The Scar You Don’t Remember, But Might Still Feel

You won’t remember your birth – but your body might.

For many of us, our entry into life wasn’t calm.
It wasn’t tender.
And it didn’t feel safe.

Birth is our first emergency, and from that moment, something inside us starts to form. We begin to learn how to shift, trust, and take up space. We absorb whether the world said, “Yes, you’re welcome here” – or didn’t.

I’ve worked with people who carried anxiety and fear for decades, only to realise the earliest imprint didn’t begin in childhood.
It began earlier.
In the womb.
At the edge of breath.
At the beginning.

These moments form what we call pre-verbal trauma. They rarely live in our conscious mind, but they live in our bodies. In the way we breathe. The way we move. The way we enter a room or pull away from ourselves.

How the Nervous System Holds What the Mind Can’t

Before we had language, we had sensation.

Our nervous system develops before our brain can name experience. Long before we understand what’s happening, we feel it.

The womb is more than a place of growth – it’s a tuning ground. We attune to our mother’s stress, our father’s voice, the emotional weather we’re held inside.

These early signals become our script.
And birth? Birth is our first true emergency.

If it felt rushed, frightening, or disconnected, our system can learn that arriving isn’t safe. That needing is too much. That closeness comes with risk.

Sometimes the difficulty in staying isn’t about despair. It’s about not being welcomed in the way we needed.

What Birth Trauma Can Echo Later in Life

This kind of imprint doesn’t announce itself. It whispers through behaviour.

In the quiet pause before speaking. In the tightening chest before intimacy. In the tension that shows up every time you try to begin again.

Here’s what often shows up in those carrying unhealed birth experiences:

• A fear of starting or completing things

• Struggling to receive love without earning it

• Panic during change or transition

• A persistent feeling of being out of place

• Withdrawing, over-functioning, or freezing under pressure

These aren’t flaws.
They’re unfinished beginnings.

The cause?

“They took me out of the sunroof, and I wasn’t ready,” one man told me.
“I got stuck so they pulled me out with forceps,” said one young woman.

Did these people come to me knowing what to work on? No.
Did they have a clear memory of being born when they were releasing their suffering? No.

We arrived here using the gentle methods of Havening and Soma & Parts work.

Listening to the Body’s Language

Your body doesn’t speak English – it speaks through feeling.

A locked jaw you can’t explain.
Nausea when someone touches your back.
A tight belly at the thought of being seen.

These are somatic memories – unspoken truths still waiting to resolve.

Just like a song stuck on the same note, these loops continue until a new melody is allowed to form.

That’s the essence of somatic healing: letting the body complete the story.

You’re Not Broken – You’re Patterned

This is important:
You are not damaged.
You’re not “too much.”
You’re not “just anxious.”

You’re patterned.
And patterns can be rewritten.

Through approaches like Havening, sensory re-patterning, and subconscious and somatic healing, we offer the nervous system something it may never have received: a sense of steadiness, closeness, and choice.

Here’s what that can sound like:

While gently stroking your arms (in the style of Havening), say:

“Even if I came in scared, I’m allowed to feel safe now.
I choose peace. I choose to be here.
It’s safe to arrive.”

What you repeat with care becomes part of your repair.

Jenna’s Story: Rewriting My Arrival

As far back as I can remember, I’ve felt the world wasn't safe. As I moved through my life, I accumulated library books (experiences) that confirmed this.

Not in a dramatic way. More like “be ready for anything scary” kind of way.

This didn't make me an anxious child; my anxiety started much later. It may not have felt natural, but it did feel normal.

I think I was in my 30s the very first time I experienced feeling safe.
I didn't have a clue what it was.

In one healing session, I traced back the root of this 'unsafeness'. Not to a heartbreak or loss. Those things had long since been healed. But to the womb.

In my mind, I saw my Mum walking on eggshells. My father’s anger echoing through her shrinking body. I felt it. I knew it. And something in me chose:

not safe = don’t come out.

These were not memories, or maybe they were my body's memories finding adult words and visuals. Maybe I was 'making it up' from information I have gathered about what life was like when I was in the womb.

Wherever this was coming from, the feelings of “It's not safe out there” were very real.

When I later asked my mum about my birth, she said:

“Out of all five of you, your birth was the hardest. It was like you didn’t want to come out.”

She was right.

So in my session, I gave myself a new memory, a new birth story, a new pattern, a new start.

In my story, I was born at sunset on our family farm. My parents sat together on a soft bed of hay. Horses stood nearby, still and calm. The sky glowed with golden light.

My father held my mother, gently rubbing her belly. When I arrived, he wept. He kissed her. He kissed me. We sat together in the warm light, wrapped in stillness and awe.

The world didn’t push us. It welcomed us.

It sounds sentimental. But it changed something.
My body believed it.

And that belief helped me live differently.
The pattern or programme of “it’s safe to arrive” has rippled benefits through every area of my life.

Healing as Re-Entry

This isn’t about going backwards. It’s about stepping in with intention.

There is no real backwards anyway—we are always experiencing the present moment. It’s the only one there really is.

When we heal something from 'the past', we are actually releasing a pattern made a long time ago that is in fact in the present.

When we revisit these early scars with presence, we don’t re-open wounds – we offer repair and resolution.

We cross the threshold again. But this time, with someone beside us.
This time, with choice.
This time, with someone whispering:

You’re allowed to be here.
You are wanted.
You are safe.

I’ve had the honour of walking with others on this path:

• The woman who said yes to life after 30 years of feeling frozen

• The healer who opened her own practice after reclaiming her arrival story

• The new mother who finally felt close to her baby after healing her own birth imprint

This work doesn’t stop at the personal.
It touches what came before.
It shapes what comes next.
It reaches into the bones of belonging.

Healing Birth Imprints: A Conversation with Alison Shaloe

In my recent conversation with Alison Shaloe—a midwife, Havening practitioner, and ancestral healing guide—we explored how these early experiences may still ripple through your life.

We spoke about:

• How breastfeeding struggles can trace back to unresolved birth trauma

• The silent impact of medical phrases like “failure to progress”

• Why babies may remember birth—and how those memories might be scripting your work habits, relationships, and sense of safety

• A gentle 60-second Havening technique you can use anytime to calm your nervous system

Recently, on my Jentle & Brutal podcast, I spoke with Alison—a midwife, lactation consultant, Havening practitioner and Trainer, and ancestral healing guide—about how birth leaves a lasting echo in the body.

Alison shared how medical terms like “failure to progress” can quietly mark a mother’s confidence for life, and how babies can carry the physical and emotional intensity of birth into their adult patterns.

She’s seen how unresolved imprints can affect not only our nervous system but also how we step into relationships, work, and even our sense of purpose.

It’s work that resonates deeply with my own. Where Alison often begins with the sacredness of birth, I meet people in the felt sense, helping them listen to the language their body has been speaking since that first arrival.

Both paths lead to the same truth: you can rewrite your entry into life without re-living the pain.

Whether you were born in a warm birthing pool or beneath cold fluorescent lights, your arrival is a threshold you can choose to re-enter with awareness, bringing repair not only to yourself, but to your children, and to the lineage that came before you.

🎧 Listen or watch here:

• Spotify

• YouTube

• Apple Podcasts

If you’d like to hear the full conversation—and try Alison’s gentle Havening exercise—listen here before you close this page.

Remember to like, share, subscribe; it REALLY helps!

Want to Go Deeper? Join Me This September

If this post stirred something in you—if your body whispered “This is me”—I’d love to invite you to go deeper.

📅 On September 22nd, 2025, I’m running my Online Soma and Parts Advanced Jenesis Training.

This training is for practitioners, coaches, therapists, and healing professionals ready to:

• Work confidently with nervous system imprints—including pre-verbal and birth trauma

• Map and transform the inner parts that hold protective patterns

• Blend neuroscience-backed techniques with somatic awareness for lasting change

• Deepen their capacity to guide clients into emotional safety and transformation

• Do their own inner work while refining professional skills

Soma is a method that operates at the level before words, where sensation, memory, and meaning meet.
It’s where birth stories live.
And it’s where they can be rewritten.

✨ Learn more or register here.

You Hold the Pen Now

You didn’t get to choose how you arrived.
But you can choose how you continue.

Your nervous system isn’t stuck – it’s listening.
Waiting for a new message.
Waiting for you to say: Welcome home.

If you’d like to begin, I’m here.

Book a 1:1 session, join a retreat, or explore my trainings where we gently write new stories – ones the body can believe.

You’re not too late.
And this chapter begins with a welcome.

Go gently,
Jenna

👉 Book a 1:1 session or private supervision