Healing as a Parent from Childhood Trauma

She was not a calming presence and then it became an emotional thing where I can't have my mom projecting the same toxic things on my daughter that she did on me during my childhood. That's Melanie Shankle, sharing ways that we can heal from generational trauma and protect the next generation. Welcome to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

I'm John Fuller. You know, John, any good parent wants to stop the unhealthy patterns that we saw our parents doing to us, right? But that old adage that you don't fall far from the tree is so true. There are things that I do behaviorally that I remember my dad doing, who was an alcoholic. And it's not that, it's just the attitude sometimes creeps in. And you got to, especially as a Christian, you got to arrest that thing and wrestle it down. But it's hard because as children, we pick up habits, we pick up ways that we speak and, you know, those unhealthy things, the attitudes that we get from our parents. If we want to be healthy in Christ, we've got to capture those toxic things and make them healthy.

And we're going to cover that today. You know, 1 Peter 1, 18, 19, and the producers pointed this out. It says, we are ransomed from the futile ways of our forefathers. Isn't that a brilliant scripture?

That kind of makes the entire point. We don't have to live in the sin or the darkness of what they put on us as their children. We can rise above it. Yeah. Yeah.

Romans 8, 1, we're set free in Christ for freedom. So our guest has written a book about her story. It addresses generational issues as a daughter and a wife and a mom. And we're very pleased to have Melanie Shankle with us. She's a mom, author. She is a cohost of The Big Boocast, a great podcast.

She's written... It's not about scaring people. It is not. I know. It sounds like it, but it's not.

No. She's written a very personal, insightful, and hopeful book about her experiences. It's called Here Be Dragons, Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma. And you can find more about the book and about Melanie at our website.

We've got the link in the show notes. Melanie, welcome back. It's been many years, but it's so good to have you back. Been a lot of years. I'm so happy to be here.

Thanks for having me. Man, you're vibrant and doing well. And that's a great part of the story. And I could just see it in your face, the healthiness in your life.

Seriously, the smile. Let's start with generational trauma. Many of us, if not all of us, experience some degree of that because parenting isn't perfect. We're not perfect. We're sinful people. We get that. Hopefully, as Christian parents, we've had that opportunity to say, I'm so sorry. I did that.

Fill it in. Mine was, I'm sorry I responded with anger. And I've never hit my kids or anything like that, but it's just the emotional response.

And I think I saw my dad in that, to be honest with you. But what's your definition of generational trauma? I think generational trauma, true, because I think here's the thing. No parent is going to be perfect.

We can try all we want. We're going to make mistakes. Our kids will be happy to tell us the mistakes that we've made if we ask. But to me, trauma is when something has been undone, when something in that parenting cycle has established insecurity in you, where there's been, whether it could be alcoholism, it can be drug abuse, it could be mental illness. I mean, it takes a lot of forms, but it's something that actually causes trauma in the home that maybe keeps a child from developing in a normal way. Typically, emotionally. Exactly.

I think emotionally, you know, and there's physical obviously as well, but I think that there's so much emotional damage that can be done that a lot of times you don't even realize, because one of the things I think is you have to, something has to be really wrong in your childhood for you to say this isn't normal, because it's all you know, and it's normal to you. You wrote this book, but you were going to write this book about your daughter, Carolyn. I was.

Something derailed that. Describe that for the listeners. So originally, the book that I pitched when I was going to write this book, I had been on a podcast and I had talked about my daughter, Caroline, her sophomore year of high school, just went through a really horrific mean girl experience and just where it was relentless. She faced it every day.

And as I talked about it, because I speak at different events and every now and then I would bring it up and I would have all these women that would come forward. And the story was my daughter is going through this too. My daughter went through this. I went through this and I was like, oh, we have a mean girl epidemic. So I thought I'm going to write this book about mean girls and what that looks like and how we try to not raise mean girls.

I didn't realize until I started to piece together the story that I was like, where does this go back from? Because I thought the thing is, is that mean mothers are going to raise mean daughters. And that's when it dawned on me that I was like, my mom was my first mean girl. Melanie, when you think about that, it's hard for me to believe a mom that is a mean mom, even though she is. Yeah. Like it's a, why would you purposefully get up in the morning and say, I'm going to do everything mean today to my daughter. They're not thinking that way, but it's these little snipes and these little statements and, and other stuff. That's it.

Give me a description of that, what that looks like. I mean, for me as a child growing up, I think she was always quick to point out all the ways that I did something wrong, the way that I didn't measure up. She would have such an overreaction to anything that I did or didn't do. And my parents were divorced when I was eight. And so there was a lot of, I would spend the weekends with my dad and I learned quickly, if I came home and she would say, did you have a good time? And if I said, yes, I knew that that was, that was spun around and it was going to end with her getting in bed and maybe not getting out for days. So even that you had to pretend, no, it was a horrible time with dad and he was terrible. I couldn't ever be myself. And so you learn to manage that.

And that's a lot for a nine, 10, 11 year old girl to manage. And now I will say that for my mom, I don't, I agree with you. I don't think that there was this thing of, I'm going to be mean. I don't, I don't know that anybody really thinks I'm going to be mean. I just think it's a reaction out of your own. For my mom, there was mental illness, but I also think it's insecurities. Well, and that's what makes it so difficult.

That's the, the auto wreck I'm talking about. That's what makes it so difficult to, as a child, particularly to know is what I'm seeing actually true. And then what I believe actually true.

The book title, I mean, this is a good place to mention this before we unpack your story. Here Be Dragons. Now let me give my, my brogue to that, here be the dragons.

That's good. Listen, I'll take you on tour with me. But yeah, just that part. But what does it mean? And I know, and I think the audience is really going to be intrigued by this because it's an interesting insight. It's so years ago, I read an article and it talked about how in ancient medieval times, when people would set sail across the ocean to explore new lands, to find new territories, that they would make their ancient maps, you know, before we had Apple maps that told us you have four stoplights to get to where you're going. They would chart these maps and what they would write, if there was a place where there had been danger, where maybe another ship had sunk or disappeared, if they had seen something, if sailors had seen something that seems scary, they would mark it in Latin, here be dragons. And it was just their way of saying, be careful, there's danger up ahead. There's something unknown up ahead.

And so when I read that, what really resonated with me is like, isn't that our whole life? That we're, it's all this unexplored territory that we all have this map of our life and we never know when the dragons may show up. Or where they're located.

Or where they're located. I just think that it's, you have very creative book titles, by the way, probably the most creative I've ever encountered. Yeah. But here be dragons is right there with the rest of them. And, you know, tipping into that whole thing you mentioned in the book, these experiences with your mom, and I'll let you describe that.

But late night Walmart runs and late night restaurant runs. And, you know, just kind of out of the ordinary things that a lot of kids go, wow, this is awesome. That's well, and that's what I thought, you know, and that's why, you know, it's funny, because even when my dad, I let him read the first draft of the book, because I just said, I want you to read this. I want you to know what's in it.

I want you to tell me. And your mom has passed away. My mom has passed away. But your dad's still alive. My dad's still alive. My mom passing away is what freed me up. I used to say the title of this book would be Now That Everybody Has Died, you know, like that, because I needed, but once she passed away, I was like, now I'm free to tell this story.

But I wanted my dad to read it. And he, he called me after and he said, that was really powerful. And he said, there was a lot of that I didn't know. And it was funny because as a kid, I didn't know that it wasn't normal. So my mom sometimes would have these, and now I know it's bipolar, but this was the eighties and nobody was talking about bipolar. You didn't hear those conversations.

She wasn't diagnosed. So she would wake us up and be like, let's, I want to paint the kitchen. Let's paint the kitchen. And so 10 o'clock at night, we would, and it was the eighties.

So that meant we stenciled like little geese wearing hats on the kitchen border, you know, it was fun. It was fun. And then she would be like, let's go get breakfast at Denny's at two o'clock in the morning. And we would go and it felt exciting. And as a kid, you didn't know, but then it would be followed up by days where she didn't get out of bed, where I would leave for school and she was in bed and I would get home and she was still in bed and the next day would be the same. But I didn't know enough. I didn't ever say to my dad, hey, mom's in bed all the time, because I just thought that's what moms do.

And even that's kind of interesting. You're thinking, you know, there'd be a little bit of dialogue about that, especially with your dad trying to manage that. I think if I were the father in that situation, I'd be trying. But, you know, again, you're just, this is coping. Everybody's coping and you're just going.

And you don't even know what's going on. Again, as a child, even as a teenager, you went off to college and met your friend, I think it was Gully. And you became involved in college ministry. Describe that turning point for you spiritually. Now, emotionally, you have all this stuff going on. You've lived through this weird, topsy-turvy, bipolar environment.

And then you go to college and go, okay, it doesn't really operate like this. Yeah, that's, it was such an awakening for me. And part of, for me, and, you know, if people are listening out there, I think this is where, there was so much of my mom because she did have us in church every Sunday. So it was this thing of you're, you're living this weird life, but you're like, but we go to church. And I do believe that my mom was a believer. I just think she wrestled with mental illness. There was no doubt, but there was so much guilt and shame. Religion was something that she really used to make me feel like a failure and to make me feel like I couldn't measure up. And I saw so much hypocrisy between what she professed to believe and the way she lived. So it just created a lot of anger in me.

Can I, let me interject there because people listening and watching on YouTube need to hear your answer to this. The fact that you were able to overcome that and not use that as your sweeping dismissal of religion. Oh yeah, forget that. My mom was a hypocrite or whatever that bitterness is. So how did you shake that off and say, okay, I can forgive that and embrace God and know that my mom did not always live like she should have and be okay with that.

Yeah. I mean, I think for me, there was so much guilt and shame that I laugh because I'm like, I used to walk down every center aisle to get saved at every possible camp or whatever. Like I say, like Billy Graham would have been like, girl, you are good. You're done. You've done it.

But I was always searching because I wanted that. But for me, when I was at Texas A&M, I went to a Bible study called Breakaway. And the leader there at the time said, he talked about the grace and mercy of God and that you can't ever outrun the grace and mercy. And that no matter what you've done, you're never too far gone. And that was what I needed to hear. That made sense to me.

That made sense to me. And so to answer your question, at that moment, I realized Jesus is the thing that always holds and people are going to let you down. I mean, the church is made up of imperfect people and the world is made up of imperfect people. What would you say to that person that clings to that excuse so they don't have to?

They don't have to make a commitment to the Lord. You know, Christians have just let me down, so I'm not going to do it. I mean, I think it's a cop out because you think people have let you down in a lot of areas of your life.

I mean, that's the truth. I mean, people have cheated, Christians and non-Christians, and it's a shame. As Christians, you hope that we're better. You hope that you're led by the Spirit, but we're going to make mistakes. And so I think to not give Jesus a chance, who is the creator of the universe, who knows you, who created you, is a total cop out. To not say, I'm going to let you prove to me your love and your sustenance and the things you're going to bring me through. Because I think the whole story of my life is how over and over again, God has always brought beauty from the ashes of things that are burned down.

Perfect. And along with coming to know Jesus during college, you met your husband, Perry, right? How did that happen and what was the impact on you? So I met him at the very end of college. It was, I would say, just in the nick of time. Literally a month before graduation, I had started to get involved with Breakaway, the Bible study that I mentioned earlier. But there was a small prayer group and it met at a guy named Perry Shankle's house. And my friend Jen said, you need to come with me to this prayer group.

And so I did. And so I met Perry there briefly. And the funny thing is, is looking back, I remember everything about that meeting. I remember what he had on. I remember everything. And it wasn't like love at first sight.

It wasn't that kind of thing. But it's funny how for whatever reason, he just made an impression on me. Mainly because he kept talking to me and I was like, why are you talking to me? But then I ended up getting a job in San Antonio and that's where Perry was from. So I moved to San Antonio, not knowing anyone. He moved back home and a mutual friend said, y'all ought to hang out. And so I was like, sure, I have nothing else to do. And so we started hanging out and we're friends for about six months and then ultimately realized, oh, I think there's something here.

So we dated for two more years and got married and we've been married for 28 years now. Yeah, that's fantastic. Now again, the moment is when you bring Perry to your house to meet your mom, I'm sure there was some time to meet your dad as well if Perry was on his game.

There was, yes. But describe even his observations and then his comments that he had afterward for you. Yeah, it was so interesting because when you bring a fresh set of eyes into a situation. And so Perry, we were serious enough where he met, I think my dad came into town with his wife, my stepmom for a business trip. And then about two weeks later, Perry met my mom and I had told him my backstory and basically the picture of my mom had painted for me. And I talk about this in the book was that, you know, she tried to paint my dad as he had abandoned our family. He had left her for this other woman that he really never cared about us. And I knew in my head, I was like, this doesn't reconcile with a man who sees you every weekend and who calls you every night of your life.

But do you call your mom a liar? I mean, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And so I just kind of let it be. But after Perry met both of them, I never will forget. We went back to my apartment and we were sitting on the couch and Perry is so discerning and always sees clearly into situations. And I didn't know how much at that time, but he said, Hey, I don't think that what you've been told adds up. He said, there's more to this story. He said, this doesn't add up with the people I just met. Just his brief observation.

That was it that quick. And so that opened up. And so he said, I think you need to talk to your dad. I think you need to have an honest conversation with your dad. So I asked my dad, he was going to be back in town in a couple of weeks. And I said, can we go to lunch? I have some questions to ask you.

And at this point I was 23. And ironically, my mom came in to see me the weekend before. And I told her, I said, I'm going to have a conversation with dad.

I just have a lot of questions. And at that point, my mom confessed essentially that everything she had told me had been a lie growing up that, um, that she had been the one that had cheated first, that she had been the one that had walked out of their marriage, that she had lied about all these things. It was so fascinating to me because all of a sudden this whole narrative I've been told my whole childhood, she admitted wasn't correct. And I guess she was afraid that at this point, my dad was going to tell me the truth. Um, and I don't know if he would have or not, but when I finally sat down with my dad at that lunch, a couple of weeks later, I said, so mom told me all this stuff. And he said, yeah, that's right. And he said, and I said, why didn't you ever say anything?

And he said, because I never wanted to put you in that position. He said, I just felt like at some point, the truth was going to come out and you would see who I was. And so it was such a lesson in me.

Like my dad to me is such a model of what it looks like to walk the high road and to believe that eventually the light's going to shine on the dark places and that he didn't jump in and create more conflict by trying to defend himself or trying to explain himself. Because I think he had to know, you know, with a lot of my animosity that I had towards him at different times growing up, he had to know that I was being told things that weren't necessarily true of who he was. Yeah.

You know, I'm struck by just the truth will set you free. You know, the Lord says that, but it's odd for us as Christians, how much we cover that up. Yeah. Either through embarrassment or repercussion, or we don't want to suffer the consequences. So it, it becomes hard for us to be honest.

It does. And I think that those places are the things in us that begin. And I think that's part of what was always going on with my mom is that darkness and those secrets fester, you know, the lies and all of that, they just grow and create more conflict within you. So this is during your dating time with Perry, you get married. Do you see the manifestation of your childhood in your own marriage now, your own insecurities, your own, you know, the things that you weren't taught directly, but that you absorbed?

Yeah. I mean, I think there was definitely for me, their pattern of it was learning. I had learned so much to always keep the peace. And if I ever, um, advocated or said, I don't like this, or I don't want to do this, or this isn't my favorite thing. I was made to feel so much guilt or shame or sometimes anger. So I just learned to keep it all down. Like, because my mom would always greet me if I was like, I don't want to do this.

Then she, it would be met with a sarcastic, like, Oh, your life is so hard or poor Melanie, you know? So I just kind of learned nobody really cares how I feel about stuff. So when we got married, what I would tend to do is I would just let stuff go and I would say, I don't care. It's all fine.

It's all fine. I'm the master of it's all fine until it wasn't. And then I would, you know, burst into tears and cry. And, you know, Perry said to me at some point in the first year of marriage, he was like, Hey, I'm not a mind reader. Like, I can't read your mind. You have to tell me how you feel.

And at that moment it dawned on me. I was like, I don't even know how to tell somebody how I feel. Like, I don't even know how to express this isn't what I want, or this isn't my thing. I mean, even something as simple as like, I don't want Chinese food for dinner.

I want Mexican food. I really didn't know how to do that because I just wanted everybody around me to be happy. And I felt like if I stayed quiet, it would do it. You know, this reminds me of the Yurkovich's material, The Way We Love, and we interviewed them and they, one of the things in there was the avoider.

They talk about different personalities. And that is a classic avoider. You know, you want to keep the peace. You don't want to disrupt anything. You don't want to disappoint your mom. So you come home from your time with your dad saying, Oh, that was no fun.

That's the avoider thing. Pretty powerful stuff. And I think pretty right on. Let's move through the end here pretty quickly just to cover today. And it'd be great if we can continue tomorrow and get the rest of the story as the great Paul Harvey used to say. But a few years after all of this, your daughter, Carolyn is born. How did having your daughter bring clarity to this relationship with your mom? This to me is a woman thing.

Yeah. Describe it because I'm not sure men really would get that, but how did having your daughter open up these wounds with your relationship with your mother? It just because nothing prepares you as a mother for how much you're going to love that child when they come into the world. Like I say that moment that I had Caroline and I had known, you know, we'd done the ultrasound. I knew I was having a daughter. And so I prayed so many times like, Lord, help me to love her. I don't know how to be a mother to a daughter.

I want to be a better mother. And when I held her, I was like, this is the most holy moment of my whole life to have this innocent little fresh from heaven wrapped in a pink blanket gift. Wow. That thing.

You know, just that. And it's just, and I remember there was a night, you know, they send you home from the hospital, like, you know what you're doing. And I'm like, it was harder for me to get a job at Soundcastle Records at 15 without a resume than for them to let me leave the hospital with this human to raise. But I remember that first night rocking her in the nursery and just looking down at her and your heart is so full. And I really started to dread. I was like, how am I ever going to send her to kindergarten? How am I ever going to let her go?

Like, how am I, I mean, I really did think maybe Jesus will come back before I have to send her to college because there's no way I can do that. But just that overwhelming love. And in that moment, I realized my mom never loved me like I love this baby. And it was, it was such a powerful moment, but it was also a moment that felt like such clarity. I'd never had that amount of clarity to before.

And it felt like a puzzle piece had finally been put in place. And it, it just opened my eyes to a lot of things that I hadn't seen before. It's so sad though. I mean, seriously, that you realized a mother's love for the first time with the birth of your daughter and then to realize I did not have that. That's sad. Yeah, it is sad.

It is sad. And it's part of the brokenness that I think there's so many of us. And I will say, since the book has come out, I've heard from so many women and that has been so sad that have said, you put into words what I have felt and I didn't know how to articulate. And Melanie, this all kind of led to a boundary that you had to put in place, which sounds like it was really, really difficult, but also freeing.

Yeah, it was very freeing. And I think because with my mom, the thing was, is her behavior tended to escalate as the years had gone by. And so by this time, I mean, she had shown up at one of my baby's showers and she was using a lot of prescription drugs. So she was not always coherent.

And so it became a physical safety thing. First of all, where I was like, I can't have my mom holding my baby. I can't have her around. She was not a calming presence.

And then it became an emotional thing where I can't have my mom projecting the same toxic things on my daughter that she did on me during my childhood. Yeah. Melanie, let's come back right at the end here, because I want to amplify this as the right word. When you talked about Isaiah 61, three, which says he gives us beauty for ashes.

Now that people have heard more of the story and people will hear more of this tomorrow. Come back to that verse and the understanding you now have from that. I think it'd be an important place to end today.

Yeah. I mean, I think when I look at my childhood, what I say is it was like a house on fire that I didn't know that I needed to escape. And so when I look at that, I'm like the ashes of my childhood and the brokenness that was there and the patterns that I could have repeated, if not for the grace and mercy of God. And when I look at the beauty that he's given in my daughter, in my family and the things that my heart longed for, it's like, that's Isaiah 61 come to life where it's like the beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness. And I think the thing about when I read that and I think the oil of gladness is it's like oil seeps into everything. It's in every aspect of your life and not that it's been perfect and not that it's been easy and not that there hasn't been a lot of pain in trying to heal and confront things and overcome, but to know that Jesus has been with me every step of the way and that he really does redeem all the things that have been broken. Yeah, it's so good.

What a good place to end. For the viewers, the listeners, if you're going, wow, this is my moment. This is the epiphany that maybe I too have suffered from dysfunction.

I would say 90% probably have. And you're waking up to that right now and listening to the conversation, get in touch with us. We have caring Christian counselors who can help talk with you and walk that through, give you a top line analysis of where things are at spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and then suggest steps that you can take, resources that we have here at Focus to help you. And that's our mission and we want to be able to provide that for you. That's what we wake up and come in every day to do. And it starts with Melanie's great book, Here Be Dragons, or should I say it, Here Be Dragons.

What a great title. Know your life map and know where the dangerous territory is. And this will certainly be there in those things that we've learned as children and the pitfalls and the dark spots that our parents have given us.

And it's not a condemnation. It's a realization of knowing how to draw closer to the Lord so that you can deal with these things. Yeah, get a copy of Melanie's terrific book, Here Be Dragons. We've got details in the show notes or give us a call, 800, the letter A in the word family. We'd also be happy to set up a time for one of those counselors to give you a call back. It's a free 25 minute or so phone consultation and you can learn more online.

Or when you call 800, the letter A in the word family. And when you get in touch, if you're able to, please make a generous contribution to Focus on the Family. Donors make it possible for us to offer counseling services and great resources like Melanie's book and so much more. And your gift of any amount today, either a monthly pledge or a one-time gift will make a lot of difference in the ministry impact that we can make together. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Melanie Shankle and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. you and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.