“The wound is where the light enters you.” ~Rumi
“I can’t do anything right. There’s something wrong with me.”
My daughter said these words quietly, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear them. But I did. And the moment I did, something in my chest cracked open.
I knew that feeling. I’d carried it my entire childhood.
We were in the kitchen; I sat on the floor and pulled her next to me. My mind racing while I tried to keep my focus on her, eyes full of compassion, as if I could pull her inside me to protect her from all harm. Where was this coming from? She was bright, creative, deeply feeling. She was exactly as she should be.
But she believed there was something wrong with her. Just like I had believed I was fundamentally flawed.
In that moment I had a bittersweet realization, a light bulb moment that didn’t make the pit in my stomach any lighter: I had unconsciously recreated the exact dynamic I’d grown up in. The one I thought I’d escaped. The one I’d promised myself my children would never experience.
Just to be clear, my father is a man I deeply admire. He taught me resilience, independence, the value of hard work. He modeled integrity in ways that shaped who I am today. In so many aspects, he was a fantastic role model.
I worshipped him.
But humans don’t go through life unscathed—that’s how we grow. And beneath all the qualities I admired, there was something I internalized without even knowing it: his approval was always just slightly out of reach.
Not because he was cruel. Not because he didn’t love me. But because the bar kept moving. Because his attention went elsewhere—to work, to stress, to whatever consumed him in that moment. Because I could never quite figure out what would make him truly see me.
I tried everything. I performed. I achieved. I made myself small when needed and loud when that seemed to work better. I studied him like a language I needed to master. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the quiet belief underneath it all: There’s something wrong with me. If I could just figure out what it is and fix it, then he’d see me and be proud.
I spent my childhood chasing approval that always felt just out of reach. And when I couldn’t get it, I decided it must be because I wasn’t quite enough.
Years later, I was living abroad with two young children, in a marriage I didn’t yet understand. I’d convinced myself I was making different choices. I had done the work—therapy, journaling, deep self-awareness. I knew my wounds. I’d promised myself I would never recreate what I’d experienced.
But knowing isn’t healing.
My nervous system didn’t care about my conscious intentions. It recognized something familiar and called it home. I’d unconsciously chosen a dynamic where approval felt conditional. Where I was always trying, always adjusting, always wondering what I’d done wrong this time.
I didn’t see it at the time. I thought I was just working through normal relationship challenges. I thought if I could just communicate better, be more patient, figure out the right approach, things would shift.
It took divorce and the distance it created to finally see what I’d done.
The difference between my daughter and me? She can name it. She can say out loud: “I can’t do anything right. There’s something wrong with me.” I never could. I just carried it silently, like a stone I didn’t know I was holding.
She’s further along than I was at her age. She feels deeply and sometimes questions whether her feelings are wrong. She notices when she feels inferior to her brother, to other children her age. She’s aware of the chase—trying to win love that feels like an unreachable target.
And watching her struggle with the same wound I carried broke something open in me.
This is what I’d unconsciously passed down. Not through my parenting—I’m genuinely different with my children than my parents were with me. But through the life I’d built before I understood what I was doing. Through the patterns I’d set in motion before I’d started to heal my wounds.
There’s something profound and heartbreaking about watching your child live out your unhealed wounds. It’s a mix of sadness, contemplation, and a strange kind of clarity.
Life runs in circles if left unattended. The wounds we don’t heal, we pass down—not always through our actions, but through the environments we create, the dynamics we unconsciously choose, the patterns we haven’t yet learned to break.
I couldn’t protect my daughter from everything. I couldn’t undo the structures I’d built before I woke up. And I had to sit with that—the humble, painful truth that my unconscious choices had created ripples in her life that I couldn’t fully control.
I also realized that she’s on her own path. And so am I.
I can’t fix this for her. I can’t go back and make different choices that would have spared her this wound entirely. But I can do something my parents couldn’t do for me: I can see her. I can mirror back her wholeness, even when she can’t feel it herself. I can let her vocalize what I had to silence.
And I can do my own healing—not just by intellectually understanding my patterns, but through feeling them, processing them in my body, integrating the parts of myself that are still stuck in that childhood chase for approval.
The parent I am today is unrecognizable from the one I grew up with. My children know safety with me. They know they’re seen. They know their feelings aren’t wrong.
But I also know they’ll carry some wounds I couldn’t prevent. And that’s part of their journey too. I have to trust that they’ll find their own path through, their own healing, their own light—just like I’m finding mine.
Breaking the cycle doesn’t mean my children grow up without wounds. It means I’m doing the heavy lifting, so the wounds don’t stay unconscious, don’t stay unspoken, don’t run in circles for another generation.
When my daughter said, “There’s something wrong with me,” I could hold her and say with complete certainty, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Not one thing.” Then I have her tell me all the things she’s proud of herself for—for being, doing and feeling—so she can internalize wholeness regardless of external approval.
I couldn’t say that to myself for most of my life. But I can say it to her. And I’m learning to believe it about myself too.
That’s the cycle breaking. Not perfectly. Not completely. But breaking, nonetheless.
About Karine Flynn
Karine Flynn is a trauma-informed Psychotherapist who discovered the hard way that knowing your story isn’t the same as healing it. After unconsciously recreating the patterns she thought she’d escaped, she now helps others understand the difference between intellectual awareness and embodied healing. She lives with her two children and is still learning, still healing, still breaking cycles. You can learn more at https://www.mindandsoul.uk
