Earlier this week, I had the privilege of sitting in Oxford’s magnificent buildings for the Transform Trauma Conference. The ornate chandeliers, detailed paintings above and the hush of hundreds of professionals around me felt like a cathedral of learning.
As speaker after speaker took the stage, I scribbled notes furiously. Some ideas were familiar; others reframed things I thought I knew about trauma, estrangement, and healing.
Here are the gems that stayed with me — I’m sharing them here because they were too powerful to keep to myself—
“When you make change in your life, people as far as seven degrees in your life will receive positive influence from the positive changes in your life.” — Dr Daniel Siegel
Many parents are quick to say, “I didn’t abuse my kids. I didn’t neglect them. We were a normal family!”
Yet last year, the largest study on estrangement was published— more than one in four adult children had cut off contact with a parent.
“But what did I do wrong? We were just a normal family!” is one of the most common things parents with estranged adult children say.
The truth is, what’s considered “trauma” is changing. The latest trauma and estrangement research is acknowledging the impact of frequency and duration.
Beating with a stick can be equivalent to “small” looks of disgust and disapproval repeated over time. A single act of physical abuse can inflict similar trauma to a thousand paper cuts over time.
Estrangement can happen not with one big traumatic event, but through several small neglects and traumas over a long period of time, said speaker and researcher Matthias Barker.
At the end of the day, the question isn’t ultimately “which is worse?” but—
What is sufficient to create a traumatic response — or, more specifically, what level of distress is sufficient to break a parent–child bond?
One of the most striking takeaways for me was about how we, as parents, communicate with our grown children—
The worst thing we can do to adult children is put fear behind our concern, which manifests as worry and becomes conveyed as negative reception of the adult child’s ability. (E.g., “Are you sure you want to drop out of college and pursue your business?”)
But when we express our faith in their gifts, own our fears transparently, and ask permission to share our concerns (e.g., “Do you want me to listen supportively, or do you want me to be a sounding board and discuss pros and cons?”), our relationship shifts drastically.
We slow down, regulate, apologize, and express faith-
“Sorry. I got worried and responded out of fear. I have faith in you.”
And we can do this with our little ones too. My eight-year-old has been asking me to publish her book, teach at her school, and help her with a lemonade business — what is my response?
More than whether that’s done, it’s my response in faith or invalidation that will shape her sense of self and the world.
Sitting in that hall in Oxford, I realised how deeply these truths cut across culture and age. Whether we’re raising small children or learning to relate to our adult ones, the patterns of fear, concern, and faith we model ripple outward — “seven degrees” outward, as Dr. Dan Siegel said — shaping not only our families but whole communities.
I left the Transform Trauma Conference both sobered and hopeful— sobered by how easy it is to wound without meaning to, and hopeful that even small changes in how we show up can send positive waves of healing far beyond ourselves.
