You're Breaking Generational Trauma

Childhood can feel like blank spaces, but those gaps don’t mean nothing happened. Your body holds the moments that shaped your sense of belonging, even when your mind can’t access them. This post looks at breaking generational trauma, how the mother wound lives in the body, and why somatic healing helps you return to who you truly are.

Many women tell me, “My childhood is full of blank spaces,” and I really get that.

Just the other day I tried recalling if my mother ever baked me a cake and I couldn’t remember!

You’d expect that I’d remember something as basic and exciting as that, right?!

But something I always tell my clients is, “your body keeps the score, and we can find what matters to remember.”

So after a while, just like I do with my clients, I recalled my great-grandmother, Grandma Piri, baking us every Friday a Babka, the Jewish yeast chocolate cake.

I’d go to her house after lunch—always before any of the other great-grandchildren arrived—so I could claim for myself one of the three or four cake moulds right from the oven.

The intoxicating smell of chocolate in the air, the warm kitchen, the small wooden stool by the window overlooking her lush garden, filled my body with a sense of belonging.

Her cake had everything I needed:

The crunchy sweet crust, the just-soft-enough dough, the dark chocolate mixed with sugar—and the unmistakable feeling that I mattered.

We may not remember what was said or done, but our body and emotional system remembers how we felt in the most important relationships of our lives.

A mother wound is a type of trauma that alters the way the brain stores both good and bad experiences.

When you’re hungry for emotional connection even positive memories can feel distant or inaccessible.

What truly matters is discovering how the body’s remembering the rupture of belonging, leading to an embedded expectation to not matter in other places in your life.

When this happens, you:

🦩 Aren't applying to that job post that gets your juice going because you expect not to get it

🦩 Can’t say you’re not available for your friend’s ask because you expect them to be disappointed with you

🦩 Avoid pursuing your art talents expecting people to not like your work

🦩 Don’t save towards buying the house you dream of because you’re not expecting to do be able achieve something like that

The mother wound is a rupture in our relationship with ourselves, with others and with life itself - originated in our relationship with our mother.

Generational trauma is held in the body as a rupture between what is possible for you and what you expect would be possible for you.

And because most therapy modalities focus on remembering, storytelling or analysing feelings and behaviours, many women come to me after years of therapy still finding themselves stuck in the same emotional patterns, such as:

🦩 Last night you dated once again a narcissistic person and couldn’t read the signs earlier

🦩 Your daughter is pulling away despite your efforts to be “nothing like your mum,” and you can’t understand why

🦩 You earn a lot of money and still get into debts because you’re not aware of the money trauma living in your body 

My somatic approach works with implicit memory—the memories your body carries even when your mind can’t recall the details or form a coherent story.

There’s something I tell all my clients at the beginning of our very first session:

🦩You don’t have to remember anything

🦩You don’t even need to tell me stories you don’t want to talk about

🦩Whatever you share doesn’t need to make sense or be complete

Once you begin healing and repairing your relationship with yourself, these blank spaces don’t necessarily fill with facts. Something far more important happens—

You begin remembering who you truly are and where you belong.

And you know, breaking generational trauma isn’t only for mothers or future mothers.

Each time you break free from the way the mother wound was passed down to you, you break the cycle and:

🦩Money doesn’t feel icky or something to fear

🦩You have friends you can call when you need support

🦩Your partner says exactly the words you needed to hear as if they read your mind

🦩 You look in the mirror and see someone you enjoy looking at

With somatic healing, I’ve helped dozens of women heal from the many variations on the mother wound including: sexual abuse, childhood neglect, an emotionally walled-off or punishing mother, growing with a mentally ill mother, and adoption rupture.

I know how to help you read the somatic “imprints” etched in your body and how to guide you to reconfigure your memories to roots that matter.

When you book a free call with me you’ll already get a taste of how that works—so you’re not left guessing or feeling like somatic work is a mystery.

Even in a short space of time, we can see together how your body gives you a taste of feeling like someone who finally gets to belong.

Today I can’t eat gluten, milk or sugar.

But if a Jewish Babka like Grandma Piri’s were placed in front of me, I’d devour it—and let the “guilt watch-guard” take the day off.

Eating that cake reminds me I belong, despite generational trauma.

And that’s what I want for you—not a life spent trying to patch together lost childhood memories, but a life where your nervous system finally knows what it feels like to be held, to matter, and to belong.

I’d be delighted to help you discover the relationships in your life—and within yourself—that can reinforce a deep sense of belonging and remind you that you matter.

On Monday, December 15, my 1:1 rates are increasing.

And the last day to schedule a free call is Friday, December 12.

If you book by Sunday, 14 December, you can lock in the current rate and choose to start now or anytime before the end of January 2026.

YOUR NEXT STEPS:

🦩 Schedule a free call in the link below

🦩 Confirmation email in your inbox

🦩 If we’re a good fit: Purchase your package by December 14

🦩 Book your first session: right away or by end of January 2026

INQUIRE NOW

P.S. Ready to ditch the effort of fitting in and discover what belonging feels like? Now is the perfect time—take advantage of my current 1:1 rate before the increase on December 15. Book here

P.P.S. Curious about how this worked for other women too? Listen to my free private podcast, BirthRite.

In the next email I’ll tell you why It’s important to start with this free call—stay tuned.

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Shelly's is a trauma-informed, certified Hakomi therapist helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother discover the hidden impacts of the mother wound 👉 so they can thrive in their lives & careers