What Encanto Teaches Parents about Breaking Family Cycles & Healing Inner Child Wounds

Encanto is such a beautiful movie about intergenerational family trauma, healing, and resilience.

Plus it has great music - as I’m writing this post, I have “We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no, no” running in the back of my mind.

While you can explore what you can learn from Encanto about decolonized and intergenerational parenting in this podcast episode,

I want to focus this post on the relationship between Antonio and Mirabel.

*Spoilers ahead*

The portrayal of their loving relationship speaks volumes about decolonized attachment and intentionally intergenerational caregiving.

Remember this beautiful scene?

Did it make you ugly cry too?

In this scene, Antonio and Mirabel are under the bed having a heartwarming pep talk about Antonio’s coming of age ceremony where he’ll receive a superpower “gift”, just like everyone else in the family.

The ceremony is a big deal for the Madrigals and Antonio is understandably nervous.

Mirabel, the only grown Madrigal who doesn’t have a gift, is also understandably triggered by Antonio’s ceremony. As we can imagine, the disappointment, shame, and guilt that Mirabel felt when she didn’t receive a gift during her own ceremony might be resurfacing around this time.

Mirabel is working through a feeling of unworthiness, and navigating her identity and sense of belonging in her family where everyone has special gifts.

But when she sees that Antonio needs support and care, she honors her grief about her lack of power, and then moves that grief aside so that she can be present and be there for Antonio when he needs her.

Does that resonate with you in your relationship with your child?

Your child might be asking for a hug to connect with you or they may push you away to declare their independence, both of which are a part of the package that’s called child development.

However, these so-called developmentally appropriate behaviors may remind you of pain from your past. They might remind you of your inner child wounds or the sense of rejection, abandonment, fear, and pain that you felt when you were a child.

When the band aid on this wound from the past gets ripped off by your child’s behaviors, your body’s innate intelligence moves so quickly to react to the perceived threat (your child’s behavior aka a pain reminder aka a parenting trigger).

The upside of this quick reactionary action is that you’re protected from having to re-experience the pain from the past.

The downside, however, is that you end up reacting to your inner child instead of responding to your actual child who’s in front of you.

So what do we do?

First, let’s remember that the goal here is not to never get triggered by your child and never accidentally snap at him.

Rather, it’s more about knowing when you slipped and snapped so that you can make a parenting U-turn and course correct by reconnecting with your child.

Our intersecting identities and social locations will likely shape what this reconnection process looks like. I respect your process.

Speaking for myself, I want to “Trinity kick” anyone who tells me to take deep breaths when my buttons just got pushed.

(Sorry to mix movie references here… I love the Matrix and all the trans allegories)

For me, I need to walk around my apartment and get my limbs moving to re-center my nervous system, calm my threat center (hey, amygdala), and turn the adulting part of the brain back on (I see you, Neocortex).

You know what works for your body.

I’m thinking of a mother of a newborn I used to serve. She had a habit of checking on her newborn while they were asleep and waking them up just to make sure they were breathing and doing okay.

When Mom felt safe enough, she was able to reflect on how her past pain shaped her worry so much that she felt so compelled to check on and wake up her sleeping baby.

She could see that when her baby was sleeping, she felt a panging sensation in her chest that reminded her of when her father left her in the middle of the night and never returned.

Through our work together, she gradually made sense of her past and contextualized her wounds around separation and abandonment.

It was incredibly humbling to see how Mom used the panging sensation in her chest as a cue to pause and distract herself with Instagram scrolling as a way to not wake her baby up.

This way she could meet her inner child with compassion using a more adaptive strategy while meeting her baby where they’re at, which in this case meant letting them sleep.

Just like how Mirabel honors her wound of feeling unworthy, sets it aside, and stays present with Antonio.

For Antonio, he feels seen, heard, and validated by Mirabel. He can trust that he matters to her.

Knowing that you matter to someone, and someone has your back even when you’re not at your best is the core of a secure attachment relationship.

Antonio uses that trust in his relationship with Mirabel to ask for help when he needs it because he trusts that his bid for help will be answered.

With Mirabel’s support by his side, Antonio can walk to the unknown (down the aisle to the magic door that will grant him his unique magic) and to explore this potential gift.

When you’re safe and supported enough to make sense of your past pain and heal from your inner child wounds that come from your ancestors’ unhealed wounds…

You’re able to heal as you’re raising your child.

In other words, you’re healing your past so that you can be intentional in the present and pass down a legacy of compassion and liberation to the future generations.

Even though Mirabel’s wound of unworthiness may be a result of her Abuela’s unresolved grief from the past, Mirabel is so loved and supported by most of her family members.

With this support, she, too, can trust that she can hold her pain in discomfort to be present and available to Antonio.

In each family, there are communication styles, interaction patterns, and rules that are “regifted” across generations.

It’s possible for you to set aside that “regift” so that you can clearly see your own gift and your child’s unique gifts.

To break your family cycles you no longer want, re-parent your inner child, and parent your child with social justice in mind, please check out the In-Out-N-Through™ Program. Let’s transform from Autopilot to Bold, Conscious, and Decolonized parenting together.