‹ Back

Have you ever really paid attention to your exact feelings? Like, paused and scanned your body to notice where you're feeling something—and then tried to identify why?

 

Last year, I had the opportunity to go tandem skydiving with the sales team I was on—and oh my God, y’all, I was nervous. But I had just started therapy, and one of the things we were working on was body scanning when my fight-or-flight response kicks in.

My director called and asked if I’d be willing to go skydiving if HR signed off on it. The day he told us it was approved, I was so pumped. I had never had the chance to do anything like that. I had butterflies and full-on acrobats flipping in my stomach as the realization sunk in: I was actually going to jump out of a plane.

 

A couple weeks later, I was in a situation where I felt like I needed to defend myself—and my fight-or-flight kicked in again. As I started body scanning, I realized something: my body in fight-or-flight felt exactly the same as when I was excited about skydiving.

That moment sent me down a rabbit hole about how trauma and memories show up in the body. After reading a few articles, I tucked that info into the back of my brain alongside all the random facts I collect.

 

Fast forward a few weeks: my daughter and I were locked in one of those battles—her refusing to listen to a single word I said, and me trying (unsuccessfully) to say something that would break through. You know, the kind of tantrum that has you on the verge of pulling your hair out—and if it were you as a kid, your parents would’ve already “squashed” that behavior with a belt or a slap.

Every part of me wanted to explode. But instead, I reached out and pulled her into a hug.

 

She froze and asked, “What are you doing?”

 

I laughed a little and said, “Bug, I want to slap you so bad right now... so I’m just going to hug you, okay?”

 

That moment ended the fight. We started talking.

 

And it hit me—as parents, we have the power to decide whether a moment becomes a trauma or a memory for our kids.

Because in the heat of it all, what we’re really looking for is a pattern interrupt—and trauma or memories often come from extreme emotional shifts. That moment became a tool I tucked in my back pocket for next time.

 

And the next time, it was Matthew.

 

I hit that same boiling point, where I wanted to scream just to break the tension. But instead—I tackled him and started to tickle him. Turns out, that kind of energy burst works as a pattern interrupt too.

 

So what if—instead of letting the anger and frustration of trying to control these little humans take over—we chose to meet them on their level?

What if we interrupted the pattern... with love?