I am so sorry that this happened to your daughter and you. [See previous article.] It is wonderful that she can openly express love to you—that’s a big deal [very important].


My daughter (now thirteen) had significant pre-birth traumas. She struggles with anxiety and learning disabilities that I believe are a result of multiple ultrasounds in utero. She is determined to re-emerge. Much of the time she tries to show how victimized she feels and to control things around her, out of fear. 


There are a number of pieces to her story. She’s known about some of the more benign parts (for example, that I was on three months of total bedrest) since she was pretty [quite] young. When she turned nine or so, I began telling her more bits of the story as they came up. I, too, worried that they would reinforce her sense of something being wrong with her, that she was “broken”—but it seemed important to keep talking about it. 


I’ve tried hard not to assume that I know what the specific distress recordings are from these events, but I do have guesses. I’ve explained that the events affected her and that her current struggles are connected to hard things that happened to her then. I’ve also gotten a lot more intentional about reminding her that the big sessions she has, and the feelings she has in them, are connected to those events and that they are not “all of who she is.” We can sometimes focus on helping young people discharge without remembering to give them RC theory, including that feelings are not who we are and are not guides to action. 


What I’m most proud of is that I invented a celebration that commemorates a day during the pregnancy when we got important information about her survival. She gets to choose how we celebrate (usually we go somewhere to eat), and each time I tell the story of that day. Each year I think about whether she’s ready to hear more of the story. The celebration helps me remember to do that.