Parenting with Kindness (To Ourselves)

In this episode, Rachael Clinton Chen and her husband Michael Chen dive into the importance of parenting with kindness—not just toward children, but toward ourselves.

Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, or caregiver, it’s common for past traumas to resurface when you’re feeling overwhelmed or stretched thin. 

Rachael and Michael openly discuss the joys and challenges they’ve faced in their new marriage, blending families, raising young children, and navigating a pandemic, all of which have both triggered old wounds and offered opportunities for healing. This candid conversation is an invitation to explore how grief can be a catalyst for growth and how choosing kindness over harshness creates space for deeper connection and hope for yourself and for future generations.

If you’d like to hear more on this topic, we invite you to join Rachael Clinton Chen and trauma therapist Aundi Kolber on Friday, October 4, for a live webinar, “Parenting As a Trauma Survivor.” They’ll share trauma-informed insights to help you understand why parenting can be so triggering and offer practical tips for addressing your own healing while showing up for your children in the way they need most. Sign up to be part of the conversation here.

About Our Guest:

Rev. Michael S. Chen is a PhD student at Eastern University in the Marriage and Family Therapy program.  He has extensive background in campus ministries in and provides counseling care to ministry workers and pastors through the Rest Initiative. He also has experience with racial trauma resolution and is certified in Trauma-Informed Narrative Focused Care from the Allender Center of the Seattle School of Psychology and Theology where he serves as Adjunct Faculty. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Rachael Clinton Chen, two sons Jamison and Silas, and daughter Evelyn.

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Good people with good bodies. I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting. Now, in some ways I’m thinking about parenting because in a couple of weeks I have the privilege of co-hosting a webinar with the Allender Center with trauma specialist author and therapist, Aundi Kolber on parenting as a trauma survivor. And I’ll talk more about that a little bit later. But I’ve also been thinking about parenting because I am a parent in multiple ways. I’m a stepparent and a parent, and you don’t ever get to turn that off. And in some ways I consider this things I didn’t expect when healing from trauma, like a bonus parenting edition. And I couldn’t think of a better person to invite to join me in this conversation than my beloved Michael Chen, who is also a parent and has a front row seat to my parenting. And the ways in which that shapes me as a human being, shapes our relationship, challenges us to grow. So Michael, thank you so much for being willing to join me. And I even hear our tiny human a little bit in the background, so welcome.

Michael: Oh, it’s so good to be here and be part of this conversation, so thank you.

Rachael: Yeah. One thing I want to just name before we start is just one that there are lots of different ways to parent. You could be a godparent, you could be an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent, or just someone who plays significant roles in the lives of young people. And those young people could be adults who are just younger than you. So again, want to just open this conversation up to the places in which parenting and offering care and attunement to a person that you’re called to tend to, exposes places where our wounds just still have more power than maybe we’d like them to exposes our limitations and also invites us to deeper healing. I also want to name, there are different seasons to parenting. Right now we’re kind of in two seasons of parenting. We’ve got young teenagers and we’ve got a toddler, very different needs, a lot of similar energy, but just very different needs. But also you could be parenting adult children in some ways, this journey of parenting, especially as trauma survivors, it’s not like we ever reach the zenith or a place where we arrive. And just finally, before we jump in, it’s also just a place that is very tender and because it’s exposing, want to just invite you to deeper compassion and curiosity in this conversation. Because I would say, Michael, you are an incredible parent and I’m very blessed and very encouraged, and I learn a lot from watching you parent. I would say I’m a really good parent and we’re definitely human size and we definitely have committed to doing healing work around the places where we still bear trauma in our bodies and how that has an impact on us and our relationships. So we’re going to try to be human sized and exploring some of these realities of just things that you might expect to some extent when healing from trauma. But I feel like parenting is one of those places that is going to bring you to your knees in a different kind of way. Does that feel fair?

Michael: That’s great. Yeah. I think you said it there, curiosity and kindness as a part of seeing parenting as almost like this exploration and who we are, who we’re becoming, rather than being so focused on specific goals and outcomes that it can really actually bring a lot of goodness and a lot more connection, I think we found.

Rachael: You have a unique experience of having raised two amazing boys. Two, before Evie came along, Silas and Jameson were 11 and 13 or 10 and 12 right there in that window. And then kind of saying yes to another adventure of the newborn season and the toddler season. And I think sometimes that could actually bring a unique perspective of parenting because a lot happened in that decade between having newborns and toddlers. And I’ve just been curious, have there been anything that has surprised you or brought into deeper clarity, some of the healing work that you’ve done, places where you still feel like, Ooh, I guess there is still more work here.

Michael: The stories that come to mind in that, I think even connect to meeting larger cultural stories and cultural narratives that if you were to actually step back and look at your life and what you’re doing, what you’re saying, how you’re prompting your children can be really odd sometimes. And so I found myself with the boys when they were younger, getting ready for preschool, actually wanting to correct them. This is something that we’ve talked about, actually wanting to correct them about certain things, certain maybe facts about the world. Purple is not in the rainbow boys, it’s actually indigo. And really feeling like, oh, this is actually going to protect them in some ways from embarrassment in the classroom or in a social setting. And there are multiple examples that came to mind when I thought about, oh, how do I protect them from embarrassment or shame? And the cultural story, even going back to Chinese immigration into this country through Angel Island, that there was this rigorous and almost ruthless, judgmental testing about facts either about the United States or about certain aspects of immigration. The wave of immigration that my parents came in valued so much education. And so I found this anxiety parenting out of maybe even connecting that to a larger cultural trauma. And so again, but without the context, you experienced that because they started correcting you.

Rachael: Yeah, yeah.

Michael: About different things. You experience it as they’re being either rude or disrespectful. They’re shaming you.

Rachael: Yeah. Well, I think I love what you’re putting words to because you’re naming that the trauma wounds we bear that are going to get exposed when we’re doing something trying to help a human being become, are not just personal. They are collective. There are collective wounds that we bear that are going to be exposed and going to come into the atmosphere. And exactly what you’re saying, because for me, I have a lot of wounds around people thinking I’m stupid. And that comes from stories in my family. Or again, if you were to ask my family, did you ever think Rachael is stupid? They would be like, no, we thought she was really smart. But just the way in which certain things play out being from Oklahoma, having an accent, being a woman in biblical studies, whatever. So yeah, I think initially when they be like, I’d be like, oh, we got a new bed. Well, technically you got a bed frame and a mattress. I would be like, I’m not inside. I would feel, thinking about Inside Out and the panel of emotions, it would be like all of a sudden anger would just come and be like, ah, I felt shame. I did feel like I was being judged or they thought I was stupid. Again, this is playing out in real time. That’s one part of me. And then there’s a lot of parts of me that are like, they’re just kids. They just, developmentally, they want to show you what they know. And absolutely at that time, I did not have enough awareness of some of the collective wounds in the atmosphere that would’ve been passed on to them from you. And I don’t know, maybe you would have had that awareness then too, to be able to say, Hey, I think part of what this is and where this is coming from and how this has been formed into their little bodies is coming from this story.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it wasn’t a light bulb moment, but just slow, slow, slow pondering. Why do I keep on correcting them about different things about the world, different facts, the meaning of different words, and sharing that some of the pondering, even if it was tentative at first with you feeling so much understanding and compassion from you. And of course, of course, it makes so much sense if there was this threat of exile or a threat of humiliation in a social context for young Asian boys of Taiwanese descent that are already up against so march. And so for you to be able to over time as we actually sit with the anger and sit with the feeling of shame to get to these places of grief, even a collective grief about how older stories continue to form our present day parenting and interactions with the children.

Rachael: Well, I think everything you’re putting words to, and maybe you could tell me if you feel this way, but I think one of the things like when you’re healing from trauma and then you and I actually work in fields of trauma healing, and you’re a therapist, you’re about to graduate with a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy. I’ve been working with the Allender Center for over a decade. It’s almost like, do you ever feel like we know too much? And sometimes that exacerbates when we have these moments where, yeah, it’s not going well. We’re not parenting well, we’re triggered, we’re activated, we’re outside of our window of tolerance. And again, sometimes I just feel the like, oh gosh, now I’m worried because I acted a wound on my child and I did it attune well, and I didn’t offer good containment, and I’m harming their attachment and it’s going to shape their lives that they’re going to go to therapy and just all the things. Do you ever feel that pressure of feeling like you have to get it perfect because you want to give your kids maybe even more than what you were given and maybe knowing too much about how we’re shaped by the harm we’ve experience, but sometimes forgetting that even in attachment research, it’s not the perfect parent that’s needed. It’s like a good enough parent and a parent that can come back and have humility and repair and do those things. Anyhow, I’ll stop. I digress.

Michael: Yes, yes. But this is maybe where we differ a little bit. And I think early on, and I definitely had this idea that successful parenting was reading the Bible with your kids every day, every week or every night and feeling like, oh, I really actually failed in this regard. Even as I tried to find creative ways to maybe even sneak in the Bible into their minds and their consciousness and realizing again, out of the context of my own home, which is not a Christian home, scripture in the worthlessness of the trauma of my home actually became such a healing balm. There were words put to experiences, there was a rich emotion, there was anger, sadness, grief, longing, desire. And so actually to want to invite them into the complexity of the story was actually really good, but it just wasn’t working. And so I feel have felt that pressure for sure on different levels. But our approach, I hear a lot of pressure that you’re describing a lot of pressure to do it right and to do it a certain way. And certainly I feel that in some respect. But my tendency, again because of my story is actually probably more to avoid. If there is difficulty or heartache not to be thinking about all the possibilities I think that you’re bringing up, but actually to hide under the covers to dissociate more so than to actually really be aware or attuned. And so that would be probably my way of dealing of stress, the really complex emotions that come up in human interactions. And so a story, you were watching the boys fight.

Rachael: Yeah. Which one?

Michael: I was disassociating. I was probably on my phone or watching TV at this point, and then you are either waving me down, flagging me down, or maybe even kicked me on the leg. Or at some point I said, Michael, you see what’s happening? And so you are much more highly attuned and maybe you can talk about the connections for you in that, but you’re much more highly attuned to some of even the micro interactions that are happening where I am probably actually consciously at some level tuning out because of the heartache and the reality of trauma and even domestic violence in my home. And so when you call me to action, in a way it’s both unnerving, exposing that, but also at some level I’m so grateful. So there’s actually so much ambivalence when you’re calling me to engage in the conflict that’s erupting here right in front of me, right in front of us. And so what unfolds in that is such goodness and connection, being able to engage and have the capacity to engage in such strong, hard, negative emotion from the boys that’s coming up about what they’re experiencing in life, both in school and in their relationship with one another. And then I think what’s so healing, and ultimately I think what I’ve wanted in introducing them to this larger story of scripture is actually being able to enter into their grief and sharing some of my own experiences when I was their age. Now they’re at this point now whether they can actually hear and process just the complexity of human experience more. I think what unfolded in that, again, because of our different styles and our different cares and concerns and anxieties was so beautiful and so healing. And so that I think in part, yes, to answer your question, I have had definitely certain ideals or expectations, desires that haven’t been met, but have actually in staying with those desires in a way have emerged and maybe even more profound and beautiful ways. And I just have an immense amount of gratitude for you, as you actually probably think and are more concerned more often globally about what’s happening with the boys and their interactions, but also realize that you have so much to bear in your body with respect to that anxiety and how parenting is going and how it looks, right, even in social settings and how what’s being communicated even outside the home in terms of what is successful, what’s good parenting.

Rachael: Oh, totally. And you use the word, oh, you’re really attuned. And I would say there is a truth to that. And I also think because of my story, I’m hypervigilant in a way sometimes that if I can notice the storm, if I can notice all the warning signs, then I can somehow prevent heartache. I can prevent harm. We can somehow magically find a way to get it right. So what is paired with that often and has been a surprising, it’s like logically, it’s not surprising, but the visceral experience of it and how deep it is and how comprehensive it is is surprising is how much fear I have. And because my experience of fear often set me up to need to protect or to fight in my life, how I quickly move to anger, the cortisol flooding moves to anger, and I want to punish. I don’t, but I want to punish. How do we prevent our kids from danger? We make sure they never do that again so that they stay out of harm’s way. They can’t, if they invite people to shame them or harm, they’ll never recover because so much of my story could hear the activation even now is don’t mess up or the whole thing’s going to collapse. And there’s just so much of that that is still in me. And I laugh because I think one of the things that’s been so surprising to me, it shouldn’t be, but it is. And I actually have a lot of hope in this because I think, oh, this is, like I said before, I’m never going to stop having opportunities for deeper healing if I can come down enough in my body because talking about things that you kind of put words to this over time, and I think I would want our listeners to hear that because what surprised me the most is that when I married Michael and I instantly became a stepmom, I was like, I am made for this. I’m ready for this. I have such secure attachment. I had been living alone for four years. I had been doing lots of therapeutic work, lots of somatic work, body care work to bring deeper healing. I actually was at a place where I spent Saturdays taking care of my plants. Sure I had some loneliness, but for the most part, I had a lot of space to self-regulate and to soothe. And if there was conflict in a friendship or a work relationship, or even with my family who lived 2000 miles away and a lot of space to ponder what was going on, to make sense of my internal world, to figure out how I want to reengage relationally. Well, when you are parenting, there’s not space to like, oh, let me take a 17 minute break to breathe, do some yoga, come back and get back to you. And so I think very quickly into our marriage and into step parenting. Now granted the pandemic came four months into that reality, which actually was a paradoxically sweet gift for our family having so much time together to build new attachments. But I felt so young, I felt like, oh, my disorganized attachment realities from my trauma are front and center. There were times where I was like, Michael, I’m sorry that you have a third child because I’m just having these, we were talking about one last night, you had cut apples for the boys after dinner for all of us really, but we’re on this tiny little island in our kitchen in our row house. The apples are easily accessible to me. Set them down. And you were like, here’s some apples guys. And I was like, can I have some? And you were like, yeah. And I was like, no. Can I have some? Basically, are you going to hand them to me? You’re handing them to the boys. You were like, you can get some. Again, so much that we’ve unpacked around what the heck was going on in that moment where I’m feeling the attachment you guys have and am feeling so anxious about my place and just so much going on. I wouldn’t have had words for that in the moment, but there were so many moments like that where we’re playing a board game and I feel like 13-year-old Rachael who used to throw fits at my family’s table over a board game and get activated is showing up. And I’m like, you’re supposed to be the adult in the room. What’s going on with you? There was just so much exposure of young, tender, afraid unhealed parts of me that of course, were needing to be in the mess of relationship in order to find a different way forward. Now, fast forward to bringing a human into the world as a biological mom and having a newborn. And I said to you before Evie came, I’m most afraid I know myself enough that I’m most afraid when she has needs and I can’t figure out what they are and I can’t bring her soothing. I’m going to flood cortisol and probably have panic attacks now in my imagination, once again, that was after 20 minutes to an hour of her not being able to be soothed. But you could, the way my body handled her crying in those early days was like instant panic, no margin, instant panic. I don’t know what to do. I’m having a panic attack. I’m flooding. And it would be like 30 seconds of crying. And those are just small examples of ways in which the work of parenting and loving these human beings and getting it really good a lot of the time just continues to be, hold a mirror to places in me that are just still very wounded and bear a lot of trauma and sometimes having reactions I don’t even understand why I’m having them. And it takes curiosity with maybe a therapist or a spiritual director or conversations with you to begin to make sense of why is this happening and what’s this connected to? And I think there are times where that can feel just really shameful and almost defeating, will we ever be well? Will we ever be well? But I think what’s also been true is it’s been a constant invitation to heal in a deeper way, a constant invitation to call upon the one who, despite all the chaos in this world, I still believe is there, God, working on our behalf to bring, to empower us, to gift us with things and facing the reality that we’re never going to get it perfectly. That’s an impossible reality in any relationship to get it perfectly. And some of the sweetest moments have been having to come back to the table with a 9-year-old, 10-year-old and say, I’m really aware the way I reacted didn’t feel good. Do you want to tell me more about what you were experiencing there and how I can be more aware of you? And also I’m really sorry. I could see how that impacted you and I’m going to do my best to make that right. Just multiple moments of being able to do repair work and seeing how that actually is the place where attachments can heal in a deeper way, not as kind of like Paul says, not that we sin, so grace can increase. It’s not like you want, oh, let’s just fail so we can have some repair. But knowing that growing, that humility and capacity to move back toward and to utilize power in the ways we’re meant to steward power with vulnerability in a way that empowers others, makes room for them to take seriously their experience and that they just continued to be invitations for deeper levels of healing. Anything that brings up for you?

Michael: No, it’s messy. I think for us, having done some very similar work, having had a very similar background and training and language with the Allender Center, that invitation I think is always to be curious and kind with what’s happening, as messy, as intense as it is, as it has been, to be able to sit with my own feeling when you are dysregulated my own feeling of shame that it’s my fault or that I’ve done something wrong. And to be able to hold on in a way and to bear the agony, both of what I’ve experienced, even as you are feeling so much, but also then to be able to move toward you and to be able to accompany one another in even a more profound way, I think is, feels almost like impossible. But I think we can testify to the goodness of having done that work both personally on our own and almost on a continual basis of connecting on that level of, okay, yeah, we’re triggered. I was triggered. You were triggered. And coming back and coming back and being able to behold in some ways, like these young parts of us that felt so much that we’re terrified, that we’re feeling so overwhelmed and the necessity to hear, to actually make room to hear these young parts is such hard work, but such holy work. So when I think about 13-year-old Rachael, I think about seven or 4-year-old Rachael often. Often. And I think with funness and a lot of curiosity, and as much as we need to hear the voices of our children, we need to hear the voices of these very young parts of us too.

Rachael: Absolutely.

Michael: Because I think they have so much wisdom and so much to offer.

Rachael: And I think some people come into parenting with some awareness of their own trauma and have done a lot of healing work. And some people come into parenting and it’s actually in moments of encountering their 4-year-old child that recall a moment of pain or abuse or heartache from their 4-year-old self. And they’re caught in this swirl and storm of the moment. So again, these can be really fraught waters, and if you’re listening to this and you’re going, yeah, I can relate to that. I actually need more insight into how attachment works and how trauma impacts us, and why do I keep getting activated in a neurological way on our neurobiology and what hope is there. I do want to make sure you know that the Allender Center is hosting this webinar on October 4th called Stories That Shape Us Parenting as a Trauma Survivor. I’m going to be co-hosting that with Aundi Kolber, who’s a therapist, an author, she’s a trauma specialist. She leads with a lot of compassion. I’m really excited about this opportunity. It’s going to be a live webinar on Zoom again Friday, October 4th, 9:30 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific Time. This webinar will be happening live, but if you can’t make it during that time, please sign up anyways, because you’ll get lifetime access to the recording to watch it on your own time. You can find more information about joining me for this webinar, ‘Parenting As a Trauma Survivor’ with Aundi Kolber at theallendercenter.org/webinars But I do hope it’s something that if you’re interested, you check out. But I can just say, Michael, from both of us that I know we will be doing this work of re-parenting and tending to the young parts of ourselves as we attempt to parent our people no matter what developmental stage that they’re in and the ways in which there’s so much mystery to love. And probably our kids will go to therapy someday to be like, oh my God, they made us process everything. They just talked about everything or they were so in their emotions, or it’s like they will because we’re not God and we’re not perfect, and there is failure, and we hope that they feel like they can go talk about the places where they long for deeper healing and that maybe by that point we’ll have enough maturity to step more deeply in. But one thing I just wanted to name or reiterate that you’ve put so well as we come to a close, it’s just the role that grief, genuine grief plays in the healing journey, in the wake of trauma as a parent, and not that kind of grief that many of us are familiar with, where a parent kind of feels fragile and needs us to make everything okay so they don’t feel bad. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about that capacity to enter a deeper lament, that our bodies bear scars, that those scars are actually pretty dynamic and still play out and have impact in our relationships, and that we have an opportunity to parent differently, but we’ll never parent perfectly. So there will always be some element of grief in this journey, and that grief doesn’t have to take us out or weigh us down. In many ways, the paradox of true lament is that it stirs our hearts. It invites us to a deeper level of comfort, and it stirs our hearts to deeper levels of hope. I’m deeply grateful for you and that I get to do this with you and for your kindness and compassion that also helps reparent parts of me. I hope I offer you the same.

Michael: Oh, no. Yeah. What’s coming to mind in parenting and our relationship is there’s nothing that harshness can do that kindness can’t do better. There’s nothing that harshness can do that kindness can’t do better, and for us to be able to experience kindness with one another, but also invite, just invite our children into a very deep, rich, beautiful experience of kindness. And I’m just so grateful for you and look forward to more parenting adventures, my love.

Rachael: Right back at you, my love. Thank you.