Like the saying goes, The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Yet when it comes to cycle breakers, it's like the apple falls, rolls clear down the hill and around the corner. Cycle breakers are different from the rest of their family. As children, they tend to live by their own instinctive set of rules, rather than simply adapting to the family beliefs and practices pressed upon them. Although cycle breakers are the healthiest of the bunch, they are often viewed as troublemakers because they see through the family's brokenness and refuse to conform. Challenging the status quo ain't easy, especially when it involves detrimental behaviors handed down through multiple generations. Cycle breakers will question rules that don't make sense and have no problem speaking their mind when it comes to family dysfunctions. A cycle breaker is someone that veers off the well-worn, familial path of what has always been and blazes their own trail.
As you might imagine, this is rarely received well by relatives who believe life should be lived a particular way - typically the exact way it's been lived for generations. This usually means that cycle breakers develop a protective armor in order to persevere. Probably the hardest challenge for a cycle breaker is finding their footing. They are forging a brand new path with little to no guidance, so naturally early on, poor choices, mishaps and calamities occur. But it's often their deep determination to break the cycle of dysfunction and chaos, that keeps them advancing toward their own vision of what life is meant to be. They raise their children in accordance with this vision, breaking free from multi-generational parenting patterns, and shifting the direction of their ancestral line forever, and for the better.
We all can be cycle breakers, though it's challenging, isolating and exhausting work. Breaking toxic cycles requires processing and understanding the origins of our own unhealthy patterns, which entails a deep level of introspection and a commitment to growth and change. Being a cycle breaker involves getting comfortable with the backlash that often occurs when going against the grain and establishing (and enforcing) healthy boundaries. The sole purpose of breaking cycles, is to heal our own pain in order to parent in a deeply connected, loving and nurturing way, so that our children may carry on this legacy of consciousness for generations to come.
I will wrap things up with this quote by Nate Postlethwait:
Never underestimate a cycle breaker. Not only did they experience years of generational trauma, but they stood in the face of the trauma and fought to say,
This ends with me.This is brave. This is powerful. This comes at a significant cost. Never underestimate a cycle breaker.