06/01/2026
I remember the first time I was allowed to have my own dog.
We lived on a working cattle farm. I was young, hormonal, and overwhelmed by the responsibility I didn’t yet have the tools to hold.
One day, I got in trouble. The dog did something unsafe — something that could’ve gotten him hurt — and I hadn’t been “across it.”
I felt the sting of shame in my parent’s voice.
And like many kids in shame… I lashed out.
I said something I didn’t mean:
“Well, the dog deserved to get hurt.”
I didn’t believe that — not for a second. But I was upset. Embarrassed.
And I didn’t know how to process the emotion in real time.
My parent shamed me further.
They told me I didn’t deserve a dog.
And then… they gave him away.
It was confusing. Crushing.
And now, years later, I can see the truth:
I wasn’t equipped with emotional literacy.
But neither were they.
They didn’t help me name or move through what I was feeling — because they never learned how to name or move through what they were feeling.
⚠️ Shaming kids for having emotions instead of helping them process them is one of the biggest unconscious gaps in parenting.
And it’s not about blaming.
It’s about interrupting a pattern.
Because when children don’t learn how to process shame, anger, sadness, or even numbness…
They internalize it.
And it leaks into adulthood.
—
💡 If you’re a parent — or just a human doing the work — it might help to check in on how you relate to your emotions.
Do you know how you process them?
Do you respond or react?
Do you soothe or suppress?
🧬 One of my favourite free tools for this is the Love Archetype Quiz —
It helps you identify your emotional processing style and what may need recalibration in your nervous system.
👉🏼 Click the link in my bio or story to take the quiz (it's free).
https://linktr.ee/roslynloxton
It’s a powerful starting point to understand how you feel — and what to do with it.
Because no emotion is “too big.”
But it does need to be heard.
💗
