Also, cannot emphasize this enough: go to therapy, because if you do not acknowledge that you have generational trauma, it might turn you into a kaiju.

This has been: lessons I learned from Steven Universe as a 37 year old.

Your whole family needs to go to therapy. But you are not a therapist and that is not your job. Your job is to figure out who you are. You will make new and different mistakes. Learn from them.

*(I was also regularly denied food and sleep as a punishment for insolence and ingratitude, but nobody is ready for that conversation.)

Okay, I’m stepping down from my soapbox.

I’ll go back to shitposting next week.

Do better, y’all.

Do better than those who raised you.

Nobody is asking you to be a perfect parent, just encouraging you to make new and different mistakes than those who came before.

That is all that anyone can ask of anyone in this world.

Try to be better, resolve to be kind, and persevere.

They taught you violence, retaliation, and to give in to anger and lash out.

Is that really what you want to be your legacy with your own children?

“But my kid is a little shit and violence is all they understand.”

Then you are failing them. Talk to the child and teach them something different.

“I was spanked and I turned out fine.”

If you think hitting kids is okay, you didn’t. You are perpetuating a cycle. You can acknowledge that and stop.

Resolve that you will never hit a child again, and learn some self-discipline.

Which your parents didn’t teach you when they were hitting you.

But, yeah: not only does it alienate your child, damage their ability to relate to other humans, and cause permanent psychological harm, it is fundamentally ineffective as a parenting tactic, and that has been fully understood by social scientists for DECADES.

There are no excuses. Don’t hit kids.

Now, someone with more time and energy would add links to the multitudes of peer-reviewed scientific studies that agree that corporal punishment, including spanking, does not even actually work, but I am not going to do that. Use a search engine. I’m sure @jstor.bsky.social can help you.

Internalize that.

Consider it when you are interacting with young people, those subject to your power and authority, and those subject to the power and authority of other adults.

Use your social capital to defend the defenseless. Say it with your whole chest: Hey. You’re better than that. Stop.

It isn’t, though, in all 50 states, because children are treated as property, and people feel entitled to do whatever they want to their property, including breaking it.

Kids are people. Moreover, children are an oppressed class with no ability to self govern, and very little hope of escape.

It’s never “just a spanking.” Hitting adults is a crime punishable by law. Assaulting kids is morally repulsive and should be fully illegal.

I have been in therapy for 10+ years, I have cut ties with most of my former abusers (–1), and I am currently okay. But that’s what it took to get to a steady place, and while I am Better, but I did not “turn out perfectly fine.” I was psychologically damaged. Permanently.

Don’t hit your children. They are small people who are still learning how to exist and are constantly under stress. They are fully dependent on you and cannot escape.

We needed to leave assault as a parenting tactic behind in the 20th century. It’s not too late to apologize and fucking quit.

These were all contributing factors in my young adulthood to me being mercenarily disloyal, a liar, and a thief, and definitely set me up for future abusers to take advantage of me for the following two decades.

I also finally got this one, which is going on my car:

www.etsy.com/listing/1869...

To the surprise of nobody, they’re mostly Pokémon Eeveelution gijinka stickers, but I did also snag Usagi, Kitty, Cinnamoroll, Chococat, and Sophie from HMC.

www.etsy.com/shop/Trytrya...

We are haunted by the ghosts of the people we used to be and the people we used to love. That’s what it means to exist.

Anyway, I’m agender, she/they, and I prefer to go by Ennui but Z and my government name are both fine.

Also, no, I did not know about the character from Inside Out 2. 🤦🏻 I came up with it independently.