If you’re thinking about having children someday, you might picture giving them love, stability, guidance, and maybe a few cherished traditions. But one gift shapes all the others: your own cohesive life story.

A cohesive narrative means you can look at your life as a whole–its joys, its pain, and its turning points–and make sense of it in a way that feels complete. This is more than knowing the facts of your past. It’s understanding how those experiences have shaped you, and how you’ve grown from them.

If you had a safe and loving childhood, this might feel natural. But if you were abused or neglected, the path to a cohesive story can be one of the hardest journeys you’ll ever take. Abuse can fill life with chaos–nothing feels predictable—or with rigidity, in which there’s no room for your real self to grow. Sometimes it’s both. These early conditions can make it almost impossible to see your life as connected and meaningful without first having the right kind of support and understanding.  This is especially true for those who learned they had to dissociate or split to survive.

This is where Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) can be life-changing. IPNB shows how our brains, bodies, and relationships shape each other, and how safety and connection help us grow the ability to reflect on our lives without becoming overwhelmed. Learning about your nervous system can help you notice when you’re in survival mode, understand why certain memories or situations feel unbearable, and practice ways of bringing yourself back to a steadier place. From that steadier place, it becomes more possible to look at the hard parts of your past without getting lost in them. Over time, you can begin to weave the scattered pieces of your history into a story that makes sense, holds truth, and offers hope.

For your future children, this work is priceless. If you can take your own chaos or rigidity and transform it into a coherent story, you give them a model of resilience, self-understanding, and honesty. You free them from carrying the hidden burdens of your unhealed pain, and you offer them a stronger foundation for building their own story.

And for you, this process can be deeply liberating. A cohesive story lets you stand in your life with dignity instead of shame, clarity instead of confusion. When your child someday asks about your past, you’ll be able to speak with steadiness, showing them that even the most painful histories can be met with courage and truth. That is a gift that will last for generations.