http://Reclaimingselfwithkirsten.com/

Reclaiming Self with Kirsten, Santa Cruz, CA (2026)

02/12/2026

For most of my life I outsourced my safety, worthiness, and sense of Self. The way I felt about me was completely dependent on how others perceived and treated me.
I moved through the world as a child does, looking for parents to validate and care for me.
I didn’t do this because I was bad or wrong, I did this because the very human need of being seen and mirrored by an attuned caregiver had never been met.
My inner child was still looking for a parent to complete me and make me whole.
Children develop their sense of Self through mirroring. Children learn who they are by how they are treated and how present and available their caregivers are. Their sense of safety, worthiness and Self is deeply influenced by their ability to rest in the love and safety of their parents.
When a child has to earn love, only receiving it when he behaves a certain way, he learns that he is loved not because of who he is but because of what he does. And this is where the pattern of outsourcing begins.
Recovery from developmental trauma invites us into what happened to us as a child but also into what didn’t happen that should have.
As adult children, we get to learn how to be the parent we needed and never had.
I get to remind myself daily that my safety comes from my ability to be present with myself. To know myself even in the presence of those that can’t see me. I still fall off my center, I still sacrifice my narrative for the narrative of others. This loosing ground is an invitation back to my own wounding and tending to my own unmet needs.
Looking to the word to make me whole will always leave me disappointed. It’s not my husbands job to parent my inner child, my bosses job to make me safe, or my child’s job to bolster up my ego.
Today I am an adult-tending and caring for all of me. Day by day integrating all the parts I had learned were not lovable and embracing my own needs and wholeness. Amazing grace and a lot of hard work.
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility 💚 kirsten

02/04/2026

Ever since I can remember there has been a spark in me that wanted to be free. And in most spaces, I sacrificed this freedom for a sense of belonging and comfort.
Liberation requires authenticity and authenticity always includes a willingness to be unliked, misunderstood, and uncomfortable.
Human beings are wired to connect but I believe most of us abandon parts of ourselves in an effort to do so.
We have become too attached to comfort and the truth is often sacrificed for status quo.
The don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel rule runs rampant in our modern systems. The rules we learn in dysfunctional homes become the rules we live by in unconscious societal systems.
Learning to tell the truth sometimes feels like death to me but I’m no longer willing to deny my own reality for the sense of fitting in.
Are you listening to your deepest truth or accepting someone else dogma as your own?
Where might your spark of liberation be yearning to shine?
What aspects of your shadow is fitting in allowing you to ignore?
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility.

01/14/2026

One of the most harmful aspects of the mental health field is that we identify normal natural symptoms of stress and trauma as disorders. My friend and colleague Magali Morales , often points out that the DSM 5 has over 360 diagnostic labels for survivors of trauma and only about 6 for perpetrators.
We’ve somehow, as a field, consented to labeling the victims of misused power and violence as disordered. (Hence our Colonial complicity).
And many Adult Children don’t need anyone to twist their arm into accepting this label. We have been groomed into believing that there is something wrong with us and relieved to finally find words to describe our inner turmoil.
I spent the first 40 years of my life believing there was something fundamentally wrong with me. My precious childhood mind had learned to survive by believing that something evil in me had caused people to abuse and neglect me. I believed if I could just be different, better, good enough, my abusers would somehow change too. I learned to survive by taking responsibility for other peoples feelings and behaviors. Somehow everything was my fault.
In Compassionate Inquiry, Gabor Mate teaches us that every process and behavior makes sense. That what we believe is wrong with us is an adaptive behavior that (at some point) allowed us to survive our environment.
Believing I was wrong allowed me to stay connected to my caregivers, who at the time, I needed to survive. Believing I was wrong also gave me a sense of control and power. As long as there was hope for my own betterment, there was hope that this pain could stop.
How has “what’s wrong” with you helped you to survive your environment? And what might this adaptive behavior need to let go of its hold?
I wonder how this reframe lands in your body and whether this inquiry opens up space for you to see yourself with a bit more understanding.
I’d love to hear your responses in the comments.
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility 🧡
❤️

01/06/2026

I grew up in a violent and addicted white home. My ancestors are settlers. European immigrants. Most likely desperate for whatever power they could find in this new world. There was a time when my grandmothers and grandfathers belonged to their land. We felt the rush of water run through our flesh in the same way we heard the water running through the flesh of the trees. Colonialism has ripped us away from our Mother, we lost a part of ourselves when we learned that land could be objectified and stolen. We lost a part of ourselves when connection and wisdom had us burned alive as witches.
Gabor Mate describes trauma as a disconnection from our essence. Without our connection to our planet, we are traumatized. Learning to objectify others and we objectify the land. Learning domination, as the norm, through family lines, as children’s wholeness and innocence are beaten out of them. Colonialism teaches power over rather than power with. Colonialism has brought violence into our homes and cultures. Imagine the disconnection needed to hit, to r**e, to neglect your child. Imagine the disconnection needed to see your child’s needs and feelings as burdens to control rather than gifts to understand. I do not believe that my healing can be whole without attending to the wound of colonial violence. None of us free in a culture that “occupies” ‘land and humans. There is no liberation in belonging to a collective consciousness that justifies the murder of children.
My parents were the victims of violence and then became the vessels in which their trauma became mine. In systems like this, truth tellers are exiled, image is idolized, and denial and silence are required to belong.
True healing requires a willingness to be exiled from the very system we live in. To be in this world but not of it.
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility.

04/01/2025

What does it mean to be me?

It means risking safety for truth.

It means swimming through pain I thought would drown me.

It means moments of love that keep me alive.

It means tender tears of gratitude and recognition.

It means standing up to power that is false and misused.

It means standing alone, shaking and desperate but determined to stand

It means rage and judgement and protection and constriction.

It means remembering to open until fear closes me again.

It means excitement and wonder and quickly forgetting.

It means waking up over and over again.

It means shadow and light reclaiming.

It means together and alone all at once. ❤️ $tine

02/24/2025

Most of the people I work with, including myself, come from childhood homes where their feelings and needs were ignored, shamed, manipulated, violated, abused and/or neglected. We grow up to become Adult Children that believe that our feelings and needs are a burden to others but also to ourselves.
Feelings and needs are a doorway into a sense of Self and identity. Without someone modeling how to be curious, compassionate, and courageous in holding our life experience, we will have no reference for how to do this.
In my home, the only anger allowed was the anger of my abusive parent. My own anger was punished, made wrong, and forced into isolation. I had no one to help me understand that anger is a sign that a personal boundary has been crossed and if I’m curious about my anger I can uncover a need that isn’t being met. When I know what need is not being met, I can make an effort to request this need be met or I can look for a way to meet it myself. None of this was taught to me. What I was taught was that my anger would be shamed. To this day, when I watch my anger arise, I almost automatically feel shame. What’s fires together wires together.
Our suffering, our pain, can be a beautiful invitation to self exploration and self care. Most families in the US are so busy working and consuming that they pass on the lie that feelings get in the way.
How might you invite your suffering to show you what you need? How might you hold your feelings with a bit more courage and compassion today?
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility ❤️

01/13/2025

Many children of addicted, or otherwise dysfunctional homes, learn to manage their feelings and needs by not having them.
We learn to stuff and hide our feelings and minimize our needs so we don’t have to experience the pain of not having them met.
We grow up abandoning ourselves; becoming codependent, addicted, abusive or dead.
We’ve had no modeling or guidance of exploring and honoring our needs and have no idea that our feelings are the result of met or unmet needs.
Recovery invites us to embrace our life experience. To get curious about our perspective and dig a little deeper into our judgements, our fears, and the way we see ourselves and the world.
What we find beyond the false self is a treasure of feelings and needs that have been frozen inside of us. This right here is trauma and for those of us that choose the path of healing, we will find pain and freedom beyond our wildest dreams.
Life is designed to heal and to live. We are designed to do the same.
May you find the part of you that knows another way. May you find the sacred knowing inside of you. I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility 🧡kirsten

01/06/2025

It’s hard to believe, but most of our ingrained traits were developed in the first few years of lives, often times before we even have words to describe what has happened inside of us.
The essence of trauma is a disconnection from the truest parts of who we are. We become what we need (or believe we need) to survive. Our true Self unconsciously traded for an egocentric ego image.
The adult child of an addicted, or otherwise dysfunctional home, is presented with an invitation to reclaim who we were always meant to be.
But first we must find out what happened to us and what happened inside of us as a result. Trauma can be a portal to truth and freedom. If we are willing to tell the truth and face our deepest fears. We will heal.
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility ❤️kirsten

12/02/2024

The addicted family system sacrifices truth for survival. Children learn to disconnect from their essence, truth, and authenticity to remain attached and accepted by their unconscious caregivers. Survival =self abandonment.

Recovery for the adult child is an invitation into truth, into our body, and into a foreign trust in our own knowing. We will be asked to be brave in a way that defies what our toxic family has demanded from us. Liberation =self reclaiming.

I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility ❤️kirsten

11/23/2024

In addicted, or otherwise dysfunctional homes, emotionally immature parents are unable to meet their children's needs.
Children learn to suppress their feelings and needs because to have them only causes further pain. We become jokers, sneaky, people pleasers, isolated, shut down.
We learn to scan our environment for signs of threat and lose our childlike ability to be fully open and alive. As children we are burdened by the unexplored psyche and pain of our caregivers.
Many of us grow up to be addicts, victims of chronic abuse, workaholics, codependents, disconnected from our precious essence and truth.
These desperate attempts to avoid our pain are not who we truly are. Recovery invites us into our pain, into what happened to us, and into what was lost in our efforts to survive.
We find our strength, our story, our truth, and possibility when we are willing to explore how our authenticity was sacrificed for attachment and survival.
Compassion, curiosity, and courage save us. Our essence is always waiting to be discovered.
May we all find a safe place to do this work. May we all find our scared belonging.
I send you all of my love and I believe in your possibility 🩵 Kirsten

11/22/2024

In many alcoholic, or otherwise dysfunctional homes, a child who expresses his feelings or needs may be punished, ignored, humiliated or abused. For those of us that grew up in the 80's, many of us are familiar with the line "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about".
This is just the tip of the iceberg of ways that unconscious parents teach their children that if they want to survive and stay attached, they must repress or deny their feelings and needs.
Gabor Mate says that the essence of trauma is a disconnection from the deepest parts of ourself. In recovery, we learn to reconnect with this depth and reclaim what was lost in our effort to survive.
Our feelings and needs are a doorway into who we are. And recovery invites us back into this, sometimes scary, sometimes awkward, always liberating, intimacy with who we really are.
I send you all of my love and believe in your possibility ❤️kirsten

11/20/2024

Parents can't expect their children to identify and avoid abuse when we teach them that the violation of boundaries and respect is acceptable within family dynamics.
In alcoholic and personality disordered homes, children learn that yelling, lying, betrayal, exploitation, and violence is to be expected. In fact, adult children often unconsciously seek out partners that carry the wounding and behavior of their parents, in a desperate effort to finally get the love that they needed and didn't get in childhood.
Children learn what they live and the US society is blatantly reflecting this truth in an our current political, economic, and social realities.

Reclaiming Self with Kirsten

02/12/2026

02/04/2026

01/14/2026

01/06/2026

04/01/2025

02/24/2025

01/13/2025

01/06/2025

12/02/2024

11/23/2024

11/22/2024

11/20/2024

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