By Someone Who Lived It
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve lived it too.
The chaos.
The yelling behind closed doors.
The silence that suffocated more than words ever could.
The addiction.
The self-destruction.
The aching need for love that felt too dangerous to receive.
Welcome to the legacy of a broken family.
The Rot of Inherited Pain
We don’t get to choose the families we’re born into.
But, yes, we do carry the wounds they couldn’t heal.
I was born into dysfunction like many. Generational trauma ran in our veins like blood. Patterns of silence, blame, addiction, fear. Patterns of hiding who we were to protect a fragile system built on shame and unmet needs.
And as much as I hated it, I became it.
I drank.
I ran.
I sabotaged every ounce of love that tried to touch me.
I made money thinking it would fix the hole inside.
But no amount of wealth could fill the void left by absence, not of people, but of connection.
I destroyed myself in the most effective way possible: by avoiding Love.
It was an unconscious rebellion, a quiet rage.
And I see now… it wasn’t just my pain.
It was my father’s.
My mother’s.
Theirs too.
Passed on like a curse.
The Lie We Live: “They Should’ve Done Better”
Here’s the truth most of us don’t want to admit:
They did what they could with the cards they were given at birth…
Not what we needed.
Not what was right.
But what they could with what they had.
Sometimes that’s not enough, and it hurts.
But continuing to blame them…
Continuing to hate…
Continuing to sacrifice our own happiness because they didn’t know how to love?
That’s a choice.
That’s our curse now.
And if we don’t break it, we pass it on.
To our partners.
To our children.
To ourselves, mostly, again and again, drinking from that unholy Grail.
Forgiveness Is Not About Them. It’s About You.
I used to think forgiveness meant letting them off the hook.
Later on in my life I finally got it:
Forgiveness is how we stop rotting from the inside out.
Forgiveness is how we stop repeating what broke us.
It’s not a performance.
It’s not pretty.
It’s not quick.
It’s a rewiring, of thoughts, of beliefs, of patterns.
It’s remembering, over and over:
“I release this pain not because they deserve it, but because I do.”
That’s when it clicked for me.
Not in therapy.
Not in a book.
But one quiet day when I realized:
I was sacrificing my life on the altar of their mistakes.
And for what?
More bitterness?
More addiction?
More missed moments of actual joy?
You Are Not the Wound. You Are the Healer.
This is not just about broken homes.
It’s about broken souls.
But broken doesn’t mean destroyed.
It means ready to rebuild, and that, if we choose it.
The “curse” stops when you say:
It ends with me.
It ends with not yelling back.
It ends with showing up.
It ends with not drinking yourself to sleep.
It ends with choosing peace over punishment.
Forgiveness is not about them becoming better.
It’s about you becoming whole.
A Final Word, From One Survivor to Another
You do not have to sacrifice your joy for their pain.
You do not have to live in guilt for wanting more.
You do not have to keep proving your worth to people who couldn’t see it.
You do not have to die slowly while trying to fix what was never yours to fix.
But you do have to forgive.
Because that’s the only way to rise.
That’s the only way to truly love.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason you went through all of it:
To become the one who ends the cycle.
And if you’ve read this far, I know it’s already begun for you.
Your Turn to Heal
Ask yourself:
- What patterns am I still repeating that aren’t mine?
- Who do I need to forgive, not for their sake, but for mine?
- What would it feel like to live free from blame?
- Am I ready to live a life that love can reach?
Because when it finally clicked for me…
I realized I wasn’t cursed.
I was chosen to break it.
And so are you.
