Healing from generational trauma and childhood shame is a courageous, messy, soul-stretching journey. At first, choosing to live on your own terms—rather than those handed down by family—feels exhilarating. But like any worthwhile endeavor, it’s not easy. The gunk rises. Sometimes the hardest passage comes just before the biggest breakthrough.

Bye Bye Shame blog and Perfect Enough guide are resources for emotional healing, generational trauma recovery, and personal transformation.

Staying with your determination to heal and create lovingly for you is strengthened when you to hold the space for yourself to simply ‘be’ without doing anything other than living each moment as it is. Holding the space for yourself is to allow yourself to be present for you.

🌀 Try these grounding rituals when life feels too loud:

Belly Breath Reset: Inhale slowly into your belly. Exhale longer than your inhale. Repeat three times.
Centerline Awareness: Pause for one minute. Drop into your body. Feel your centerline. Let your mind quiet.
Sacred Timeout: Excuse yourself to the quietest spot available. Do nothing. Just be. Five minutes.

(Receive our Perfect Enough™ guide for more Gentle Practices All about Creating a Life You Love – It’s free.)

Your energy in motion—your emotions—will rise and fall. Like rumble strips on the side of the highway, they exist to keep you in balance and on track. Letting your emotions exist, a little bit closer to the surface where your body meets the universe can be scary. Emotions stuck inside you fester like a chafing piece of clothing. It is going to get red, maybe raw and even infected. The only way you can make room for better feelings and reactions is to safely let them surface, process them, and let them go.

To process and liberate yourself from bothersome emotions, write down the emotion that you are preparing to release. It can be a tool to liken setting it on a shelf that you can come back to when you have some moments out of the limelight of your life (work, school, obligations, caring for your children and so on). Reach out to a trusted confidant or professional when your struggle is overwhelming.

Healthy acknowledgment of shame can help regulate your own behavior and distance yourself from the ickiness associated with shame. THINK: Hey what a minute, I am Not That!

Shame feels unbearable because it’s a lie. If you didn’t feel the sting of someone else’s projected shame, you might lack empathy. And if you lacked empathy, you wouldn’t be here yearning for healing. THINK: Embrace the ick so you can move through it.

The more you nurture yourself—through reflection, movement, nourishment, rest, creativity, and connection—the more your body, mind, and spirit learn: This is safe. This is mine.
Keep walking. One day at a time. You’re not just healing—you’re creating a life you love.

Unshaming and Unfurling: A Healing Journey

Should’a Could’a: Shush the Critic. Bring on Your Inner Coach.

The Courage to Be the Red Leaf: Healing Generational Shame by Putting Yourself First