Together We Rise: Breaking Cycles for My Boys
A year ago, I wrote about physical healing. The latest scans are completely clear. Now I scan once a year. As I finished healing physically, I began using the tools from the emotional healing course. As I did, I began the journey of sorting the pieces of my personal history, especially the parts that had resisted reflection. The tools helped to soften that resistance so I could process these pieces and put them together, revealing a map that I could follow to tame my triggers, see my shadows, and watch them shrink as I shined a light on them. I used to think I was broken, beyond repair. Now I know that we are all just puzzle pieces, waiting to come back together.
These days, my prayer is “Help me see what I need to see and be what I need to be.” I still don’t have the whole picture, but it is becoming more clear. A few weeks ago, we went on our annual family vacation. I was incredibly anxious beforehand, as it tends to be an intergenerational minefield of neurodivergent dysregulation in which, like dominoes, one goes off, and then the rest tumble into full meltdown. All .Week. Long.
This time, however, I made a point of saying I wanted us to work on regulation, accountability, and gratitude. I was explaining this to our nine-year-old when he suddenly said “Mom! It’s an acronym: RAG. Instead of ragging on each other, we will do these three things.” So we did, and the trip went more smoothly than usual. We even added “acknowledgment,” as in “acknowledge when someone has apologized and thank them.” The trip went pretty well. On the way home, however, our nine-year-old had an epic meltdown. He was exhausted from too many late nights and too much junk food.
When I saw that he wasn’t going to be able to regulate himself, I wrapped my arms around him, kept telling him to breathe, that I loved him, and that he was doing great. He calmed down and thanked me. We stopped at a Starbucks after, and I went in to order, feeling the tears coming. But when I checked in with myself, I realized they were tears of gratitude. When he was younger, his meltdown would have triggered the chaos I felt inside me. I would have struggled to regulate myself, nevermind be able to help him. This time, I realized, I wasn’t triggered. Not only did I not need to regulate myself, but I was able to help him coregulate.
As I sat there silently weeping in the Starbucks, I realized that I had given my son what I had most craved at that age: validation, comfort, and a feeling of safety and security. I had let him know that he was not alone. In that hug, I sent healing back in time, to my child self, and forward, to his adult self. In that moment, I realized that by healing my own insecure attachment, I am able to be a secure base for my boys. In healing my abandonment wounds, I am able to be present with them. Much of this emotional healing journey has involved becoming conscious of the shadows that hid in the subconscious.
The subconscious rules ninety-five percent of our thoughts, behaviors, and actions. We’re basically being guided by the puppet strings of our past. In order to make the unconscious conscious, we must be present. We must practice introspection. However, as humans, we resist being present, numbing in any number of ways so that we don’t have to feel our triggers. In an effort to protect us from the pain of the past, our subconscious mind and ego drive this process. Instead of protecting us, however, the same situations are magnetized right to us in an attempt to heal them. When we operate from the subconscious, we create the very outcomes we fear most. The child who was abandoned pushes partners away as an adult, recreating that same abandonment.
Research shows that a key piece of breaking cycles is when a parent with childhood trauma can feel the feelings they felt during the trauma in order to process them out. However, if a parent has repressed their feelings, they are far more likely to act from the subconscious, repeating intergenerational patterns. When I was a new mom, I hadn’t done much emotional healing. I was triggered all of the time. Despite my best efforts, I was behaving in ways I swore I wouldn’t. I desperately wanted to do better for my children. I didn’t yet understand that my ego had constructed defenses so that the feelings that simmered in the shadows remained repressed.
I tried therapy myself, and it didn’t work. I could talk about things that happened, but my ego, and the defenses it had built to keep me safe by repressing these feelings, wouldn’t allow me to let go enough to feel them. So I couldn’t tame my triggers. Those defenses were put in place starting at the age of four, as I endured almost thirty surgeries in childhood, being ripped from my parents arms and dragged, kicking and screaming, to the operating room, when I was younger, and then, as I got older, having to be a brave little soldier, suppressing all of my anxiety and terror so I could survive the trauma. Over and over again.
So when, as a grown up mother, I sat on a therapist's couch to process these feelings, there was no way my ego was going to allow me to feel all of that pain. It would have been overwhelming. Reiki and energy healing proved to be the answer for me. It went around the defenses of the ego, healing at the energetic level, dissolving the emotional blocks and allowing me to feel the feelings so that they could finally be released. I finally had a way to process this trauma out of my body, brain, and nervous system. This is why there were no triggers when my son had his meltdown: I had processed them out. Because the pain has now been processed, the patterns are no longer repeating. This is how we break cycles: We heal ourselves. This, in turn, helps our children heal.
Cycle breakers tend to be the black sheep of their families. They hold up a mirror to their family’s dysfunction, and they incur the wrath of those who do not like their reflection. But our children are watching. Each time we choose truth over the betrayal of ourselves, it reflects onto them. And they will in turn stay true to themselves. We are the torchbearers, shining a light on our family’s shadows. When we dissolve them, we illuminate the path for others. We may have to burn some familial bridges at first, but from the ashes of those bridges, we create fertile soil for new growth on our family’s tree. From broken bonds, healthy boundaries are created. And when people come back, they come correct. It takes forgiveness on our part, and accountability or their part. But then, love can win, and we all can rise as we grow together, reaching for the sun, leaving a legacy of healing and liberation. This is how we heal our world.
1: Fraiberg-Ghosts-in-Nursery.pdf copy
Ghosts in the nursery. (n.d.). https://frcnca.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ghosts-in-the-nursery-paper-copy.pdf
