When Love Carries Weight
For anyone who prefers listening to reading, this AI-generated audio (created with Google NotebookLM) offers a gentle summary of the key ideas in my blog.
“I love you with a sad heart right now.”
A mother said this to her ten-year-old daughter after her daughter, in a moment of anger, raised her voice during an argument. Raising her voice was clearly out of line and not how this mother was educating her child. It felt disrespectful. It crossed a boundary.
And yet, something important happened at that moment.
The words sounded gentle. Loving, even. On the surface, they carried warmth and reassurance. But underneath, they placed a quiet weight on the child’s shoulders. The unspoken message was this: my sadness is because of you.
Over time, that weight becomes familiar.
The daughter grows up feeling responsible for her mother’s emotional state. She hides parts of herself. She does not want to rock the boat. She takes the blame for her mother’s upsets and apologizes quickly.
For some children, this shows up as hyper awareness. They learn to scan the room, soften themselves, and stay alert to what might disappoint or upset. They begin to pay less attention to their own feelings, because there simply is not room for them.
Nothing healthy grows from that place.
And yet, there is something important to name here. The good part of that sentence is that love remains. It does not disappear. And that matters deeply.
A child should never feel that love is withdrawn when they make a mistake.
When Love Becomes Conditional
But in my work, I see how often parental love quietly becomes conditional.
If you wake up on time.
If you are grateful.
If you behave well.
If you speak kindly.
If you do as I say.
If you do the right thing.
The message is subtle but clear. I love you when you are this way. When you are not, disappointment enters the room; sometimes loudly, sometimes silently. Love begins to feel fragile.
What does not serve the child is tying love to the emotional experience of the parent. It makes the child feel responsible for preventing sadness, disappointment, or hurt. It does not model emotional honesty or repair. Instead, it quietly places blame.
But what about the raised voice? Isn’t that wrong?
Children Are Still Becoming
Before we go there, we need to remember something essential. Children are in development. They are learning. And they have core needs that must be met in order for healthy behavior to emerge. And beyond that, the behaviors we hope to see must be modeled for them. Children don’t learn regulation, respect, or emotional responsibility through instructions alone. They learn by watching how we live it.
In my Compassionate Inquiry trainings with Dr. Gabor Maté, I learned that children need a few fundamental things:
Unconditional loving acceptance.To be accepted for who they are, not for who they perform as.
Rest from working to maintain the relationship. A child should not have to be nicer, quieter, prettier, or more respectful in order to feel connected.
Space to experience all emotions, not just the pleasant ones. Those emotions need to be seen, named, and validated by a regulated adult.
Free play, especially in nature.
When these needs are not consistently met, even for understandable and well-intended reasons, behaviors emerge. Not because the child is bad or broken, but because something inside is asking for attention.
What is required in those moments is not control, but nurturing, presence. And above all, a parent who can self-regulate and model how emotions are processed.
Yes, it is a lot. But who said parenting was meant to be easy or instinctive in the world we live in today? This is why I do what I do. Because we were never meant to do this alone.
So let’s return to the moment between mother and daughter.
The Pain Is Older Than the Moment
If the mother is not connected to herself, and one of her own origin wounds is activated when her daughter raises her voice, she will feel hurt. But the pain is not actually coming from the child. It is coming from an old place. A belief of not being good enough, a fear of not being liked, anger because she herself was never allowed to raise her voice or express her opinions growing up, or a lifetime of disconnection from her own emotional world.
Perhaps she learned early on to manage her own parent’s feelings. To keep the peace. To fix. Or in the case of one of my clients, quite literally, to survive. She had to parent her own mother, who had her at sixteen. Listening to her own emotions was not safe. There was too much at stake. So eventually, she stopped noticing them altogether.
From that place, it becomes nearly impossible to stay present with a loud, dysregulated ten-year-old who may be overwhelmed, frustrated, or simply desperate for connection after a hard day. The child’s expression becomes too much to hold. And without realizing it, the pain gets passed on. This is how generational patterns continue.
So is the raised voice the cause of the mother’s sad heart? Is it the child’s fault?
Of course not.
I see children as messengers. They arrive exactly where healing is asking to happen. Not to blame us, but if we are willing to see it, to invite us back to ourselves. Back to the places we had to leave behind in order to survive.
When parents use gentle-sounding phrases that carry emotional weight, they unknowingly transfer guilt to a new generation. Weight that does not belong there. What helps instead is honesty with responsibility, and it sounds like this:
“I love you. Always. What just happened stirred something in me, and I am going to take care of that. My emotions are not yours to manage. I need a few minutes to regulate, and then we can talk. My love for you does not change.”
This teaches something powerful.
That love is not taken away.
That emotions can be named without becoming weapons.
That a parent’s sadness is not a punishment.
That truth and connection can exist at the same time.
From this place, correction and discipline can happen beautifully for the child. Not through fear or guilt, but through safety, clarity, and connection.
This is conscious parenting in action.
Breaking Cycles Quietly
It requires compassion and curiosity toward ourselves but most humans were never taught how to live with their pain. In fact, many of us were told to get over it. To toughen up, to carry it quietly and to not be so complicated. But nothing grows without vulnerability. A butterfly’s cocoon cannot be rushed or handled without harm. What looks fragile is actually doing the most important work of becoming.
From self-judgment, no healing is possible. Compassion creates the safety needed to see the truth. And when that compassion is present within us, it inevitably shapes how we show up with our children.
Children are deeply sensitive. They absorb their parent’s emotional states and make them mean something about themselves.
When we care for our inner world, we offer our children the greatest gift: freedom from carrying what was never theirs.
We are wired to feel all emotions. Joy, anger, fear, grief, curiosity, play. When emotions are suppressed, as in the mother in my example, and when authenticity is denied, as in the daughter, the cost is high. I have heard it and read it far too many times. So many people reach the end of life with the same regrets. Not having had the courage to be themselves. Not having had the courage to express what they truly felt.
Parenting gives us a chance to change that story.
When we take responsibility for our inner world, we break cycles quietly, lovingly, and for good.
