These are my thoughts, my experience, my unfolding understanding. Take what resonates and leave the rest.
I've heard it from clients. I've said it myself, for almost two decades.
"My parents loved me so much. I had a great childhood."
And then something closes. A door, quietly. We move on before we've fully arrived.
There was no brute violence. It could have been worse. They did their best. We have a lot to be grateful for.
All of that can be completely true — and still not be the whole story.
The Wound That Keeps Reopening
What I've noticed, client after client, is this: when someone has looked everywhere for an explanation — for the relentless inner critic that doesn't correct but destroys, the toxic shame, the depression, the need to achieve in order to feel loved, the inability to believe they are enough — the last place they look almost always contains the origin story.
Think of it this way. If you had a wound on your leg that kept reopening, that festered, that never quite healed — you wouldn't just keep re-bandaging it. You'd have to ask: is there something still in there? Glass? Dirt? An infection that was never properly cleaned?
The origin matters. Not because we want to assign blame. But because without it, we're treating the surface while something deeper goes on doing damage.
Both Things Can Be True
This is the reframe that changes everything for most people I work with:
Our parents loved us AND there were unhealthy dynamics that left us wounded.
They were good enough to raise us into reasonably functional adults AND they passed something on that they couldn't transform from their own childhoods.
We don't have to condemn them to see clearly. We don't have to choose between love and truth.
Generational trauma doesn't require villains. It only requires human beings doing their best with what they were given — and sometimes what they were given wasn't enough.
What About Grief and Anger?
If one or both of your parents have passed — if they suffered greatly and gave so much of themselves — you might find it impossible to be angry at them. You might fear it would desecrate their memory.
I understand this intimately. I lost both of my parents at twenty-five.
And I can tell you from my own experience: I have let out enormous anger toward both my mother and my father. For moments of abandonment, shaming, violence, absence. Because those moments were just as real to my young body as the moments of great love.
And I know with certainty that wherever they are now — they love me even more for doing this work. For tending to my own wounds. For learning to mother and father myself.
Real healing doesn't mean bypassing pain through premature forgiveness. It means feeling the anger and grief fully — until they transmute, on their own timeline, into forgiveness, compassion, tenderness, and eventually medicine for others.
Forgiveness, if it comes, arrives after the grief has been felt. Not before.
What Healing Actually Looks Like
Of course healing isn't only about understanding how we were wounded. It's also about understanding how we adapted to survive that environment — and seeing why those adaptations made complete sense for the child we were, even as they limit the adult we're becoming.
The inner critic that destroys rather than corrects? It was protecting you once.
The need to achieve in order to feel loved? It was the only strategy available.
The inability to ask for help? It kept you safe when asking wasn't safe.
These aren't character flaws. They're survival strategies that outlived their usefulness. And the moment we see them for what they are — the moment we give the wound its real story back — something begins to shift.
The wound has been waiting to be witnessed like this all along.
If this is resonating, Jungian coaching might be the right next step. I work with people in focused blocks of six sessions — going beneath the presenting problem to what's actually driving it. Book a free 30-minute Threshold Call and let's find out together.
Aimi Colibrí is a certified Jungian coach based in Grass Valley, CA (Nisenan Territory), working with clients online across the US and worldwide. She writes about depth psychology, shadow work, and the messy middle of transformation.