Breaking Cycles...the Road to Freedom.

“It ran in my family until it ran into me.”

When I found that quote, I read it over and over as I tried to process all the feelings coursing through me. I felt proud, strong, happy, and powerful. Then- sad, scared, lonely, and angry. I started thinking- Why is it on me? Why couldn’t someone else do it? What if I’m not strong enough? That’s why I want to explore this topic of cycle breakers with you; it’s complicated and messy and unfair but it’s also work you do because you deserve to be free of those dysfunctional patterns. You are worthy of healing. 

Cycle breakers are the ones who recognize a harmful pattern in their family system that has caused harm and they take the steps to break this cycle. It requires them to look at the messages passed along through even generations and acknowledge that something isn’t quite right. They make a commitment to break it. Cycle breakers may be the ones in the family who have always been a bit of the outcast, they may have been the one who viewed things differently, and maybe even recognized some of these patterns at a young age and couldn’t name it. They may have looked around a room filled with toys and people but still felt an emptiness inside of themselves. Those young cycle- breakers-to-be may have wondered “what’s wrong with me that I don’t feel complete?” Maybe they were even asked that by a member of the family. 

I’m here to say, there’s nothing wrong with you for not fitting into a system that harms you. That was your gut trying to tell you that something was not right. That your needs were not being met. That you deserve to feel safe and did not at that time. 

When you’re the cycle breaker you may be shamed for speaking out against the family system. You are a threat to how things have always operated, and that’s scary for yourself and for those who benefit from your compliance. That capacity for healing is within us all, but when we act on it, it can scare others because they were never able to do it themselves for whatever reason. You will get pushback for being a cycle breaker because you are doing something the generations before you couldn’t- creating a new path. 

I encourage you to sit with yourself and look within yourself; take a moment to listen to that wounded kid inside you who may have felt that something was not quite right. That little kid part of you may have felt unseen, unheard, or unloved. By breaking the cycle you are giving yourself a chance to change those core wounds. 

It ends with you. 

P.S. I am so excited to see the new beginning you create