family fighting - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

It's hard to love you, honey, when your stress response stings so bad. I need our family to stay sweet especially when the hard times come, for if our love isn't protection for each other, we can't stand strong when it counts. Be there for me, I'll be there for you. But I need you to learn your own stress triggers and control yourself, calm yourself, learn how to become a stress buffer for others. Only then can we have a strong family and end the intergenerational trauma we all inherited.

It was the same old story. Dad had become stressed, his stress response was dis-regulated, he was spiralling. Mom's buffering ability was overrun, and now she was triggered too. Dave wanted to protect Mom, he always did. So then he was in the middle of it - all of them with their higher brains shut down and their primitive selves in full lack-of-self-control maximum-damage-infliction mode. The fall out of all this was gonna take years to heal, if ever. I didn't get it then, how could I? Six years old and hiding behind the couch - peeking out - getting my own dose of toxic stress and PTSD into the bargain. Family fights, eh? No-one wins and long term it makes us all sick, makes us all die younger than we should have with lives so much less loving than we all deserved, needed, wanted. These are the ACEs you never want to hold, let along get a stack of them. I found my way out though, in making love the focus of my life, in being self aware, in noticing when I am my inner "Bruce Banner" or in "Hulk-smash-mode." I want to do better for my kids, they deserve it and it would break my soul not to win this one.

I love the calm between the storms, but without a real sense that the last storm has passed, I'm just not sure I can relax how I need to. So next time you feel those dark clouds getting between you and the sun, how can we enjoy the rain together, hand in hand, surviving together with those hugs that feel like everyday miracles?