When Love Changes Shape Across Generations

Breaking Cycles with Compassion

Before I became a mother, I used to think becoming a different kind of parent would be straightforward.

I knew I wanted a different kind of parenting for my children, but I didn’t always know how.

When I actually became a parent, I realised something unsettling:

Awareness doesn’t erase what the body remembers.

The parenting style I grew up with was the only one my nervous system knew. Old patterns don’t disappear, and what is familiar often becomes the default we return to, especially when we are tired, stretched, or overwhelmed, even when we no longer want them. 

What surprised me most was how complex those moments felt.

I can love my children deeply and still feel uncomfortable when they make choices I would never have been allowed to make. Intellectually, I know their choices are not “wrong,” but simply different from my preference. Yet I can still feel something shift inside me.

A discomfort.

A tightening.

A feeling that is hard to name - sometimes it even feels like rejection.

Deep down, I know my children are not pushing me away. They are doing exactly what I hoped they would do one day: developing their own voice, making their own choices, and becoming their own person.

I am learning that they are not extensions of me. Yet that doesn't always make the experience any less emotional.

Perhaps that is part of the complexity of parenting. 

Like most parents, I want the best for my children. I want to protect them from harm, from regret, from pain I can anticipate before they can. At times, I find myself wanting to steer them toward what feels safer, wiser, or more familiar.

This is the space I often find myself in - not as someone who has figured it all out, but as someone still learning how to stay present in the tension between protection and letting go.

Their path is not mine to choose.

Learning how to be a safe harbour they can return to, not the anchor that keeps them from leaving.

In my therapy room, I witness a similar inner world unfolding in many different lives.

Some of my clients are parents, trying so hard to parent differently from how they were raised. They are aware, reflective, and intentional. Yet, then life happens - a sleepless night, a stressful week, a child crying for the fourth time that morning.

“How do you parent differently when the only parenting you've ever witnessed is the one you're trying not to repeat?”

No one hands us a map.

We simply become parents one day and discover that all the old stories, wounds, and lessons we thought we had left behind are suddenly sitting beside us at the dinner table.

Parenting has a way of revealing the difference between what we know intellectually and what lives deep within our nervous system.

And suddenly we notice ourselves slipping into old patterns, with words coming out of our mouths that sound painfully familiar. The shame that follows can be immense.

Some of my clients are not parents yet. They carry fears about becoming parents because they worry they might repeat the very patterns they are trying so hard to heal. Wanting something different is not the same as knowing how to do it differently.

What I often notice is how heavy the responsibility feels - as if breaking cycles requires perfection.

Perhaps what creates change is not perfection, but the willingness to return to ourselves with awareness and compassion.

The pause before reacting.

The repair after things don’t go as intended.

The quiet decision to try again. 

And over time, that creates a place where your children can return, even as they navigate their own path.

Perhaps this is where love begins to change shape across generations.

Not because one generation loved more or less than another.

But because each generation is learning how to express love with the tools, awareness, and possibilities they have available to them.

Perhaps the goal was never to become a perfect parent, child, partner, or human being.

Perhaps the goal is simply to understand ourselves a little better, so we can move through our relationships with more choice, compassion, and intention.

If you found yourself somewhere in this reflection, perhaps there is a part of your story that is asking for a little more attention.

Research has found that parenting patterns can be passed from one generation to the next, but they are not fixed or inevitable. Self-awareness, emotional regulation, supportive relationships, and intentional reflection can all help interrupt those cycles and create new ways of relating.

 Whether you're trying to parent differently, make sense of your own upbringing, or untangle the patterns you've carried for years, therapy can offer a safe place to begin.