When I finally opened up to a family member about how another family member treated me as a child, his response was simple (in his eyes 🙄),
“Well, you were a bad child.”
I froze. I became that little girl again, hurt, angry, confused. Not because I hadn’t heard it before, but because it was the same pattern, the same rewriting of pain to make it easier to digest.
So I asked him, “Did that warrant my being tormented as a child? Or was I rebelling as a result of what I was experiencing?”
He didn’t answer that part.
Most people don’t.
The Excuse Doesn’t Heal the Hurt
We talk about trauma like it starts and ends with the incident. But the truth is, it continues through every person who excuses it.
Every time someone says,
• “They meant well.”
• “That’s just how they were raised.”
• “You probably did something to make them act that way.”
Each of those statements adds another layer to the wound. You might not have caused the initial pain,
but when you defend it, you help keep it alive.
Rebellion Isn’t the Root. It’s the Response
People love to label children as “bad” without asking why.
Maybe that defiance was defense.
Maybe that mouthiness was a cry for help.
Maybe that silence was protection.
We don’t just become difficult out of nowhere.
We become who we are based on what we’re forced to survive.
So when you call someone’s pain “overreaction,”
you erase the context that shaped them.
You make their coping look like character flaws instead of survival skills.
Excuses Are Another Form of Silence
When you justify trauma, you give the person who caused it permission to keep doing harm.
You teach the survivor that speaking up will only get them shamed, dismissed, or told to “get over it.”
And so, we don’t talk.
We bury.
We shrink.
We learn to downplay our own pain so others can stay comfortable in their denial.
But here’s the thing:
Healing doesn’t live in denial.
It lives in acknowledgment.
It starts when someone finally says, “You didn’t deserve that,” and means it.
Breaking the Cycle
Families love to talk about forgiveness.
They rarely talk about accountability.
They call it “keeping the peace,”
but what peace exists in pretending the harm never happened?
It’s time to stop covering up abuse with “that’s just how they were.” It’s time to stop offering excuses when what’s really needed is empathy.
Acknowledging what happened doesn’t destroy families. Ignoring it does.
For the Ones Who Know This Pain
If you’ve ever been told you were “too much,”
“too emotional,”
or “too bad” to deserve compassion, this is for you.
You weren’t a bad child.
You were a child trying to survive an environment that made you feel unsafe. You were reacting to chaos that adults refused to confront.
Your pain is valid.
Your memory is not exaggerated.
And your healing deserves to exist without the shadow of someone else’s excuses.
Stop explaining away trauma.
Start listening to the ones who lived it.
Because sometimes, the only thing worse than what happened is how easily everyone else finds a way to justify it.
By the way, I’m tired of making things more palatable.
My truth is coming out, SOON.
No more excuses.
~Kae Jaye
Kae Jaye The Writer 