Reparenting When No One Ever Did

Reparenting is strange when you’ve never actually been parented — not in the emotional sense.

There was no secure voice to say, “You’re safe now.” No one to sit beside me in my darkest moments and help me make sense of them.
Just silence. Or criticism. Or confusion.
So when people talk about reparenting as “replacing the bad with the good,” I struggle to even name what the good would’ve looked like.

I’m not replacing.
I’m building from scratch.

And that’s a harder journey. But maybe, a purer one too.

Because I’m not copying a model — I’m becoming one.
For myself. For my son. For the scared parts of me that still flinch when they feel forgotten.

Some mornings I still wake up with that ache.
That inner child still hoping someone will come knock gently and say, “I’m here now. You don’t have to do this alone.”

And then I remember:
That someone… is me.

And I do knock.
And I do stay.

That’s how I know the reparenting is working.