Deana

Deana

What drives someone to seek a life without emotional chaos? In this share from the ACA Tuesday Zoombox meeting, Deana talks candidly about growing up in dysfunction and how Adult Children of Alcoholics recovery reshaped her expectations of healing. Centred around the ACA Loving Parent Guidebook, she reflects on how the concept of reparenting changed everything.

A key passage hits home: the goal of reparenting "isn't to become better, but to become better at loving ourselves." Deana explains how she once treated recovery like a rewards scheme – expecting a partner, a better job, more money, and all the “shiny things” as a payoff for doing the work. Instead, she found something less glamorous but far more valuable: genuine self-compassion.

She shares how, when she first met her inner child, she didn’t meet a playful, happy kid. She met a traumatised, neglected child who “wasn't all that happy to find me because I hadn't been nice to her for a really long time.” With humour and honesty, she describes years of denial, mistaking toughness for strength – “suck it up, Buttercup” – and how that left her without the basic emotional tools most people take for granted.

The episode looks at universal human needs like being seen, heard and cared for, and how lacking these led to painful relationship patterns, poor boundaries, and constant triggering.

Deana talks about learning to set boundaries without bulldozing others, respecting her own inner voice (which doesn’t sound like Charlton Heston after all), and appreciating the subtle miracles of recovery: “It’s more of a quieting the noise so that you can hear the beauty in the quiet.” If you’re adjusting your expectations of recovery, wrestling with inner-child work, or wondering why emotional basics feel so hard, this heartfelt share might make you feel a little less alone.