The name’s Bond. Trauma Bond.
Be Kind & Rewind
The headlights streamed endlessly, red taillights glowing and orange indicators flickering like faint, faraway stars. I lay by the massive windows of my grandparents’ Durban Spa timeshare, my nose pressed against the cold glass, mesmerised by the rhythmic dance of traffic lights twelve floors below. It’s my fourth birthday, and just two more sleeps until Christmas. My father promised he’d come, and I believed him—just as I always did.
This memory is one in a tapestry woven with a recurring thread. It set the stage for a lifetime of trauma bonding, filmed in front of an invisible audience, complete with early ’90s canned laughter to underscore the inauthenticity. Just another foolish girl mistaking inconsistency and disappointment for love because that’s what was modelled to her by her father—her first love. I stayed by the window until the glass reflected only the dim interior of the room and my own small, disappointed face. He never came.
That moment became a blueprint for the love I would seek and accept. My father adored me and could never say no, yet his promises often dissolved into the aether. When he said he’d come, I believed him every time, despite countless nights spent staring at empty headlights or waiting with my suitcase on the front lawn. Even now, as an adult, I’m gutted each time he lets me down.
To me, he was a giant—a King in my tiny world—strong, unshakable, and confident. And I? A fool. Trusting, believing, never learning, always falling for the same old story. Gullible. A joke.
His inconsistency and disdain for women who ate—any woman larger than a size zero—shaped my earliest lessons about love.
1. Love is intertwined with longing and unpredictability.
2. Only the super skinny are worthy of love.
3. Adoration and abandonment coexist.
These lessons seeped into every facet of my life, forming bonds that soothed and destroyed respectively.
My father’s strength and love were real, yet his unreliability and self-destruction loomed larger. His drunk, reckless car crash left him hospitalized for months, in traction with a spinal injury. It became a symbol of his shadow—the part of him unable to bear his burdens, passing them instead to me. That crash revealed his mortality and vulnerability, showing me he could not protect himself, let alone me.
As I grew, I saw our relationship for what it was: adoration without discipline, connection without boundaries, love without depth. We adore each other, yet we are strangers. This dynamic—being adored but unseen—became the template for my relationships with men.
Every partner mirrors my father: grandiose, conceited, controlling, and irresponsible. They promise me the world and leave me holding shards of broken commitments. They own me, and I become a versatile asset: arm candy, trusted advisor, resourceful servant, even mother—shouldering their emotional labour, tending to every need, bearing the blame for their failures as they gaslight me into defending my responses.
The trauma bond feels like love because it is familiar. And familiarity, even when painful, is seductive. It’s a bitter truth that the very things we long to escape often feel most like home.
The shadow of the father archetype looms over every romantic connection, casting control and coercion in its wake. Yet, in each disappointing relationship, I see reflections of myself—the fool longing for validation, hoping this time will be different, clinging to promises even as they unravel.
If my relationships with men mirrored my father, then my relationship with drugs is the clearest expression of my relationship with myself. For 26 years, drugs were my companions, my solace, my source of power. In my search for transcendence, drugs gave me a glimpse of something beyond the pain, beyond the chaos. They offered strength when the world felt threatening and soothed the ache when nothing else could.
There is a peculiar strength that comes from using drugs. They become the shield and sword, a means of surviving in a world that feels too sharp and a way of dulling the edges that cut too deeply. But this strength is hollow. It costs connection, presence, and the ability to inhabit your own life.
Drugs were my escape hatch, my getaway car, and my prison.
They promised freedom but chained me to cycles of shame and dependency. They filled the void left by broken promises—not just my father’s, but my own, allowing me to hold on to a semblance of agency, even as they quietly robbed me of it.
If drugs were my rebellion, eating disorders were my attempt at control. Restriction, purging, the careful calculation of calories—each a desperate protest against the chaos outside. Yet this, too, came at a cost.
Like addiction, it severed me from my felt sense, from the very body that carried me through life.
I was numb. My body, a battleground of unprocessed pain, became a prison. The mirror reflected an image I could never reconcile, a silhouette I could never forgive. Every skipped meal, every act of self-denial whispered promises of redemption that never came.
This endless cycle—promise, hope, disappointment, self-loathing—must stop. It’s time to be kind and rewind.
My son is my greatest teacher. In him, I see the Innocent Child, a reflection of who I once was. I want him to know that love is consistent, that promises are kept, and that he is seen and valued for exactly who he is.
To parent consciously is to confront your wounds. It means examining the ways I was hurt and choosing differently. It’s holding myself accountable for the patterns I unconsciously perpetuate.
I can’t shield him from pain, but I can give him the tools to face it—to process, heal, and thrive.
Each time I look into his eyes, I’m reminded of the privilege of shaping a life. He is my reason to choose differently, to rewrite the script passed down through generations.
I am learning to feel, to trust the signals I long silenced. My body is a map, each ache and tension a marker of buried pain. Reclaiming my body is reclaiming myself.
Jungian psychology tells us that the Wounded Healer transforms pain into purpose. In becoming a trauma-informed somatic support practitioner, in service of people who use drugs, I find meaning. Twenty-six years of drug use couldn’t have been for nothing. Each moment carried a lesson that now informs how I hold space for others.
I understand the allure of escape, the craving for control, and the shame that binds them together. I know what it’s like to be trapped in a trauma bond—with a person, a substance, or yourself. But I also know the terror and power of turning inward, and confronting the shadows that haunt you.
☾♡⛤
In awe of your life. How strong you are to have survived all you have and still be confronting head on
Such a beautiful sentiment to see your son as your greatest teacher.