Disclaimer: This episode includes discussion of sensitive topics, including abuse, sexual abuse, and childhood sexual abuse. Although there are no explicit descriptions of child sexual abuse during the episode, please take care of yourself as you listen. If this content feels overwhelming or triggering, we encourage you to pause or take a break. Your safety and well-being matter more than anything we share here.

In this potent and deeply personal episode, Cara and Rythea sit down with Abigail Gunn, MsEd, LMHC, LPC, licensed therapist and founder of People Make Sense. Abigail is changing the way we talk about childhood trauma, dissociation, and recovery—with compassion, sharp clarity, and a commitment to truth.

This conversation explores how parenting can become a powerful catalyst for facing your trauma. Abigail shares how having children of her own helped surface repressed memories, and how her time in Al-Anon played a key role in awakening her from long-standing dissociation.

Rythea also shares her experience of retrieving her own repressed memories through dreams, writing, and reenactment in therapy. Together, Cara, Rythea, and Abby explore what happens when a child is forced to choose between their own humanity and the perceived humanity of the adults around them. They discuss how trauma shapes the developing brain, and how dissociation becomes a survival strategy that can last long into adulthood.

Key Topics:

• Childhood trauma as a profound and formative experience
• The myth of “false memory syndrome” and its negative impact on survivors
• Trauma as neurodiversity—and what it teaches us about the brain
• How trauma interrupts development and distorts the crucial stage of reality testing
• The weaponization of attachment, care, pleasure, and love performed by perpetrators
• Parenting as a trigger and pathway to memory retrieval
• Reclaiming self-worth by placing responsibility on abusers
• The body’s role in healing and bringing forth memories

Abigail shares how recovering memories of her own childhood sexual abuse led her to challenge dominant narratives in psychology, including the myth of “False Memory Syndrome.” She brings a fierce softness to the conversation—grounded in lived experience—and reminds us that trauma is not a disorder, but a normal response to harm.

Get to know Abigail Gunn and People Make Sense https://peoplemakesense.com

Follow Abigail Gunn on Instagram & TikTok @people.make.sense

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. We’re committed to featuring guests who differ in gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and lived experience in order to broaden this conversation and reflect more voices. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our growth and healing.

Rate & Review: Moved by this episode? Leave a review and help us reach more parents and survivors walking this path. Healing is possible—and no, your kids don’t suck.

Cara and Rythea dig into how hypocritical they feel as parent advocates when they fall so short on their own commitment to staying loving. They have a good laugh and some deep process about how childhood wounds and unconscious aspects of self show up when they least expect it.

They explore specific situations where they have worked hard to be different, but keep getting triggered into the same kind of reactivity. They brainstorm (and unravel) how the umbrella of non-coercive, collaborative philosophy keeps them grounded and afloat, even as they make constant mistakes.

Cara comes clean about the bedtime triggers she faces with her daughter and how demoralizing her trauma responses make her feel. Rythea exposes how a mother-wound with her own parent blocks her from allowing her child to individuate gracefully.

Together, they ask: how does the parenting approach we use bring us back to our hearts and playful connection with our children through the long haul? What does it mean to model a process for our children when we’re the ones unraveling?

Key Topics:

• Feeling powerless or threatened by your child’s autonomy
• Parenting from your wounded parts
• Modeling emotional processing in real time
• Creating micro-moments of connection, even in rupture
• Honoring your child’s developing identity and values
• The tension between belief and behavior in parenting

If you’ve ever wondered, Am I even doing this right?, this episode is for you. Cara and Rythea remind us that real parenting is messy—and that returning to connection, especially after rupture, is where the healing begins.

Tools & Resources Mentioned:

• The EARS acronym: Empathize, Affirm, Relate, Support/Solve
• Parts Work (Internal Family Systems)
• Co-counseling techniques for emotional processing

Book a parent mentor session with Rythea: https://rythea.com/for-parents

Check out Cara’s Relationship Toolkit: https://www.caratedstonetherapy.com/your-relationship-toolkit

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

It’s important and essential to put our voices (Rythea and Cara) in a context. We are two white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Because of this, our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. This podcast will feature guests with expertise around conscious parenting who differ in gender, race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, and histories from us, to broaden the conversation and reflect the lives of as many people as possible. 25% of the proceeds of this podcast will go to creators of color who have been mentors and influences on our work and in our growth as parents.

Rate & Review

Share your thoughts! Your feedback helps us reach more parents looking to embrace collaborative, non-coercive parenting.

How is our parenting an act of resistance or compliance to larger systems that harm? How do we know if we are unconsciously carrying out patterns of oppression in our families? What does it look like to step out of what is expected of us and parent from ancestral values?

In this episode, Leslie Priscilla shares how being raised by two Mexican immigrants and parenting her own bicultural children inspired her to create Latinx Parenting. She opens up about how parenting in the context of colonization and white supremacy has forced many families of the global majority to adapt their parenting in ways that stray from ancestral wisdom. We talk about how parenting philosophies like attachment parenting and homeschooling are often seen as white-dominated spaces, even though these practices existed in many cultures before colonization disrupted them.

Leslie Priscilla is a Queer Neurodivergent Non-Black Xicana/Child of Mexican Immigrants with Rarámuri lineage. She’s a mama of three, a certified Parent Coach with over 16 years of experience, and the founder of Latinx Parenting—a movement rooted in the liberation of familias through nonviolence, reparenting, and ancestral healing.

In this conversation, Leslie gets personal about how she has been raising her children and how her family follows a flow of collaboration and organic learning. She brings us into the heart of nonviolent parenting, based on the work of Ruth Beaglehole, and reminds us that "at the root of every behavior is a need that is seeking to be met."

Key Topics:

• Colonization’s impact on parenting across generations
• The erasure of ancestral caregiving practices
• Nonviolent parenting as liberation
• Parenting as an act of social and racial justice
• Understanding every behavior as a need trying to be met
• Parenting as a portal to self-healing and collective growth

This episode is a warm, powerful call to the collective healing work needed to liberate future generations—one parent, one family, one kid, at a time.

Get to know Leslie Priscilla and Latinx Parenting https://latinxparenting.org/

Follow Leslie Priscilla on IG @latinxparenting

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

It’s important and essential to put our voices (Rythea and Cara) in a context. We are two white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Because of this, our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. This podcast will feature guests with expertise around conscious parenting who differ in gender, race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, and histories from us, to broaden the conversation and reflect the lives of as many people as possible. 25% of the proceeds of this podcast will go to creators of color who have been mentors and influences on our work and in our growth as parents.

Rate & Review

Share your thoughts! Your feedback helps us reach more parents looking to embrace collaborative, non-coercive parenting.