Please stop saying parenting is hard for everyone & read Parenting with PTSD instead

Sometimes, we feel anxious, intrusive, or afraid when changing or bathing or own babies.

Sometimes, we feel sick to our stomachs and worried while potty training, nurturing, or disciplining our toddlers.

Sometimes we feel victorious, awe-inspired, and grateful to be able to provide security, safety and unconditional love to our children.

Parenting can be hard for everyone, at times, but it's not the same kind of hard for everyone.

Sometimes, we feel shame-filled and ill-equipped when talking about puberty, body parts, or sexuality. Sometimes we flash back or angst ahead because of how and we were compromised by caregivers as children in our bodies, homes, and families.

We don't all arrive to adult life with the same experiences, support or resources.

If affection, attention, and intimacy have been complex, mysterious, difficult, dangerous or even deadly for some kids no wonder parenting after trauma is daunting for the adults we become.

"Parenting when you have experienced childhood abuse can feel like walking back into a war zone as a soldier with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There are flashbacks and triggers everywhere, and most parents are completely blindsided by them because no one talks about it."

Those words were written by @Dawn Daum and @Joyelle Brandt explaining why they co-edited Parenting with PTSD in order to create the parenting book, resource and community they had sought and could not find.

(Note: Note: An online version of Parenting with PTSDÂ is available, for free, for 48 hours in Canada, USA,and the UK).

We live in a world where it's easier to find books on gluten-free baby food than it is to find books on break-the-cycle parenting after "ACE-ing" childhood.

Parenting without ACEs or traumatic stress is not the same as parenting with them.

To say parenting is hard for everyone is to minimize the avalanche of evidence about ACEs, how the cumulative impact lasts and into and throughout parenting, parenthood, and adulting.

Finally, there is a book that addresses the facts, fears, and frustrations of mothers and fathers with post-traumatic stress directly. It includes the voices of dozens where we speak for ourselves, to each other and with allies.

ACEs-related information is all over these pages which will get to parents directly. There are even downloads parents can share with providers. Brandt and Daum write:

Over the last two decade, science and research on toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has shown us that abuse which occurs during childhood interrupts healthy brain and body development. Some children who experience this kind of interference in healthy development will be supported with therapeutic interventions; most will not. However, all survivors of childhood abuse have one thing in common; they grow up, and most become parents. Parenting survivors need support to get through the flashbacks and other post-traumatic stress symptoms they will experience.
As new mothers, editors and contributing authors Dawn Daum (of Northville, NY) and Joyelle Brandt (of Port Moody, BC) both went looking online and on book shelves for something to validate how they were experiencing motherhood, but never found what they needed. What they did find was each other after Daum published an online article describing her struggles with raising her daughter as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. Brandt contacted Daum after reading the article and asked her if she wanted to create the resource that each of them went looking for.

The essays in this book bring voice to the many challenging experiences shared by survivor parents in all phases of parenting.

Each essay included in Parenting with PTSD walks you through not the individual's abusive experiences, but rather how such experiences have affected the author as a mother or father.

How can we change the present, our relationships, and families if we don't understand the way we're impacted by the past?

Parenting plans, programs and advice will continue to fail, fall short or do harm if they don't address the actual needs of the parents they are created for. Some even re-traumatize parents.

Parents deserve more.

I love people who take it upon themselves to create the resources they needed in order to help others. It's inspiring. But it also means that what people need doesn't yet exist or is impossible to find. That's awful.

While ACEs are common, resources that speak specifically to those parenting with them are not. If anything, we get unasked for advice that often isn't ACEs or trauma-informed or informed at all by survivor parents. How can we change the face of ACEs if we aren't hearing, honoring or supporting those with the greatest impact on the next generation?

How can we change the face of ACEs if we aren't hearing, honoring or supporting parents who are on the frontlines of most impacting the next generation?

Parenting with ACEs is not the same as parenting without ACEs. Parenting with ACEs with resources is not the same as Parenting with ACEs without them.

We need this book, community, and resource.

And far more.

In fact, part of the reason the Trigger Points Anthology was revised and rebranded to this updated form is to be more inclusive and expansive. More voices and perspectives are represented. More tools and resources for parents, professionals, and allies have been added.

Brandt and Daum write:

Parenting with PTSD has the original content from the first edition including essays written by fathers, a queer woman expecting her first child, mothers from inside and outside of North America, women of different ethnicities, single and married parents. Essays on post-traumatic symptoms not previously discussed, writings by parenting survivors who either provide trauma-informed services or educate those who do, and new tools have all been added.
Despite two time zones and a country between them, Brandt and Daum worked together to talk to other parenting survivors and collect their stories. Through hundreds of emails, texts, and phone conversations Daum and Brandt created the Trigger Points Anthology, now Parenting with PTSD. The decision to revise and republish the original anthology is due in part by the overwhelming response from readers, the majority of which carried a diagnosis of PTSD or C-PTSD, but also because the editors have significantly increased their knowledge and awareness of how to best serve, inform, and support parenting survivors.

I'm grateful for this book and for all the post-traumatic growth, community and solidarity as well. Many of us are now breaking the cycle and the silence together. We are encouraged by and encouraging each other directly, online and in daily life.

We don't offer each other unsolicited advice. We remind each other that the struggle is real and that the effort is worthwhile. We help each other mark the terrain we've traveled.

We cheer each other when we notice our children feel safe and loved while young and vulnerable and we marvel at that. We revel in the moments when they explore and relax in a home and world they most trust. We encourage each other to dig deep, rest and help each other to recalibrate when we feel knocked off center.

We help ourselves and our children learn how to renew, recover and seek comfort and solace when hurt or afraid. It's not only hard. It's warrior work and celebration-worthy.

Maybe the joys, bliss and magic moments will be the subject of their next book.

For now, I'm thrilled to be a contributing author in this book and this ACEs Connection community. In fact, many can be found in the pages of this books, such as @CHARLES DANIELS, @Louise Godbold @Elisabeth Corey, and @Byron Hamel.

Note: If Dawn Daum and Joyelle Brandt sound like familiar names it's because they are members of ACEs Connection Network, were featured guests on the Parenting with ACEs chat a few months ago and because I've written about them and their earlier version of this book, Trigger Points Anthology, previously.

Disclosure: I'm a contributing writer to this book but have no financial stake or reward in the sales. I'm promoting it because I hope parents struggling the most feel less alone and honestly because I'm so thrilled at how much ACEs are all over so many pages. I'm thrilled to be a part of a parent-led, survivor-led, ACE-aware initiative by and for other parents.

More information on Editors & Parenting with PTSD Community