Are you the cycle breaker?

I never could have predicted the enormity of making the choice to be the ‘cycle breaker’ within a family.

I didn’t think it was going to feel like it did. I was not prepared for the rollercoaster of emotions that was to come when I decided that it was no longer possible for me to play this game. It was no longer possible for me to keep being the character that my family needed me to be.

Finally, the idea of staying the same felt more dangerous than walking down the unknown path of change.

Even though I was under no illusion that it was going to be easy, I was unaware of enormous amount of conditioning that was going to present itself. I had no idea of the pain, rejection, grief and anger that would come to the surface and need to be dealt with and that most of this would be directed at the people I loved and who I thought loved me.

Being the ‘cycle breaker’ can be a lonely choice and at times you will ache at your core to feel numb again but for me once I started, once my eyes were open to the generations of destruction there was no going back. I couldn’t return back to the person I was pretending to be for the sake of keeping peace within a destructive family that felt like it could implode at any time.

What I do want to make clear though is that I do not blame my parents or my family for choices I have made in the past but I can see generations of cycles, patterns and trauma that lead me to those choices but now I choose different. I choose to do things differently, I choose to be in this world differently and I choose to show my daughter something different than what I was shown.

There have been many lessons and I know there are still more to come but this is the biggest one so far.

There will be family and friends that won’t like the ‘new’ you and it actually won’t have anything to do with you but will be all about them and how the ‘old’ you made them feel.

When you become the ‘cycle breaker’ within your family it makes everyone else feel unsafe because as a ‘tribe’ when you are all the same, when you are all playing your own role or character within that family it feels consistent, safe and normal even when its destructive. When one person decides they want different it throws everything and everyone into the unknown. And this ‘unknown’ is on par with death for many people. It is one of the scariest things they can imagine and this is how generational cycles and trauma happen. No one wants to be thrown out of the tribe, this is sure death, humans thrive on connection and being an outcast for me felt like possibly the worst thing imaginable.

This has been the biggest challenge for me. I’ll be honest I hate not being liked, I hate being teased or made fun of or not being accepted, so this was really triggering for me and still is to a point. I felt this deep need to explain myself to people and to be understood and accepted but I had to come to the heart-breaking realisation that none of the people in my family were on the same path as me.

Even though I still love the people that I am eternally bonded to, the relationships are now different and I have had to accept that as a consequence of choosing different. I have chosen to still love them and be grateful for the people they are in my life but now I put me first. I don’t change for them, I don’t play the character they need me to be and I accept that I’m different to them and it isn’t the worst thing imaginable anymore.

Joel Rafidi from ‘Are You Here For The Truth’ said that ‘the cost is the pain and projection that comes with being the person who forces decades of darkness, ignorance and illusions to the surface…but the profit is truth, freedom, regulation, wholeness and authenticity’. Breaking generations of cycles and trauma isn’t about placing blame, it’s about learning from the past, choosing different and doing better because we are worth it and our children deserve it. It won't always be easy and will often be lonely and unknown but the pay off is peace and wholeness.