There have been a lot of painful conversations on Twitter today about child abuse, neglect, and power dynamics between parents and kids.

I put together this thread of affirmations for survivors who maybe found today to be a hard day to be online.

Dear Survivors,

We deserved parents who could meet our needs. Who could be trusted when we asked for help. Who didn’t ignore us when we were vulnerable.

We deserved consistent, reliable care.

We deserved caregivers who recognized our needs as legitimate and important — not as a weakness to leverage against us or a vulnerability to expose or criticize.

Having needs is a fundamental part of being human. Meeting those needs is the foundation of parenting.

We deserved caregivers who took the time to teach us rather than turn away from us when we struggled.

We deserved the safety that comes with knowing there is an adult who will both protect us and help us navigate our challenges, big or small.

We deserved parents who didn’t rely on an imbalance of power to control, neglect, or reject us.

We deserved parents who could show up fully as human beings, boundaries in place but humble.

Parents who could model true vulnerability so that we might embrace our own softness.

We deserved parents that didn’t mock us. Who didn’t make us feel smaller than we already felt. Who didn’t rely on our smallness to feel bigger, to feed an ego or sustain a power trip.

We deserved to eat when we were hungry, rest when we were tired, cry when we needed to, be supported when we asked for it, and be seen and held when we were hurting.

And not made to feel less than because we dared to need these things.

And we deserved to have our needs ANTICIPATED, rather than crying and kicking and shouting and begging just to be seen. To have those needs tended to by an attuned caregiver whose focus and attention was turned towards us.

And when our caregivers couldn’t give us that, we deserved to have trusted adults who could see that we weren’t fine.

We shouldn’t have had to wait to grow up and be those adults for ourselves.

Please know that I see you now. That, even if the abuse wasn’t seen, even if you question its legitimacy, even if there wasn’t a single bruise or mark, I still believe you.

I believe what happened was wrong and that you deserved so much more.

Be gentle. Go easy. Breathe.