I’m a woman in my thirties, a mother to two incredible kids. Their father and I divorced about 6 years ago, after he cheated on me. Writing that still stings. But what stings more is how familiar the pain feels—how my adult relationships, time and again, have reflected the same chaos I once called childhood.
I was raised in a home where love and violence were often tangled. My mom and dad divorced when I was young, and after that, my mother brought home a series of men—some abusive, some terrifying. I was molested by one stepfather, stalked by another. My mother had a pattern of cheating and leaving, always chasing the next relationship. She would involve my sister and me in her romantic relationships. We weren’t just bystanders; we were emotionally entangled in the highs and lows of her love life, often hearing things no child should hear and witnessing behaviors far beyond our emotional capacity to understand.
At the time, I had no idea what was really going on. But looking back now, with the perspective that therapy and healing have given me, I can see it more clearly: my mom was likely struggling with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)—a disorder rooted in her own unhealed childhood trauma. That trauma didn’t end with her. It passed down to us as we displayed the same emotional patterns. The instability. The abandonment fears. The emotional intensity that we couldn’t always control. What we were living was more than dysfunction—it was intergenerational trauma in motion. And like so many others who grow up in homes marked by emotional chaos, we didn’t recognize it for what it was until much later.
I didn’t realize just how chaotic my life had been until my therapist introduced me to EMDR therapy and asked me to create a target list of traumatic memories. I’ve been in therapy for many years, and I’ve done a lot of hard emotional work, but something shifted in the moment. Compiling that list was like stepping outside of my life and seeing it from above—for the first time, I saw just how much I had normalized trauma.
At first, EMDR sounded… well, a little “woo-woo.” I’m in the medical field, and the idea of moving my eyes back and forth to process trauma sounded more like pseudoscience than therapy. I was honest with my therapist about my skepticism, but I trusted her enough to try. I’m so glad I did.
The real turning point came during a conversation with my ex about our kids. He was being belligerent and unhelpful, like usual, and I realized something had changed- I wasn’t spiraling. I wasn’t reactive. I wasn’t consumed by his manipulation. For the first time, I could breathe through it. I stayed calm, clear, and in control. That was new.
Since starting EMDR, I’ve noticed shifts in how I think, feel, and respond. I still don’t completely understand how it works, but I know that it works. It’s as if the emotional charge attached to some of my worst memories is finally losing its grip on me.
Despite the years of therapy, I still found myself falling into the same relationship patterns after my divorce—falling fast, loving too hard, often choosing men who were emotionally unavailable or still involved with someone else. I was always trying to love them into healing, to save them, to be the one they finally chose. And when they didn’t choose me, I’d sit in that pain and wonder, Why not me? Why am I never enough?
But I’m starting to understand now that the answer isn’t in them, it’s in me. I don’t say that to blame myself, but to take back some power. I’ve been acting out an old story that started long before I ever went on a date. And now, I’m rewriting it.
I long for a stable, loving relationship, yes—but more than anything, I want to be whole. For my children. For a future partner, sure. But mostly, for myself.
I don’t have all the answers yet. I still have work to do. But I’m finally beginning to feel what healing can actually look like—and it doesn’t feel like chaos. It feels like peace.
Dr. Josephine G. Moss, PsyD, MS in an EMDR therapist based in Jacksonville, Florida providing online EMDR therapy to adults throughout the state.
