Episode 11
Holding Too Tight: Encanto & Parenting After Loss
This episode explores the profound themes of generational trauma and the challenges of parenting in the wake of loss, as illustrated by the Disney movie Encanto. Siobhan and David delve into how the film resonates with their experiences, particularly the struggle of holding on too tightly to their living children after the loss of their daughter, Grace. They reflect on the impact of trauma on parenting styles, recognizing how fear and past experiences can unintentionally shape their interactions with their children. The conversation emphasizes the importance of being aware of these dynamics and the need to create a healthy environment for their children to grow and thrive. By examining their own responses to fear and vulnerability, they offer insights on how to navigate the delicate balance between protection and allowing freedom, ultimately advocating for conscious parenting rooted in understanding and compassion.
Takeaways:
- The Disney movie Encanto offers profound insights into generational trauma and its impact on families.
- It's essential to recognize the scripts running in the background of our parenting behaviors.
- Learning to let go and not hold on too tightly can benefit our children's development.
- Consciously processing trauma helps prevent it from negatively affecting our living children.
- Communicating openly with our children about trauma can foster understanding and empathy.
- Parenting after loss requires constant reflection and adjustment to new challenges and fears.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome to Life after Babylos, a podcast brought to you by Grace in action.
Siobhan:I'm Siobhan, Grace's mum, and together with David, Grace's dad, we'll be exploring life after loss.
David:Welcome to life after baby loss.
David:With me and her.
David:Or her and me.
Siobhan:What we talking about right now, David?
David:We don't talk about podcasts.
David:No, no.
David:We don't talk about podcasts.
Siobhan:Okay.
Siobhan:What's that?
David:Encanto.
Siobhan:Oh, Encanto.
David:Oh, wow.
David:Okay, fine, fine.
Siobhan:We don't talk about Bruno.
Siobhan:No, no, no showing off.
Siobhan:We don't talk about Bruno.
Siobhan:It's a good little melody, that one.
David:Yes.
David:Good luck.
David:Quite tricky.
Siobhan:They're great songs.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:And all the spanish versions.
Siobhan:I love them.
Siobhan:I listen to them frequently.
David:What, spanish versions of the.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:I didn't know there were any.
Siobhan:You've listened to them in the car.
Siobhan:The girls have made you.
David:See, I don't pay attention to my family's.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:So why are we talking about Encanto, David?
David:We are talking about Encanto because there are actually many, many, many great life lessons, I think, that came out of watching Encanto.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:If you haven't seen it, it's on the Disney Channel.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Go watch it or stop listening before you've.
Siobhan:Until you've watched it.
David:Yes.
Siobhan:We are not going to be able to talk about this without giving spoilers.
David:There are thematic spoilers in this?
Siobhan:Yes.
David:So the thing about Encanto is there's.
David:So there's many, many, many good life lessons plus songs, and there was one in particular that I think really sort of grabbed us both.
Siobhan:Oh, yeah.
Siobhan:I mean, I was absolutely bawling the first time we watched it.
Siobhan:I found it hard not to cry every time we've seen it since, because clearly our girls were quite taken by it for a while, and we were forced to watch and listen to it plenty of time.
David:I mean, there's a lot going down.
David:And if you said to our girls that, did you get the lessons around generational trauma, I don't think they'd know what we were talking about, but it's definitely there.
David:It's about the trauma that you take with you into the next generation, and I think it's.
David:We were talking about this the other day.
David:We were talking about something similar the other day.
David:And I grew up quite a fervent Christian, so I know my bible quite well.
David:And there's so many things in the Bible which you may think are nonsense when you get down to it.
David:Actually, there's something to it.
David:And the Bible often talks about, you know, the sins of the father visited for seven generations.
David:And it talks which essentially it's talking about generational trauma and what we pass down to our children and the effects that that can have and have and have and have.
David:And it's no doubt about it that a baby dying gives you trauma just a bit.
David:Just a bit.
David:And then you got to avoid the passing on of that trauma to your children.
Siobhan:Well.
David:Well.
Siobhan:We'Re talking about it because we feel like it's something that should be made conscious because it's very possible to do this without even realizing you're doing it.
Siobhan:I think, and I know for sure that stuff that's been passed down, you can just see it, that even people who are, let's say, consciously trying to deal with the trauma that life can chuck at you sometimes you can end up doing it without intending to.
Siobhan:And I think Encanto struck this particular chord for me because I recognized the struggle in myself that I have with our living children, which is about holding on to time.
David:So just to set the consequence, the consequence, the context, the abuela, the grandmother of this family, she lived through some pretty traumatic events, and she's the one who runs this family.
David:And, you know, the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren.
Siobhan:Well, not just that.
Siobhan:The village.
David:And the village, in fact, yeah, there's a whole wider.
David:There's a wider thing to it, and you just said it basically.
David:A lot of the problems come is because she's holding her family way too tight, not letting them express.
David:Well, they express her individuality, but within the bounds that she sets.
David:And that is what's causing some of the bigger problems.
David:So again, do you know what I mean?
David:Spoilers.
David:Go see this before you.
David:Let's turn back time.
David:Go see this before you listen to this.
Siobhan:And, you know, it's a bit dramatic.
Siobhan:It's quite dramatic the way it plays out.
Siobhan:But by the end, she realizes, in fact, that, yeah, she has been holding on too tight.
Siobhan:I think what I can see happening in the film, what I imagine, what I filled in for the intervening years, is that there was the initial trauma, and then there's this period of survival in which you have no choice but to do the things that you need to do in order to survive.
Siobhan:And then that became her way of being.
Siobhan:And I think it's moving through that and beyond that and realizing that actually those survival things and those trauma effects, they lead you to behaving in certain ways.
Siobhan:But after some period of time has passed, it's important to stop and question, actually, what script is running in the background here?
Siobhan:Is that the script that I want to be running my life?
Siobhan:And we were very fortunate when Grace died.
Siobhan:We already had a daughter who was nearly three, and I noticed pretty quickly that I was quite different in my behaviour towards her.
David:I.
Siobhan:Because I was living in constant fear of something awful happening to her.
Siobhan:Really.
Siobhan:Absolutely constant fear.
Siobhan:And I think I wasn't in that space before Grace died.
Siobhan:So there was a.
Siobhan:There was a big shift for me inside.
Siobhan:I could feel it and I was really aware of it in that moment.
Siobhan:I was very careful to not sort of, like, try and wrap her up in cotton wool.
David:I think anyone that knows Alana, who's our eldest, would be quite surprised to hear that from you, because she's been pretty fearless and we've allowed her to do things where a lot of other parents are like, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness.
David:And we've allowed her to do that.
David:But I think that was.
David:That had to be a conscious decision.
David:We had to overcome fears.
Siobhan:Yes.
Siobhan:In that moment, yeah, that was a conscious choice to.
Siobhan:I could feel the way my brain was wanting me to do other things and behave in a different way, and I couldn't do it.
Siobhan:I actually couldn't do it to her at all.
Siobhan:But what I noticed much further down the line, after we had our two subsequent children, Kira and Elissa, I noticed that my general behaviour and demeanour changed, and that that kind of the script, that fear script that was running in the background, actually took over in the way, and that changed the way I parented.
Siobhan:So the other two have been parented quite differently from Melana.
Siobhan:I mean, to be fair, they are different.
Siobhan:They are just different children.
David:I think Alyssa is our youngest, and I think we'd learned.
David:We'd had the opportunity to see what we were doing more with her by the time she'd come along.
David:So I think Kira, who was the next after grace, I think she kind of bore the brunt of whatever.
David:However we were expressing our trauma and our fear and the rest of it.
David:And, you know, you can kind of see.
David:I hope she never listens to this, but you can see it in aspects of her character that the others don't have.
Siobhan:But we've spoken about it.
Siobhan:I've spoken about it with her, David.
David:Oh, have you?
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Because she said to me on a couple of occasions, yeah, we're really getting to talk here, aren't we?
Siobhan:You know, she said to me on a couple of occasions, she gets very, very scared of a lot of things.
Siobhan:Really deeply.
David:She's very fearful.
Siobhan:Fearful.
Siobhan:Very deeply fearful.
Siobhan:And, you know, on a visceral, physical level, like, she ends up shaking and things like that, and she's like, mommy, I don't.
Siobhan:Why am I so scared?
Siobhan:I don't want to be scared.
Siobhan:And I said, well, it might have something to do with how absolutely petrified I was the entire time I was pregnant with you, that something awful was going to happen to you as well.
David:And you poked her a lot.
Siobhan:She poked.
David:She didn't get to rest.
Siobhan:I did.
Siobhan:I poked her every time.
David:She'd been still for a certain amount of time.
David:You were like, is she alive?
David:Is she alive?
David:Poke, poke, poke.
Siobhan:And she poked me back.
Siobhan:She was wonderfully obliging.
David:She's still doing that.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:For a long time, she didn't sleep very well.
Siobhan:She never slept very well.
Siobhan:And, you know, I did wonder, was that because I constantly poked her?
Siobhan:But, you know, yeah, that fear played out.
Siobhan:But I was thinking more about, you know, once they're running around and doing things and, you know, trying not to mollycoddle them.
Siobhan:And I realized what I did differently was I set things up differently.
Siobhan:So on the face of it, I wasn't mollycoddling them, but in fact, I changed the environment, so I wasn't presenting them with situations where I would have to mollycoddle them.
Siobhan:So we just didn't go to those places.
Siobhan:We didn't do those things.
Siobhan:I let you do that.
Siobhan:I let other people do that with them.
Siobhan:I couldn't do it because.
Siobhan:Because I didn't want to hold on too tight to them, because underneath all of that, and this also affected how we birthed Keira and Elisa as well.
Siobhan:Underneath all of that, I have a really strong conviction that whatever happened to Grace, or we know what happened to Grace, what happened to grace that my living children have right to have their fair chance at fully living.
Siobhan:So it's my job as their parent to get the help and support I need to process my stuff and to not mollycoddle them.
Siobhan:And that has been so hard.
Siobhan:So hard.
Siobhan:But it was a similar thought that led us to still with them.
Siobhan:Alana was a home birth, and Grace was born in hospital after we already knew she died at that moment.
Siobhan:And then we continued to give birth in hospital, and then Keira and Elissa were both also born at home after that.
Siobhan:And that was very, very tough to do that.
Siobhan:But I felt like they deserved the chance that I wanted to give to Grace and that I had given to Alanna as well to come sort of in their own time, as naturally as possible, all those kind of things.
Siobhan:That's my personal birthing approach and ethos that was important to me.
Siobhan:And I think that's extended through life as well.
Siobhan:And, you know, I am petrified.
Siobhan:They're jumping off things and climbing on things, and they're on the trampoline doing flips.
Siobhan:And, you know, I mean, you said to me several times, said, sweetheart, why don't you look away.
David:Like you had to in the land and decide to climb up a cliff?
Siobhan:Oh, yeah.
David:When she was four years old, it's like.
Siobhan:Yeah, well, the walls of Rochester Castle actually shot up them.
David:Yeah.
David:Let's just.
David:You look over that way.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:I mean, she's fearless.
Siobhan:Yeah, she really is fearless.
Siobhan:In a total contrast to Kira, who is actually getting braver.
Siobhan:She's learning.
Siobhan:She's learning as she's getting older.
David:It's a big journey for her.
David:And I think that's on us.
David:And I'm not blaming ourselves for that.
David:I'm not holding guilt for that.
David:I've chosen not to hold guilt for that.
David:I do wish we hadn't swamped her with our fear now.
Siobhan:We were trying not to.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:I mean, that's the other thing.
Siobhan:We were consciously trying not to, and we still did and it still happened.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:So I wish we hadn't done that for her sake.
David:But I'm not blaming us because I think it's a completely natural.
Siobhan:I don't think we had any other choice at that moment, did we?
Siobhan:No.
Siobhan:But then, since then, we've.
Siobhan:We've been consciously working on that.
Siobhan:How else do you think that kind of inclination to hold on to tight.
Siobhan:Where.
Siobhan:How else does that show up?
Siobhan:Or how does it show up for you?
David:A lot of the things that Alana would do that wouldn't bother me.
David:I realize the other two girls haven't done it because I've just, you know, where I, you know, I had a policy.
David:I'm not gonna say be careful to her.
David:No, of course she's gonna be careful.
David:She doesn't want to fall.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:So, you know, I'll do that.
David:But I can't help myself with the other two.
David:I'm like, careful for, you know what?
David:I'm not doing the generic be careful because that doesn't mean anything.
David:I'm like, watch out you don't slip because it's wet there.
Siobhan:Yes, exactly.
Siobhan:You're saying more.
David:My fear response is not allowing me to trust them as much as I trusted Alana.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:And that's hard.
Siobhan:Yeah, that's really hard.
Siobhan:So you're also somehow.
Siobhan:Yeah, no, you're not controlling the environment, are you?
Siobhan:But your response to the situation is different.
David:My response, and it's something we said on a previous podcast that now we know bad things can actually happen.
David:My awareness of bad things being about to happen is heightened, whether it is going to happen or not.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:It makes.
David:Especially in situations which are fairly, you know, risky, not in any big way, but there's an element of risk there and, you know, a catastrophize at risk, maybe.
Siobhan:I have struggled with that, letting other people look after the kids.
David:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Siobhan:That.
Siobhan:I find that really difficult.
David:Especially like.
David:So Alana used to go over to her grandmas all the time.
David:She go to Ormy is what we call Siobhan's mum used to go to ormies all the time on her own, spend weekends on her own.
David:And the others haven't done that.
David:Mainly because the dynamics of life have changed.
David:But I think if they were to, I'd be like, I wonder if they're okay.
David:Should we give them a call?
David:She would do things I didn't necessarily do with Elena, so.
David:And it's only as I'm speaking.
David:It's only as we're talking about it now.
David:I realize that's one of the differences.
Siobhan:Yes.
David:And I feel like they're less able to deal with going away on a weekend on their own than Alanna is.
Siobhan:Because they haven't been exposed to it.
David:We.
David:I think.
David:And that's on us.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:I'm not going to feel guilt for that, but it's definitely on us.
Siobhan:I struggle saying goodbye at the school gate, leaving them in the care of someone else.
David:My big thing was, and if you've ever heard me talk at a medical conference and I come back to the flashback thing.
David:So when Siobhan gave birth to grace, she had problems with a retained placenta.
David:So after I'd cut the cord and dressed grace, I had to put her in a cold cot in the corner.
David:Now, because Siobhan still needed support, it was another 4 hours before you were able to deliver that placenta.
David:I put her in a cold cot and I had to turn and leave her and come and support you.
David:She didn't need me then.
David:She was dead.
David:But it was such anathema to me to turn away from my daughter and walk away.
David:And I've struggled with that ever since.
David:I think every bedtime for ten years, every time they're asleep and I have to walk away, I'm just like, flashback.
David:Feeling it.
David:Feeling it.
David:Saying goodbye.
David:This, like, you know, Kira went off to school on her own for the first time, and turning around and saying goodbye and just watching her go off on her own was like.
David:And I mean, Alana's been doing that for secondary school for a year.
David:She.
David:And now a couple of years, yeah.
Siobhan:Wow.
David:But the first.
David:The first year when she started going off down the road on her own, off to meet her friend, I would literally stand outside the gate and watch until I couldn't see her anymore.
David:Did she?
David:And then it became a bit of a game.
David:She'd disappear and then she'd pop back and stuff.
David:And it was like, okay, let her go.
David:It's fine.
David:It's fine.
David:Don't hold too tight, because you can't hold too tight anyway.
David:And I think that's a natural reaction of a parent, but heightened.
Siobhan:Well, I was just gonna say the problem becomes that you then don't know.
Siobhan:It's hard to see what's, like.
Siobhan:What's just normal.
Siobhan:Like, what's just normal parenting, general normal parenting, fears and stuff.
Siobhan:And what's really actually being trauma driven there.
Siobhan:And even for us, you know, we had Alanna already, but she was still so young that we weren't.
Siobhan:We kind of had a vibe, but, yeah, nothing like, you know, letting them go off to school by themselves.
Siobhan:We weren't anywhere near.
David:We were lucky because after.
David:After Alanna was born, you know, we're doing the.
David:We've got a newborn, it's so delicate, blah, blah, blah stuff.
David:And we went to see our doula Mars, who was incredible.
David:She's had five kids, including twins, so she was basically, like, throwing her around by one leg and, like, there was no.
Siobhan:Well, and we saw my cousin Mary.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:And between the two of them, there was absolutely no delicacy in the way they handled this child.
David:And that was.
Siobhan:They were gentle.
David:They were.
Siobhan:Yeah, but, yeah, but they would do.
David:And they were firm, but they were just like, sure.
Siobhan:And, yeah.
David:And I think that was a really good start for us and going, you know, we don't need to be as gentle, tiptoe y scared, worried as we think we need to.
David:And I think we've acted accordingly.
David:But I think that got reset by grace for me.
Siobhan:It got set way back.
Siobhan:That moved the mark way because I don't think I was quite in the same place as you when Alana was born because I had more experience with babies, so it didn't feel, like, as big.
Siobhan:I mean, it definitely felt a bit different, for sure.
Siobhan:But it didn't feel like as big a journey for me as it was for you.
Siobhan:But, yeah, Greystein moved that bar like, miles, miles in the background.
David:So is there still work we have to do, or is it the same work that we've been doing?
David:We just got to keep doing it?
David:Is there something new?
Siobhan:Well, I think what happens is the challenges change.
Siobhan:So as our living children age, the things that we have to deal with where we could hold on to tight, you know, we're then faced with those new situations that we haven't dealt with before.
Siobhan:And I think somewhere at the back of my mind, I've got my little checklist where I go, hang on a minute.
Siobhan:How am I responding to this?
Siobhan:Now?
Siobhan:What script is running this?
David:Respond.
Siobhan:And is this my fearful trauma script that's running this, or is this just parenting normal, run of the mill?
Siobhan:All our friends and their kids of similar ages are going through the same old thing as well.
Siobhan:So it's good to talk as well to other parents, those who've experienced baby loss and those who haven't, to kind of help you gauge perspective.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Keep some perspective on these things.
David:Is there anything we can learn from the end of Encanto?
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:Number one, singing a great song will help any situation.
Siobhan:Two, don't let it get to the point where your whole house explodes.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:I mean, you know, their talk.
David:Yeah, talk.
Siobhan:And, you know, my kids, they can ask me stuff, and I will talk to them.
Siobhan:So it might be, you know, I have to do the work to look after my own trauma and to deal with my trauma response to grace dying.
Siobhan:And part of that is realizing that there are some things that other parents might be fine with that I'm not.
Siobhan:And it's okay for me to say to my kids, hey, guys, you know what?
Siobhan:If you want to do that, that's fine, but somebody else is going to have to do that with you.
Siobhan:I can't do that with you.
Siobhan:That's beyond my ability.
Siobhan:And to set some boundaries around that and say, you know, it's.
Siobhan:Yeah, you can, but not with me.
Siobhan:And that's.
Siobhan:And that's okay.
Siobhan:You know, I can't be everything for my kids.
Siobhan:And if I'm in a situation where I think my fear is too great that it will actually take away from their ability to actually do something or their enjoyment of the situation or, you know, I have a couple of times.
Siobhan:This isn't for me, guys.
David:There are times you said to me, you're gonna have to go with them to this.
Siobhan:Yeah, I can't do that.
David:Yeah.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:Well, I think just listening to you just.
David:I know that important thing of checking in honestly with yourself, actually see me, see what scripts are running and don't be ashamed to act accordingly.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Or the other thing I've had to say to him as well is we've done it once and I've realized, actually, that is too stressful for me.
David:And it's not bad.
David:It's not a bad thing to admit that and to act on that.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:It's not a sign of failure.
David:It's a sign of just being realistic with yourself, I think.
Siobhan:Yeah.
Siobhan:Trampoline parks.
David:Oh, really?
Siobhan:Oh, my goodness me.
Siobhan:Watching them fling themselves around.
Siobhan:I mean, I try not to look at them too much when they're on the tramp, on our trampoline in the back garden, and my brain is going, oh, my God, someone's about to get injured and I can't.
Siobhan:I just.
Siobhan:My nervous system just is so triggered by all of that.
Siobhan:So I could say, you know, no, we're not going to a trampoline park.
Siobhan:But I don't say that.
Siobhan:I say, you can go, but someone else is going to have to take you because I can't wrap them up in cotton wool.
Siobhan:They need to go and experience that.
Siobhan:How are they going to learn that?
David:Do you explain that through the lens of your trauma, though?
David:Because are they not thinking, why can't mommy take me to the trampoline park?
David:Doesn't she like us to have fun or something like that?
David:I don't know.
Siobhan:Well, not the trampoline park specifically.
Siobhan:And I can't remember what led to this particular conversation, but I know that I have had a conversation with Alanna.
Siobhan:I mean, she, at this point in time, just for reference, she's 13 and this must have been a year ago, I think.
Siobhan:And I can't remember what the specific situation was, but I did say to her it might have been about staying in touch, and I did say, look, I don't know if this is what other parents do, but my parenting and how I am as a parent was massively impacted by grace dying.
Siobhan:And it means that there are some things that we're going to do as a family and that I'm going to ask you to do as your mum that are a direct response to that.
Siobhan:It's nothing.
Siobhan:I think she was like, oh, you don't trust me?
Siobhan:It was something like that.
Siobhan:And it was causing an issue for her thinking I didn't trust.
Siobhan:And I said, no, it's not about that.
Siobhan:This is actually, what about this is about what I need, which is another.
David:Reason to be honest with yourself so you can be honest with your kids.
Siobhan:Yeah.
David:And there's less misunderstanding, less communication missteps.
David:Yeah.
David:As usual, we would love to know what your experiences are and how you handle them so that you can help us help others with that information.
David:And we will have an episode where if people, enough people feedback, we'll go over that feedback, I think, and see what we can learn from it.
David:So please, please, please do that.
David:Not going to do this often.
David:I'm only going to do this once in a while.
David:But in between episode season one and season two of this podcast, we have sat on the server that it belongs on and we've been paying the bills for it for how many years.
David:So if I, which isn't easy in this day and age, if you're getting a benefit from this and you would like to donate to this, then you can go to Ko fi.com gracing action and buy us.
David:Just give us a price of a coffee.
David:Every penny.
David:As my dad would say, it's the pennies that make the penny.
David:What did he say?
David:Something about saving pennies?
Siobhan:I don't know.
Siobhan:I never heard of it.
David:All right, so give us some pennies.
David:That's what I'm saying.
Siobhan:We'll put a link in the show.
David:We'll put a link in the show notes.
David:Till next time, be kind to yourselves.
David:Peace, love and strengthen.
