What I didn't learn in school

There’s something no one really prepared me for — not in grad school, not in parenting classes, not even in the professional development workshops that filled my early career.

No one taught me how to hold the weight of intergenerational trauma — not in theory, but in my own body.
Not in my family.
Not while packing school lunches or sitting across from a client in pain who reminded me a little too much of myself.

As a mom and as a therapist, I have spent years collecting knowledge: attachment theory, nervous system regulation, trauma-informed practice. But the work of actually breaking cycles — in real time, in messy moments — that was something I had to learn on my own.

I remember feeling the sting of a reaction that didn’t match the moment. My child saying something small, and me feeling something enormous. I remember how hard it was to admit that the work I do for others — sitting with them in their inherited pain — was the same work I was struggling to do inside my own home.

And I remember looking for something — a space, a framework, a map — that could help me make sense of it all.
And realizing that space didn’t really exist.

Not one that honoured both the personal and the professional, the messy and the meaningful.
Not one that said: “Yes, you’re trained. And still — this is hard. And no, it’s not just you.”

That’s what seeded The Elara Institute.

Not just the research. Not just the training. But the gap I felt between knowing and living. Between being a professional with insight and a parent with inherited patterns I was just beginning to see.

This blog won’t offer five-step formulas or quick fixes. I’m not interested in performance.
What I’m interested in is telling the truth — about what it means to notice what we’re carrying, and to choose, in small but brave ways, to carry it differently.

If you’re here, maybe you’re doing that too.
Maybe you’ve been looking for this kind of space.
I hope it helps you feel less alone in the work.

— Meghan