When I was growing up, I heard it all the time: I hope you have a kid just like you. It was always spit like a curse meant to come back and get you when you least expected it, no matter how prepared you were to keep it from coming true. Because what a terrible thing, having to take care of and live with someone just like you. I never wanted kids, but, man, was I terrified of having one just like me! I hated my childhood self for so long! I was treated terribly by my peers and teachers, and neglected by my father, so all those outside voices became my inside voice; I thought I was an annoying, ugly, crybaby – too much and too little. So when I got pregnant in 2019 only a month after asking my doctor to tie my tubes, I had some decisions to make – and a curse to reckon with!
I had my baby and the curse kept running through my mind: I hope you have a kid just like you. Well, let me tell you, she’s worse! She’s a beautiful, hilarious terrorist! Now, I hate the word terrorist because it’s mostly used to dehumanize people we want to bomb instead of used to describe billionaires and politicians and weapons manufactures and toddlers named Cas.
Every parent/child has a battleground and ours has always been bedtime. She’s so sweet and funny and kind but as soon as the sun goes down, her eyes pop out of her head and claws extend and she goes full gremlin, laughing like a rabid hyena and attacking me when I’m at my weakest. When Cas was about three, I was trying to get her to get ready for bed and she just wasn’t having it. She refused everything – going potty, brushing her teeth, reading a story – and instead was screaming at me and laughing hysterically if any evidence of my frustration and exhaustion showed on my face. So there we were in hour two of trying to do our routine, when I collapsed on the floor of my bedroom, leaned against my bedframe and started sobbing uncontrollably. I’m a terrible parent, I lamented, I’m a failure, I can’t do anything right. Then Cas came up to look into my face. “Oh, mommy, you crying?” She asked, expression bent sympathetically. As I nodded my head and opened my mouth to speak, she slapped me across the face and ran laughing into the hallway.
Another time – when she was still in a hitting phase – I had read that kids just have a bunch of energy they need to get out and if they’re not given another outlet, they’ll hit. The article suggested pushing against a wall or hitting a pillow or stuffed animal. So that night when I was tucking Cas into bed and she raised her little fist to hit me, I told her, “No hitting!” To which she argued, “But I wanna hit you.” So I countered with, “How about you hit one of your stuffies?” She gasped at my suggestion, obviously appalled at the idea and said, “NO!! They cute!”
Every night it was something. I spent more time crying and sleep deprived and insulted than ever in my life – that kid should seriously teach a class on psychological torture. And through it all, I’ve had in the back of my mind, I hope you have a kid just like you. And I have exactly that and worse, and she is so easy to love. And I realized. I… was easy to love too. At least I should’ve been. I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I grew up and how I was treated; the way my friends – maybe even you – were treated by their parents and their peers. We deserved a lot better than we got. So why? I should’ve been easy to love, so why wasn’t I? Which brought me to my second realization: hurt people hurt people.
Every wound you receive doesn’t just go away. They scab over and scar and throb when the weather changes. And the ‘weather’ of a child’s emotions are constantly changing. Every person’s emotional capacity is only as old as their own inner child when they received that wound. I feel lucky that I had done years of inner child work before Cas was even a thought. I have been holding the kicking, screaming, clawing little monster within myself long before I ever held her. So when she triggers me – and she triggers me a lot – I have the skills to take a breath. To see her for what she is – not a threat, not an enemy, a child. And help her do the same.
When I say she’s easy to love, I don’t mean it’s easy to stay calm and to not run my default programming. I feel the conditioning every time. Every time she yells at me I have to choke down a scream. Every time she refuses to listen I have to hold back my hand. I feel the urge to treat her exactly how I was treated because that’s what was beaten into me. But I forgive myself. I reparent myself every day. And most importantly, I forgive them every day.
There’s a great exercise I’ve done many times and I would encourage you to do. More often than not, we’re not going to get our healing from the ones who hurt us. We’re not going to get an apology from our parents. Either they will never be in a place to have that conversation or sometimes our parents aren’t here anymore. So we have to have that conversation with the ghost of them; and it goes like this:
You: You really hurt me.
Them: I did the best I could.
You: It wasn’t enough.
Them: I know – I’m sorry – can you ever forgive me?
And that’s where the freedom comes. In that moment, you have a choice. You can forgive them and move forward. You can choose not to. Sometimes we’re not ready – might not ever be ready. But you can give yourself that choice. No matter what you choose, you can begin to heal your child self. Every time you feel those big emotions that you think are ugly or unacceptable, you can hold those feelings as if they were a small child. Don’t smother or ignore. Let them grow.
Mikky is a trans non-binary artist and storyteller from Phoenix, AZ. They love cats and birdwatching and hanging out with their best friend, Hanan, and crazy child, Castiel. Mikky has been a writer all their life but recently dedicated to oral storytelling in 2026.
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