I was born into a family already carrying chains.
Not the kind made of iron.
The kind made of fear.
Silence.
Shame.
People pleasing.
Pain lived in our home like a monster beneath the bed.
Always there.
Mostly unseen.
Until it reached out and reminded us it had never really left.
Like every child, I didn’t choose what I inherited.
I simply learned to carry it.
I spent years believing I was the problem.
If I could just try harder…
Love better…
Give more…
Fix everyone else…
Maybe the pain would finally stop.
It never did.
I kept trying to swim.
I just didn’t realize I was wearing chains.
Those chains followed me into adulthood.
Into my relationships.
Into the way I spoke to myself.
Into the choices I made.
I carried burdens that were never mine and blamed myself every time they became too heavy.
For years, I believed surviving was enough.
Then something changed.
Not all at once.
A thousand tiny choices.
A walk.
A boundary.
A meal without shame.
A morning without a drink.
A difficult conversation.
A quiet “no.”
One choice became another.
One broken link became another.
Slowly, I realized something that changed everything.
Breaking chains isn’t one brave moment.
It’s choosing, over and over again, to stop handing your pain to the next generation.
Today, I co-parent with kindness instead of resentment.
I apologize when I’m wrong.
I tell my children they are loved.
I choose healing instead of hiding.
Not because I’m perfect.
Because someone has to break the chain.
Looking back, I can finally see what I couldn’t see then.
I was never weak.
I was surviving.
And surviving took a strength I didn’t yet know I possessed.
Every day I choose differently than what was handed to me…
another chain falls.
Maybe that’s what healing really is.
Not forgetting where you came from.
Not pretending it didn’t hurt.
But refusing to pass the weight on.
My children may never know the chains I was born wearing.
And that…
is how I know they were worth breaking.
Tag: childhood
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Chainbreaker
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Pockets
As a woman, I’ve noticed that good pockets are hard to find.
I’m not talking about pants pockets, although let’s be honest, men seem to have that department on lockdown.
Somewhere along the way, women’s pockets started shrinking.
The funny thing is, I don’t think it stopped with our clothes.
The pockets of childhood disappeared too.
The pockets of time where we were allowed to grow slowly.
Allowed to wonder.
Allowed to daydream.
Allowed to become.
We grew up too fast.
Tried too hard.
Pushed too far.
And if we’re not careful, life keeps taking our pockets away.
Work.
Responsibilities.
Phones.
Obligations.
People needing things from us.
One day you wake up and realize there isn’t a single pocket left that’s yours.
I know because I did.
I lost so much of myself that way.
Not all at once.
Pocket by pocket.
Eventually, I had to start creating pockets of time.
A walk.
A quiet cup of tea.
A long bath in the dark.
A moment to think.
A moment to write.
A moment to come home to myself.
Because life has a way of moving from one problem to the next.
One crisis to the next.
One responsibility to the next.
And if we never stop long enough to process what we’ve lived through, we miss the lesson entirely.
I’ve become protective of those pockets now.
Not because they’re empty.
Because they’re sacred.
In many ways, I’m protecting the little girl who was told she was too much and somehow not enough all at once.
I’m teaching my children the same thing.
Put the phone down.
Read a book.
Take a walk.
Write a letter.
Sit quietly for a moment and think about what you’ve learned.
Think about who you’re becoming.
Pockets are precious.
Time slips away.
Commitments multiply.
Life gets loud.
But the things we carry deserve somewhere to rest.
So make room.
Make space.
Protect your pockets.
You may discover that what’s waiting there is you.