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Let me ask you something. How old are you when you get triggered? And no, I'm not asking how old you are according to your driver's license. I'm asking, how old are you emotionally when somebody doesn't text you back? How old are you when somebody tells you no? How old are you when somebody criticizes you? How old are you when the person you love needs space? How old are you when you feel rejected? How old are you when somebody disagrees with you? How old are you when you feel like somebody isn't listening to you? Because baby, you might be 48 in the driver's seat, but that 12-year-old girl might have her hands on the steering wheel. And that is a problem. Because some of us have grown-up bodies, grown-up responsibilities, grown-up money, grown-up relationships, and childhood coping mechanisms. We can run a business, manage employees, raise children, pay a mortgage, earn degrees, lead organizations, handle everybody else's problems, and still become a scary little girl the minute somebody makes us feel unwanted. Quiet is kept. Some of the decisions you swear you're making, because that's just how I am, aren't being made by who you are today. They're being made by who you had to become back then. And today we're gonna talk about it. Welcome back to the Quiet is Kept Podcast. I'm Shanti B, your master certified mental health coach, author, speaker, and your journal bae. And baby season three, she's not playing. We're going deeper, we're getting underneath the behavior, we're getting underneath the relationships, we're getting underneath those excuses, we're getting underneath all that. That's just how I am, BS. And we're asking, why are you like that? Because that's just how I am, might explain your behavior, but it does not automatically excuse it. And today's conversation is called The Children We Used to Be Are Still Making Adult Decisions. Go grab your journal. I'm for real. Because you're probably going to hear yourself somewhere in this episode. And before we get too deep, let me go ahead and give you this disclaimer. This podcast is intended for education, reflection, and personal growth. It is not therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or a replacement for professional mental health treatment. Now, let's get into it. One of the hardest things I had to do in my healing journey was stop looking only at what people had done to me and start looking at what happened inside of me because of what they did. And those are two different conversations. So, you know, it's easy to say my mama did this or my father didn't do this. This person hurt me. This person abandoned me. This relationship traumatized the hell out of me. These people bullied me. This person betrayed me. Okay, those things did happen. But then comes the harder question. What did I learn because they happened? What did little Shanti decide about herself because of those experiences? What did she decide about love? What did she decide about trust? What did she decide about relationships? What did she decide about herself? Because children don't just experience things. Children create meanings around what they experience. So if daddy doesn't show up, a child usually doesn't say, well, my father may have unresolved emotional issues, limited relational capacity, complicated circumstances, or competing priorities. Girl, no. That baby says, Daddy doesn't want me. And if mama doesn't show affection, the child doesn't say, my mama's emotional availability may have been impacted by what she herself experienced growing up. The child says, I'm not lovable. So if you're constantly criticized, you don't think this adult has unhealthy communication patterns. You think something is wrong with me. And if nobody asks how you feel, you might decide my feelings don't matter. And then you grow up, but the belief grows up with you. And that is the part that people miss. When I wrote my book, Quiet is Kept, I talked about how affection wasn't really part of my childhood home. Because it wasn't. We weren't hugging, we weren't sitting around saying I love you. We weren't sitting at a table talking about everybody's feelings. I learned to keep things inside. That's what I knew. Keep it in, push through, handle it, move on. You don't take a uh you don't wake up on your 21st birthday knowing how to communicate. You don't get married and automatically know how to be vulnerable. You don't become a mother and suddenly know how to provide emotionally what wasn't needed modeled for you. You carry what you know. In my book, I eventually had to name this for myself. I wrote about not having affection modeled and not feeling emotionally supported and later recognizing how resentment toward my mother affected the way I mothered my own children. And listen, that shit was hard to admit. Because now we're getting into accountability, not shame, accountability. There is a difference between the two. Children are brilliant adapters. They figure out what they have to do to survive the environment that they're in. If crying gets you comfort, you learn that it's safe to cry. If crying gets you punished, you learn to stop crying. Remember, stop all that crying before I give you something to cry about. Yeah. You've heard it, you you've heard it said to you, and you've said it at some point in your life to your own kids, if you have any. If asking questions gets you yelled at, you're gonna stop asking questions. If being successful gets you attention, you're gonna become an overachiever. Hello, somebody. If being useful gets you love, you become the person that everybody can depend on. If disagreeing creates chaos, then you become agreeable even when you don't agree. And if nobody comes when you need help, you become hyper-independent. If affection is inconsistent, you might become hyper-aware of whether people still love you. If the adults around you are unpredictable, you may become extremely good at reading a room. People will call you intuitive, and maybe you are, but sometimes that intuition started as I need to figure out what mood mama is in before I walk through this door. Woo! That's survival, and survival strategies work. That's why we keep them. But the problem is something that protected you at eight can sabotage the hell out of you at 38. And that's where the healing comes in. All right, now, this isn't just some motivational talk. There is an entire body of public health research around what are called adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. The CDC describes ACEs as potentially traumatic experiences occurring before the age of 18, including abuse, neglect, witnessing violence, parental separation, and certain forms of household instability. And listen, y'all, approximately two-thirds of U.S. adults surveyed in CDC data reported experiencing at least one ACE. About one in six reported four or more. So if you've been walking around thinking, why can't I just get over what happened when I was little? First of all, you are not talking about something rare. A whole lot of grown-ass people are carrying childhood adversity. But here's where I don't want us to misuse information because some people hear trauma research and immediately go, see, that's why I act like this. No ma'am, no ma'am, Pam. That's not where we're stopping. Research can help us understand a behavior. It cannot become a lifetime permission slip for the behavior. We don't use trauma to avoid responsibility. We use understanding to create change. And the CDC research goes even deeper. ACEs have been associated with mental health conditions, substance abuse, chronic disease, health risk behaviors, and challenges involving education, employment, and income. Researchers have also found what they call a dose response relationship. That means the risk of negative outcomes generally increases as the number of ACE categories increases. The CDC currently identifies ACE prevention as a major public health priority and notes that childhood adversity can affect brain development and functioning as well as health and opportunities later in life. Now, hear me. That does not mean if you had trauma, your life is dumb. That is not what I said. Association is not your destiny. Your childhood can influence you without having the authority to permanently define you. And that's the entire point of healing. Let's start with rejection. Because baby, that little child can tear up a grown person's whole relationship. Let's say you grew up feeling overlooked. You know, maybe you had an absent parent. Maybe you felt like your sibling was the favorite. Maybe you weren't invited to things. Maybe kids bullied you. Maybe adults made you feel unwanted. Maybe somebody you depended on constantly disappointed you. And now you're grown. So your partner says, I need a little time to myself tonight. That's all they said. But your nervous system hurt. I don't want you. And now you're upset. What do you mean you need space? Why did I do something? Are you mad at me? Who are you talking to? Are you cheating on me? Why can't I come? Why all of a sudden you want to be alone, baby? All they asked for was a couple of hours to themselves, but your abandonment will hurt three years. That's what I mean when I say sometimes the child is making the adult decision. The adult situation is happening in the present, but the emotional response is being fueled by the past. And here's a question I want you to write down. Get your journals. I want you to write this down. When I feel rejected today, who does it remind me of from yesterday? Don't answer it too quickly. I want you to think about it. When somebody doesn't choose you, whose rejection are you really grieving? Because sometimes we're crying over somebody we dated six months with tears that started 30 years ago. I want you to sit with that. Now let's talk about the people pleaser. You know I had to come and get y'all because some of you aren't just nice. You are constantly actively auditioning. You're auditioning for love. Look how helpful I am. Look how understanding I am. Look how flexible I am. Look how much I'll tolerate. Look how much I'll sacrifice. Look how little I require. Look how easy I am to love. And underneath all of that, giving is sometimes the unspoken question: are you gonna keep me now? Baby, that's not generosity. That is fear dressed up in a nice outfit. And there's a difference between giving because that's who you are, and giving because you're scared people won't love you if you stop. Oh my God. Somebody needed that today. Because if you believe love has to be earned, you will overperform in relationships. You accept crumbs and call yourself grateful. You overextend yourself. You say yes while your entire body is screaming, hell no. You'll become indispensable because you think if they need you, they can't leave you. And baby, people can need you and still mistreat you. I want you to marinate on that. When I look back at my own childhood, I see places where I desperately wanted to belong. In my book, Quiet is Kept. I wrote about wanting to be liked so badly in middle school that I changed myself. I tried to fit in, I gave people what I thought they wanted because I hadn't been taught self-respect, self-love, self-worth, or boundaries. And if you don't address that, the need to belong can follow you into childhood, into adulthood. Different playgrounds, same little girl. Now she's not trying to get invited to the middle school party. She's trying to get invited to somebody's life. She's trying to get chosen by that person, the woman, the friend group, the employer, the organization, the church, the family, the audience, social media. And every time somebody doesn't choose her, she starts questioning herself what's wrong with me? What did I do? Why don't they like me? Why wasn't I invited? Why wasn't I considered? Why wasn't I chosen? And one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn is everybody not choosing you is not rejection. Sometimes it is redirection, sometimes it's incompatibility. Sometimes you're simply not their person. Sometimes they're not your people. Sometimes that room was never assigned to you. And sometimes you don't belong there because you've outgrown what you must beg to be included in. Come on now. Now let's talk about achievement. Because trauma doesn't always look like somebody falling apart. Sometimes trauma has a resume. Sometimes trauma has degrees. Sometimes trauma owns businesses. Hell, sometimes trauma wins awards. Sometimes trauma is booked and busy. Sometimes trauma is making six figures. Sometimes trauma has a hundred thousand followers. Sometimes trauma is the person everybody admires. And because they are functioning, nobody thinks to ask, what is driving all of this? Are you successful because you genuinely enjoy what you're building? Or are you still trying to prove something? Are you ambitious? Or are you terrified of being ordinary because you learned that achievement was the only thing that made you valuable? Don't get me wrong now. There's nothing wrong with success. You know, I believe in success, but I don't want success that requires self-abandonment. I don't want to build a life that impresses everybody but exhausts me. And I definitely don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to prove my work to somebody who decided they didn't see it 30 years ago. At some point, you have to stop performing for an audience that isn't even in the room anymore. All right. Now we're in the coach's corner. The trigger is information. So here's something I teach. Your trigger is not always your enemy. Sometimes your trigger is information. A trigger can show you where something still hurts. Not every uncomfortable feeling is trauma. Not every disagreement is triggering. And we have got to stop weaponizing therapy language. Somebody disagreeing with you is not automatically gaslighting. Somebody having a boundary is not automatically narcissistic. Somebody making you uncomfortable isn't automatically toxic. Sometimes you're just uncomfortable. And grown people have to learn how to tolerate discomfort. But when you have a strong emotional reaction, get curious about it. Ask yourself, what am I actually feeling? Not what happened, but what are you feeling? Are you feeling abandoned, embarrassed, unimportant, powerless, ignored, unwanted, disrespected, unsafe? And then ask yourself, when have I felt this before? Now we're getting somewhere because your reaction might be telling you this isn't the first time. Now, some of y'all weren't allowed to have feelings growing up. You could have feelings as long as they were convenient. I remember hearing and being told, you a kid, you don't have no feelings. Kids don't have feelings. Only when you're happy, grateful, or you're behaving. But you weren't allowed to be angry, you weren't allowed to be sad. You weren't allowed to cry. You weren't allowed to be scared. There's nothing to be scared of. Disappointment, you better fix your face. And then we wonder why grown adults have no idea how to regulate themselves. We told children to stop crying instead of teaching them what sadness feels like. We told them to stop getting angry instead of teaching them what to do with that anger. We told them, because I said so. Oh my goodness, that was a mama's favorite line, because I said so. And then wonder why they grew into adults who struggle to advocate for themselves. Some of us learned obedience, but not emotional intelligence. And now we're grown trying to learn a language we were never taught. I talk about this in Quiet is kept when I reflected on my relationship with my mother. When I eventually identified those pain points, I listed the adult impact plainly: low self-esteem, trouble dealing with my emotions, difficult difficulty showing love to myself and others, and anger. The reflection was important because it moved me from look what happened to me to look what happened inside of me and what am I going to do about it now. That second question changed everything. And that brings me to the hard truth of the week. Write it down. Your childhood may explain your behavior. It does not excuse the harm you cause as an adult. And I'm going to say it again because some people hate this part of healing. Your childhood may explain your behavior. Excuse the harm you cause as an adult. You didn't choose what happened to you as a child, but eventually you do become responsible for what you do with it. And that's where healing gets grown. Because you can be both. You can be somebody who was hurt and somebody who hurt people. You can be the victim in one chapter and the villain in somebody else's. Amen. Nobody wants to talk about that. Because we like the clean stories: the good person, bad person, victim, abuser, healthy, toxic. But human beings are complicated. It is never that simple. Sometimes we repeat what we survived. Sometimes we give somebody the somebody else the exact wound we complain about carrying. And sometimes without even realizing it. Because unhealed patterns repeat. And once you can see the pattern, you become responsible for interrupting it. Yeah, I said it. And if you ain't uncomfortable yet, you sure are about to be. How many people promised I'll never do what my parents did? And then you went and had children, you got overwhelmed, you got triggered, you got exhausted, and heard their mother's voice come out of their own mouth. Or saw their father's behavior in themselves. Baby, that will humble you because you realize, oh shit, I didn't just inherit the eye color, I inherited patterns. In my book, I had to admit that resentment from my childhood affected the way I showed up as a mother. I recognized the similarities between what I experienced and ways I later interacted with my own children. That don't mean I sit around beating myself up. It means I tell the truth because you can't change a pattern you are committed to denying. That's why accountability is love. Accountability will say, I love myself enough to tell myself the truth. So let's talk about generational patterns. Everybody loves saying, I'm breaking generational curses.

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Okay.

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So what are you actually doing differently? Because posting a quote isn't breaking a pattern. Buying sage isn't breaking a pattern. Knowing therapy words is not breaking a pattern. Breaking generational patterns sometimes look like apologizing to your kids, going to therapy, getting a coach, learning how to regulate your anger, not hitting your children because you were hit. Allowing your children to disagree respectfully, heavy on them respectfully. Teaching emotional vocabulary. Respect and privacy. Not making your child responsible for your emotional needs. Because they're not, they're just a child. Letting them have boundaries. Choosing a healthier partner. Yes, I say that loud. Walking away from relationships that normalize chaos. Learning to communicate instead of shutting down. Learning to rest. Learning that love doesn't require suffering. And sometimes breaking the pattern means admitting the family tradition is dysfunctional as hell. And I'm not carrying it forward just because that's how we've always done it. Just because that's how you've always done it. Don't make it right. What your inner child actually needs. Now, here's where I want to clean something up. You know, people hear the words inner child and imagine sitting around talking to an imaginary five-year-old all day. That's not what we're doing. When we talk about the inner child, we're talking about the emotional experiences, beliefs, memories, unmet needs, and coping patterns that developed earlier in life and may still influence how you respond today. Sometimes the most loving thing you can tell your younger self is, baby, I got it from here. You don't have to chase them. I got it. You don't have to prove yourself. I got it. You don't have to stay because you're afraid of being alone. I got it. You don't have to make everybody happy so they'll keep loving you. I got it. You don't have to fight every time somebody disagrees with us. I got it. You don't have to panic because somebody needs space. I got it. You don't have to silence yourself to stay safe. I got it. I'm grown now. You don't have to drive anymore. That's not erasing your inner child, not shaming them, not pretending your childhood didn't happen. It's putting the adult back behind the wheel. Because we've been letting that inner child drive. And she don't know how to drive. All right. You know what time it is. Get that journal. Because I want you to do more than listen to this episode and say, ooh, that's so good. Because I know it is, but no, that ain't what I want you to do. I want you to do the work. Number one. What did I have to become as a child in order to feel safe, accepted, loved, or noticed? Did you become the achiever, the funny one, the quiet one, the helper, the caretaker, the responsible child, the rebellious child, the invisible child, the peacemaker, the strong one. Write it down. Number two, what did that role protect me from? Maybe perfectionism protected you from criticism. Or maybe people pleasing protected you from conflict. Maybe anger protected you from vulnerability. Maybe humor protected you from sadness. Maybe independence protected you from disappointment. And maybe control protected you from uncertainty. Don't just judge the behavior. Understand what job it was doing. Does that behavior still protect me or is it hurting me now? That's the question. Because you can honor the coping mechanism and retire it. Thank you for helping me survive. But baby, we don't live there anymore. Number four, what situations make me feel emotionally younger than I actually am? Woo! Is it rejection? Being ignored, conflict, being told no, criticism, someone leaving, feeling excluded, financial instability, someone raising their voice, write it. Because your patterns become easier to interrupt when you know the circumstances that activate them. Number five, and this one might get you. Whose love am I still trying to earn? Is it mama, daddy, an ex? A child? A sibling? Someone who bullied you? The whole damn internet? Whose approval are you still chasing? And what would happen if you stopped auditioning? Number six. What does adult mean now? What does adult mean now? Wait, I can't. What does adult me know now that child me didn't know then? Maybe adult you knows I can leave, I can say no, I can protect myself, I can choose my relationships. I have resources. I can ask for help. I don't have to tolerate disrespect. I can survive disappointment. I'm allowed to change my mind. I don't need everybody to like me. I can be alone without being abandoned. Write it down because that's the voice we need louder. Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, Shanti, how do you even start connecting these dots? A lot of that journey is documented in my book, Quiet as Kept. And let me tell you something. I didn't write Quiet as Kept from the perspective of somebody who had everything figured out. Hell no, I didn't even want to write this book. I wrote it by telling the truth about my life. The pretty parts, the ugly parts, the decisions I'm proud of, the ones I'm not proud of, the things people did to me, and the things I had to take responsibility for, and eventually the healing. There's a section in the book where I literally sat down and identified pain points connected to my parents. And that included what happened, how it affected me, how those effects showed up in my adulthood. And that process ultimately led to difficult conversations and became part of my healing work. That's what I want people to understand about this book. It's not, look how everybody treated Shanti. Look how terrible everybody was to Shanti. No, that's not the point of the book. The point is look at what happened, look at what it created, and look what healing required. So if these conversations are hitting something in you, go get the book, read it, and you can also get the accompanying journal because some parts of that book will trigger you. And that's what the Quietest Kept journal is about. Don't just read my story, use my story to start asking questions about yours. You can find Quietest Kept through my website and wherever I currently have the book available. It's available everywhere and it sells books. You just put in a search. Quiet is kept by Shanti Refuge. That's my former last name. So now let's get into relationships because sometimes that childhood womb knows how to pick them. Have you ever met somebody and instantly felt this overwhelming connection? Like, oh, I've never felt anything like this. We just clicked. It feels like I've known them forever. Maybe. Or maybe they feel familiar. And familiar doesn't always mean healthy. If chaos was your normal growing up, peace can feel boring. And if unpredictability was normal, consistency can feel suspicious. If affection had to be earned, somebody loving you freely might make you uncomfortable. If you had to chase love, you may not recognize love that isn't running from you. And then we say there was no spark. Baby, that spark might have been anxiety. I'm not telling you that every exciting relationship is unhealthy. That ain't what I'm saying. So don't twist my words. I'm telling you to stop using butterflies as your entire relationship screening process. Because sometimes butterflies are attraction, and then other times butterflies are your body saying, Oh shit, I've seen this movie before. So I need you to pay attention. Now let's talk abandonment. Some people leave first, they'll sabotage something good before somebody gets the opportunity to hurt them. They pick arguments, they emotionally withdraw. Hell, they cheat. They keep backup options. You know what I'm talking about. They refuse to fully commit. They find flaws, they convince themselves I don't need nobody. And everybody thinks they're afraid of commitment. Sometimes they're afraid of loss. Because if I never fully give you my heart, you can never fully break it. Now that sounds protective, but look at what the cost is. You avoid the possibility of heartbreak and also avoid the possibility of intimacy. Baby, that's not freedom, that's fear making your decisions. And then we have control. I just like things done a certain way. I know you said that before. And maybe that's true. Or maybe uncertainty terrifies the hell out of you. Maybe chaos taught you if I don't control everything, something bad is gonna happen. So now you control schedules, you control money, relationships, conversations, plans, outcome. Hell, people, you call it being organized, but every around everybody around you calls it exhausting. And here is the work. Can you distinguish between having standards and trying to control everything because uncertainty activates you? Because control can create the illusion of safety, but you cannot control your way into emotional security. No, you can't. At some point, you have to develop trust in yourself that says, even if something doesn't go the way I planned, I can handle myself. That's the difference. One phrase that I hear after people disclose painful childhood experiences, but I turned out fine. Oh my god. Or somebody tells them, You turned out fine. What exactly does fine mean? You survived, you have a job, you aren't in jail, you're not on drugs, you pay your bills. Okay, but are you emotionally healthy? Can you receive love? Can you rest? Can you trust? Can you apologize? Can you communicate? Can you have conflict without trying to destroy somebody? Can you establish boundaries without feeling guilty? Can you be alone without feeling worthless? Can you hear criticism without falling apart? Can you experience joy without waiting for something bad to happen? Can you ask for help? Can you tell somebody what you need? Can you sit with your emotions without numbing them? That's what I want to know. Surviving childhood isn't the same thing as healing from it. And resilience, baby, it is beautiful. But resilience shouldn't become another way of minimizing pain. Current CDC research underscores how seriously childhood adversity should be taken. It's 2026 ACE's guidance notes: long-term effects on health, opportunity, and well-being, while also emphasizing that prevention and protective environments matter. An older CDC modeling estimated that preventing ACEs could potentially have prevented large numbers of adult depression and heart disease cases in the populations that were studied. Those are population level estimates, not a prediction about anyone's personal future. But they do demonstrate why childhood environments matter far beyond childhood. In other words, what happens to children matters. And what happens after something happens to children matters too. Support matters, safe adults matter, resources matter, connection matters, intervention matters, healing matters. Alright, so here's my what I'm unlearning for this episode. I'm unlearning the idea that understanding why I am the way I am means I have to stay that way. Because that's another trap. People get so attached to their trauma sore that it becomes their identity. I'm like this because blah blah blah blah. Okay, now what? My mother, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, and now what? Or my father, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now what? My ex, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now what? My childhood, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, now what? What I'm saying is there comes a moment in healing where the question has to shift from why did this happen to me, to what am I going to do with what happened to me? Not because the first question doesn't matter. It definitely matters. But if you live there forever, you hand the people who hurt you permanent decision-making authority over your life. And I'm not doing that, and you shouldn't either. And this is exactly the kind of work I do in coaching because sometimes you already know you're stuck. The problem isn't awareness. You know you keep choosing the same type of person. You know you overthink. You know you keep saying yes when you mean no. You know you're caring resentment. You know you abandon yourself. You know you don't trust yourself. You know you keep ending up in the same situation wearing different clothes. The question becomes, why? And more importantly, what are we going to do differently? And that's where coaching comes in. So my job isn't to run your life. I'm not here to tell grown people what to do. My job is to help you hear yourself clearly enough that you stop lying to yourself. To help you identify the pattern, challenge that story, create a different response, and hold you accountable while you practice something new. Because awareness without action, that just turns into another notebook full of shit you already know and ain't doing nothing about. And you know I'm journal-based, so I love a good notebook. But eventually, close that journal and do something. If you know you're ready to go deeper and you're tired of repeating the same cycles, go and visit my website and learn more about coaching with me. Because staying stuck might be familiar, but baby, staying stuck ain't cute. Now I got a challenge for you this week. The next time you get triggered, don't immediately react. I want you to ask yourself three questions. Number one, what just happened? And only the facts, not your interpretation, just the facts. So, for example, they haven't texted me back in four hours. Not, they don't give a damn about me. That's interpretation. So just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. Number two, what story did I did I immediately attach to what happened? They're leaving. They're mad at me. They don't love me. Oh, I'm not important enough for them to text me back right away. I messed everything up. I'm being rejected. That's the story. And then number three, how old does this feeling make me feel? Don't overthink it. Just notice what what age are you when it comes up? What's the age? Eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty? And then ask, what does adult me need to do now? Not little me, adult me. Maybe adult you waits. Maybe adult you asks a question. Maybe adult you communicates differently. Maybe adult you sets a boundary. Maybe adult you tolerates uncertainty. Maybe adult you leaves. Maybe adult you apologizes. Or maybe adult you realizes this person hasn't actually done anything wrong. I'm responding to an old womb. That practice alone can change relationships because you'll start separating what's happening now from what happened then. All right, I want to leave you with something. You don't have to hate the child you used to be in order to become the adult you need to be. That child was doing the best she could, they were surviving, they were adapting. They were trying to make sense of things that children shouldn't have to make sense of. So don't shame that version of yourself. Thank them. But also let them know you can rest now. I've got us. I'm not going to let people treat us any kind of way. I'm not going to abandon us just so somebody else stays. I'm not going to make us small so other people feel comfortable. I'm not going to keep proving that we're worthy. I'm not going to chase anybody who keeps showing us they don't want to be caught. I'm not going to confuse suffering with love. I'm not going to make decisions from panic. I'm not going to punish people today for something somebody did to us yesterday. I'm not going to keep recreating the same pain just because it's familiar. I'm grown now and I am choosing differently. All right, your quote for the week is you cannot change what happened to the child you were, but you can stop making that child responsible for the life you're building now. Go ahead and write that down because that little girl deserves healing, but grown you deserves a life. Now, if this episode made you uncomfortable, good. You know how we do. You know how we do around here. I don't want to give you content that you forget before you pull out of your driveway or pull into your driveway. I want to give you something you're still thinking about tomorrow. So here's what I want you to do. First, follow the Quiet is Kept podcast wherever you're listening. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe. Leave me a review. Share the episode. And when you share it, tag me. I want to know what part hit you the hardest. And then, second, if you haven't gotten your copy of my book, Quiet is Kept, go get it. Because this podcast is an extension of the conversations I started there. I told my story because I knew somebody else would recognize themselves in it. Not because our experiences have to be identical, but because pain has patterns. And so does healing. And finally, if you're tired of recognizing the pattern but still repeating it, come and do one-on-one coaching with me. You do not need another year saying, I know I need to work on that. Girl, work on it. Your future cannot keep paying bills that your childhood created. And I'm going to say that one more time before we go. Your future cannot keep paying bills that your childhood created. You have permission to heal. You have permission to choose differently. You have permission to become somebody your younger self never had the opportunity to be. And most importantly, you have permission to take your hands off of the survival mechanisms that once saved you. But now they're keeping you stuck. I'm Shanti B, and this is the Quiet is Kept Podcast. And quiet is kept. Sometimes the person you need to stop letting run your life is the younger version of you who is still waiting for somebody to come save you. Babe, ain't nobody coming to save you. You have to go back and get her. Love her, listen to her, protect her, and then tell her, baby, you don't have to drive anymore. I got us. See y'all next episode.