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“Say only nice words to your child. Even if it seems like they’re not listening, if you repeat those kind words a hundred or a thousand times, eventually they will become the child’s own thoughts.” ~my grandmother
When I think of my childhood the first word that comes to mind is “night.”
The nights were always the hardest.
My father struggled with alcohol and sometimes channeled that pain into violence at home.
As a child, I felt like danger could arrive any time after the sun went down.
I was afraid of deep sleep. I kept the lights on in my room because the darkness seemed to be losing control.
I slept with my head right next to the door, leaving it slightly open. I wanted the door to hit my head if someone came in so I could get up quickly.
A part of me was afraid that my father might come into my room while I was sleeping and do something.
The other part was worried that he might hurt my mom and that I wouldn’t be able to hear it. So I remained half awake, listening to every sound, ready to jump and protect her, even though I was a small child.
The school found it impossible to live like this.
I was so tired I couldn’t concentrate and my body was full of stress every night. Moreover, people in our neighborhood knew about my father.
Some parents told their children not to be friends with me because of his reputation. I often sat alone in school. I saw other kids laughing together at lunch while I was eating quietly in the corner.
Teachers mostly noticed my trouble when my pain turned into bad behavior. They often scolded me, and I soon began to believe that there was something terribly wrong with me.
In my own opinion, I was not a child who was scared and tired. I was the “bad” problem child that everyone avoided. I didn’t know how to change that story, so I wore it like a heavy coat.
My mother was also struggling. She was hurt by my father, worried about money, and constantly worried about what would happen next. Sometimes, when I caused trouble, she would yell at me because she had no energy left. I don’t blame her—she was doing her best in a situation that seemed impossible.
One day, my grandmother came and saw my mother yelling at me. Later, he pulled my mother aside and said something that changed our lives.
She told him, “Say only nice words to your child. Even if it seems like he’s not listening, if you repeat those kind words a hundred or a thousand times, they will eventually become his thoughts.”
My grandmother believed that repetition of love could rewrite a child’s inner world.
My mother took it more seriously than I imagined. She started carrying a small notebook.
Inside it, she wrote sentence after sentence – the things she wanted me to believe about myself. The pages were full, almost bursting with his hopes for me.
Every day she would choose a different line to tell me. Sometimes she would say, “You are a kind boy.” Sometimes, “you can become a gentler, stronger adult.” Other times, “No matter what you did today, you still have a good heart.”
At first I did not believe these words. They felt like lies because my daily life didn’t change overnight.
Kids still avoided me, teachers were still strict, and my father still drank.
Inside, my mind replied, “No, I’m not kind. I’m broken.” But my mother did not stop. Even on days when I made big mistakes, she opened her notebook, looked at her list, and picked out another good sentence for me.
She repeated these words like a silent prayer for my life. Sometimes perhaps she didn’t fully believe them herself, but she said them anyway.
Slowly, some changes started coming. I still remember the first time a teacher praised me for helping another student. For a second. I thought, “Maybe I can be really kind.” It seemed as if my mother’s words were waiting for the right moment to awaken inside me.
As the years passed, those sentences became a new inner voice. I began to imagine a future where I completed school, found meaningful work, and became a decent adult instead of repeating my father’s patterns.
I still had hurt and anger, but I also had the steady background music of kindness.
This gave me enough courage to move ahead.
Eventually, I went to university. I studied programming and found something I was good at. The first time I was able to buy a phone for my mother with my salary, I felt like I had crossed a line that I never even thought about as a child.
I was no longer the “bad kid”; I was an adult who could give back to the woman who never gave up on me.
Looking back I realize that my life didn’t change because someone gave me a perfect plan. It changed because someone chose different words again and again, even when everything around us was in chaos.
Love came in the form of sentences whispered over and over again, like water drops slowly carving a new path through stone. My grandmother was right: Words repeated a hundred or a thousand times eventually become thoughts.
At first, my mind was filled with sentences like “I’m dangerous,” “I ruin everything,” and “Nobody wants me.”
My mother’s notebook gave me new sentences: “I am learning,” “I can be gentle,” “I have a future.”
Over time, those new sentences became the ones that felt most true.
I know that not everyone’s mother or grandmother is like mine. Many people grow up and have no one to say a kind word about them. Some of us are also surrounded by people who say the opposite – that we are lazy, depressed, or unlovable.
If that’s you, I’m so sorry. I know how heavy these words can feel.
But this is what my life has taught me: Even if no one else has done it for you yet, you can start doing it for yourself.
You can become the one writing a notebook full of nice sentences about your heart.
You can choose a new statement every day and repeat it until it starts sounding like a lie.
You may decide that your inner voice will be the first place where a different story begins.
If you grew up in fear like I did, the nights are probably still hard for you. Your body may remember things your mind tries to forget. On those nights, instead of fighting yourself for being scared, you can place a hand on your chest and whisper something to yourself, like, “It’s understandable that you’re scared. But you’re not alone anymore.”
It won’t erase the past, but it can soften the present.
If you’re a parent or caregiver, or if you have a child struggling in your life, remember what my grandmother said. They may roll their eyes or act like they don’t care. They may even push you away. But your kind words are still landing somewhere deep inside them, planting seeds they won’t recognize until years later.
I used to think that healing meant suddenly becoming strong and fearless. Now I think healing often looks like this: A little child who used to sleep with his head in the door grows up to become an adult who can eventually turn off the light at night.
Not because the world is completely safe, but because there is now a different voice inside him – a voice that says, “You deserve protection. You are allowed to relax.”
My life began in a house full of screaming people and broken mirrors. It could have easily ended there in the same pattern of anger and pain. But my grandmother’s wisdom, my mother’s notebook and those repeated sentences led me to a different path.
If you’re reading this and you feel stuck in your old story, I want you to know something. You don’t have to pretend that everything was fine. Your pain is real and it deserves respect.
But your story isn’t over, and you’re not the only one who knows what happened to you. The words you choose today are also you.
Maybe you start with just one simple sentence, quietly whispering to yourself: “I am more than my past.”
Say it a hundred times if you need to. Say thousand.
One day, you might look back and realize that this sentence became the foundation of an entirely new life.
*I don’t speak English well, so I used ChatGPT to help translate my story. But everything you read comes from my own memories and my own heart. I wrote this because I want to deeply share what the love of my family taught me about healing.
about chanhyeok
Chanhyeok is an indie programmer from Korea who grew up in a home shaped by his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s quiet courage. He now creates small devices that help people talk to themselves more compassionately. Their first iOS app, self suggestionSends gentle confirmation reminders to your lock screen in eight languages. You can view it here: https://apps.apple.com/en/app/SelfSuggestion/id6754752885
