Do you feel like you’re only as good as your last perfect homeschool day? Do you struggle with the exhausting cycle of trying to prove your worth through achievement? In this powerful conversation, Pamela Good shares her journey from childhood survival mode to adult perfectionism—and how she finally broke free.

Pamela grew up with three siblings in a home where their mother struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. To cope, she learned to push herself relentlessly in sports, work, and eventually motherhood. But that survival strategy that served her as a child became a prison as an adult. She shares how she crashed and burned trying to be perfect, and how she discovered God’s love and grace in the midst of her brokenness.

• How childhood trauma can lead to perfectionism in adulthood

• Why trying to prove you’re not broken only makes things worse

• How perfectionism affects our children (even when we think we’re hiding it)

• The lies Satan tells us when we’re discouraged

• Three truths that help us break free from performance-based living

• Why it’s important to give ourselves grace for survival strategies that no longer serve us

• How worship music and Scripture helped Pamela renew her mind

• The difference between being a perfectionist and being a recovering perfectionist

“I wanted people to think I was worthy. I didn’t want people to see me as broken. So I was going to be the perfect mother, even though I never had one.”

“I realized the voices telling me ‘you need to do this’ or ‘this isn’t good enough’ weren’t me—it was Satan, the ruler of darkness.”

“Only Jesus is perfect. You will never be perfect. But you just feel you can achieve it. And you keep on that little wheel going round and round.”

“I’m a child of God. And if the Son sets you free, you’re free indeed.”

Pamela is the author of “He Never Let Go: Overcoming Childhood Trauma with the Love of God.” She and her three siblings survived a chaotic childhood and all went on to raise beautiful families of their own. Pamela’s book recently won an award for transformative stories.

• Website: pamelawaggonergood.com

• Facebook: Pamela Waggoner Good

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Remember, friend: You are not defined by your productivity. You are not measured by how perfectly your homeschool runs. You are a child of God, loved just as you are.