type of data. But as you continue that practice, you are able to look at it and see patterns. You'll be able to understand what your triggers are. When you're journaling about you'll understand that if you are getting triggered every time your kid throws a temper tantrum, it's not about your child's temper tantrum. Maybe it's the volume that your child gets to when they're throwing a temper tantrum.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: Or maybe it's the emotion that the child is showing because when you were a kid, you weren't allowed to show emotion.

Emily Cleghorn: Understanding these patterns and having that data is hugely helpful.

Tiff Carson: Wow. I love that so much as you were giving those examples, like the loud one.  The loud one for me….all three of my kids were diagnosed with ADHD and ODD, and let me tell you, the volume in our house was extreme at times.

Tiff Carson: I remember telling my ex-husband, my mom, I can’t handle the volume in here.

I can't handle it. It's too much. I'm overstimulated. And it would send me into a trigger. It took work for me to find out the root of those triggers too and to be okay with it and give myself grace. And instead of losing my shit, I would go outside or I would remove myself from that as much as possible. If my ex-husband wasn't there, I would make sure that they were safe, obviously, but I had to remove myself from that situation in order for me to not do something that I would regret, or say something that I would regret. So it takes a lot of work to acknowledge and see yourself. 

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah. And the key with this is to have a mindset of curiosity rather than judgment, because that judgment isn't going to help you. It’s going to hurt you more than anything.

Emily Cleghorn: So understanding what your triggers are, but then ask yourself, “Hmm, I kind of overreacted when Junior was doing X, Y, or Z. I wonder why?” 

Emily Cleghorn: I wonder, what's that about?

Tiff Carson: That it's not just a parenting moment. It's not necessarily your child doing something that's upsetting you. What is the deeper meaning behind that reaction?

Tiff Carson: And that's where you'll get to the good stuff. 

Emily Cleghorn: And you know, as trauma survivors, we are not the most compassionate with ourselves, and so developing a sense of self-compassion. I have actually developed a 30-day program. It's an email program that helps remind you of being compassionate towards yourself. A lot of us, me included….the stuff that we say to ourselves, we would never in a million years say that to our best friend. 

Tiff Carson: So true. I did an Instagram post about that a couple of years ago. “Things that I would never say to my daughter” and then at the bottom I just said, “So why am I saying them to myself”?

Emily Cleghorn: Mm. Yeah.

Tiff Carson: And it's so true that we are fine, just saying crap to ourselves over and over and over again but that does no good.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah, we become our own abuser.

Tiff Carson: We do, we become our own abuser. And so, when we start working on this, I call it the messy middle of the healing journey, it's so important that we recognize that when we are doing that, we are actually continuing the generational trauma.

Emily Cleghorn: Yep.

Tiff Carson: What is one small tangible practice that a mom can start doing today to shift from a reactive to responsive parenting?

Emily Cleghorn: Pause before you react.

Emily Cleghorn: If you can pause and take a deep breath. Now, I know as trauma survivors it's hard for us to take a deep breath because we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You breathe very shallowly.  Breathe in through your nose, hold it for a couple of seconds and then breathe out through your mouth, and that kind of helps to activate parasympathetic system. Instead of being in your fight or flight, freeze or fawn response, and you know what? Everybody has one of those responses that is default for them. It's human.

Emily Cleghorn: We were made that way, but we don't have to live in it.

Tiff Carson: So I'm curious, how has gratitude played a part in your journey in rewiring your brain, from a trauma response to more grounded parenting?

Emily Cleghorn: Gratitude changes how you think, and so if I can remind myself that I am thankful that I am safe and sit with that. I am thankful that I am loved because little Emily didn't always feel loved.

Emily Cleghorn: Let's be honest. That goes into what I was saying earlier about rewiring the neuro pathways in your brain.  It lets your nervous system say you know what, oh wait, I've had to be on edge for a really long time, but now, I don't have to be. Now I'm safe. And it won't change overnight, but it will change eventually.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: I can remember a few years ago when my son was throwing a temper tantrum and I handled it calmly. I didn't throw a temper tantrum of my own and it hit me. I was like, whoa, I dealt with that without losing my crap. It was huge because in that moment I was the safe place for my son to feel his feelings.

Tiff Carson: I had one of those too, and I wrote about it in my book, but I'll share it here as well. So there was something that happened between my dad and my brother, and basically what he did is he told my brother to leave, and this is when he was 13 years old. It was in a moment of anger. It was in a moment of, I'm sure alcohol use and all of that.

Tiff Carson: There was a moment when I was with my boys and we were getting ready to go to a doctor's appointment and they were….a nightmare. Let's just say it. It was awful. They were so disrespectful. They were not listening, they were screaming. It was hell.

Emily Cleghorn: Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: It escalated out of control. And I remember yelling the same words at them that my dad said to my brother…that they needed to leave, they needed to get out of my home. I don't want to see you anymore. I don't want you to come back…you name it. It just spewed it all out of my mouth and I went into my room to finish getting ready. And I just started bawling my head off. I was like, what did I just do? What did I just do? I just did the same thing, and I came out of the room and they were both crying. They were putting on their backpacks, and one of my little guys looked at me. They were probably nine, almost 10 years old, and he just gave me this look. And he was like, I don't know where we're supposed to go. Sorry, I'm getting, I'm getting emotional.

Tiff Carson: And I just felt my brother's pain in that moment of being told to leave and never come back. And I could have ignored that. I could have ignored it and felt all the shame and don't address it, just sweep it. Just ignore it. Nothing to see here. And instead, we got in the car, and I made the decision to change the direction for my kids experience.  To stop the generational trauma.

Emily Cleghorn: Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: I said, I am so sorry for what I just said to you in that house. I should never have said those words to you, and I know how much it hurt your heart. And I want you to know, I never want you to leave my home, our home. I never want that to happen. And I said those things because of this, because this is how I was feeling.

Tiff Carson: I’m proud of myself for saying, I don't need to keep doing this. I don't need this to keep going this way. I want to show them a different way. And that's what it's all about.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah.

Tiff Carson: That's what you are passionate about, is creating positive ripples for our future generations.

Emily Cleghorn: Absolutely. Yeah.

Tiff Carson: So what do you think it's gonna take to break those cycles and how moms will know that they are on the right path?

Emily Cleghorn: I think it's going to take a lot of education because there's a generational pattern where if you were brought up in a family, there's really a toxic narrative that whatever happens within our family stays within our family

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: And we don't talk about the hard stuff. I am of the belief that emotional wounds are really no different than a physical cut or scrape. That cut or scrape needs air in order to heal.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: And so in order for our emotional stuff to heal. We have to give it air. We have to talk about it. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, it's hard, but we have to talk about it.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: Sometimes it's not possible to communicate with someone who hurt you and get an apology. Sometimes people don't think they have caused any harm. They don't think they need to apologize, but understanding that sometimes you don't need the other person to release all of the emotion that is around whatever they did to you. And being willing to apologize to our kids because they're people too. They have emotions too.

Emily Cleghorn: They may not be fully grown yet, but they still have feelings. They still have a nervous system, a developing one that is very sensitive and being able to put our ego aside and do the work on ourselves so that we can equip our children with the emotional intelligence that wasn't gifted to us. 

Emily Cleghorn: And, I'm not about blaming other generations because of their crap and how they parented and all of that stuff. They didn't know what they didn't know, but we know more and so we can do better.  When you know better, you can do better.

Tiff Carson: And I think a big one too is just being okay with being vulnerable.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah.

Tiff Carson: One for me was, I was severely bullied in middle school, and it was starting to happen with one of my little guys. And instead of just saying “It's going to be okay, don't worry. Don't listen to them.” Instead, I was vulnerable and shared my experience with them, with all my kids. I let them know this is how extreme it got. This is how I was feeling in that moment.

Emily Cleghorn: Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: I told them how I thought I was never going to have friends again. I was devastated. I spoke about and used words about the emotions that I felt in that moment, in my life, so that they could really understand okay, mom really gets this.

Emily Cleghorn: Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: I really can go and talk to her about this if this continues, or just give them that safe space and that they will then feel like they can be vulnerable with me. 

Tiff Carson: That is hard for people to do.  For those people who are still in the process of healing childhood wounds or don't even know they have childhood wounds, what lessons from your work can they apply to their own journeys to start that process and to recognize that, okay, maybe I need to look at some things.

Emily Cleghorn: Well, I would say first and foremost, get curious. Get curious about your reactions. Curious about why or how your family operates. Get curious about all of that stuff. Not for the purpose of judging or shaming or any of that kind of thing but being aware.  Awareness is a tool.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. Big time.

Emily Cleghorn: Having an awareness and asking questions may help you a lot.  There may also be family members, if you ask start poking and asking questions, may get grumpy with you because they're happy in their misery. It says nothing about you. It says more about them. 

Tiff Carson: Emily, this conversation has been so powerful. But before we go, I want to leave our listeners with one final thought. If a mom out there is listening to this in tears, like I just was, and feeling seen for the first time, but they're unsure where to start, what would you say to her? Would it be to get curious?

Emily Cleghorn: Get curious and find a community that understands you.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Emily Cleghorn: Okay, so not all communities are made equal. Not all trauma recovery communities are made equal. Some are just content to compare battle stories.

Emily Cleghorn: Finding a community like the Hard Beautiful Journey community or the Mama Hood After Trauma community where it's healing focused, supportive, loving is an asset, a powerful asset.

Tiff Carson: Very powerful to find what you just said, the right community. And another example I'll give is when our kids were diagnosed with ADHD, I needed to be in rooms, in online rooms, in spaces where the moms…got it. 

Tiff Carson: Where you just say one thing and they're like, oh girl, I get it.

Emily Cleghorn: Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: Like, holy crap, what happened today?  You know, where they  truly get what you're going through.  It’s in those rooms and in those moments where you know you are not crazy, not alone, and that you’re safe.

Tiff Carson: And you don’t feel judged and there’s no shame because you can be so open and honest and you guys get what I'm facing right now. So that is huge, huge, huge, huge advice. So thank you. 

Tiff Carson: I'm really curious to know about that 30 day email thing, I want that by the way.  And here is another important resource for you to check out, and that is Emily's YouTube channel. It is called Mama Hood After Trauma. She has amazing videos on there that you guys should all go and check out.

Tiff Carson:  I am just so incredibly grateful for this conversation with you today. I end every interview asking my guests what they're grateful for today. What are you grateful for today, Emily?

Emily Cleghorn: I am grateful for this conversation.

Tiff Carson: Me too. It's brought up so many emotions, but I love it 'cause it's tears. The tears are salve for my heart. That is what I call it.

Emily Cleghorn: They're healing tears.

Tiff Carson: They are healing tears and every time I have conversations with people like you, I feel it healing step by step.

Emily Cleghorn: Yeah.

Tiff Carson: Anything else that you're grateful for today? Like spring maybe because we are both in Canada!

Emily Cleghorn: Oh yeah. Spring, I'm thankful for the mud puddles.

Tiff Carson: Exactly! Well, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your experience.  Not just your experience, but how you are taking that experience and wanting to help other mom on their own journey and making a difference in our future generations.  So, I'm just incredibly grateful for you, thank you.

Emily Cleghorn: Well, thank you.