The Moment I Realized Intergenerational Trauma was Missing from the Conversation

The Moment I Realized Intergenerational Trauma Was Missing From the Conversation

I remember the moment so clearly.

I was talking on the phone to a therapist — someone trained in the very same attachment frameworks I’d studied and practiced. At the time, I was in the thick of trying to support one of my children through intense emotional dysregulation, and I was desperate for help. Not as a professional — but as a mother.

I told her that I knew how important co-regulation was. I knew that my child needed a calm, grounded adult to help him through his big feelings.

But then I said something that I now understand as the heart of it all:

“I know how important it is… but his crying just triggers something huge in me. I can’t get to a regulated place.”

And her response?

“You need to learn.”

That was it. No curiosity. No compassion. No exploration of where that reaction might be coming from. Just a quiet (and not-so-quiet) message: Get it together.

In that moment, I felt what so many parents feel: invisible, shamed, and completely alone.

And that was the moment the lightbulb went off.
It wasn’t just me struggling to stay calm.
It wasn’t just me “not trying hard enough.”

It was my nervous system — shaped by my own history — carrying echoes from a time when crying meant something different. When it meant danger and powerlessness.

This wasn’t just parenting stress. It was intergenerational trauma rising up in the most tender, vulnerable moments of caregiving.

And yet no one was naming that.
Not in therapy.
Not in the parenting programs.
Not even in most professional trainings I had been part of.

We talk about trauma in children.
We talk about co-regulation and nervous system strategies.
But we don’t often talk about the internal storms caregivers are navigating while trying to show up for their kids — especially when those storms are tied to things they’ve spent their whole lives trying to manage, forget, or survive.

That moment stayed with me. It still does.

It’s one of the reasons I created The Elara Institute — to help fill in the gap I once fell through. To bring intergenerational trauma into the conversation, not just as a theory, but as a lived reality that deserves care, support, and reflection.

Because “learning to co-regulate” isn’t just a skill to master.
It’s a journey.
And for many of us, it starts with unlearning the belief that we should already have it all figured out.

If this resonates with you — whether you're a parent, therapist, or someone who's sat on both sides of the couch — I just want you to know:
You're not alone. You're not broken. And you're not failing.

Sometimes what looks like “dysregulation” is actually a nervous system telling the truth about something that’s never been named.
And naming it is a powerful place to start.