A Unique and Often Heartbreaking Path: Breaking Our Family’s Generational Pattern of Dysfunction

​By Eliane Sainte-Marie
​Founder, Parenting For Wholeness

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While talking with Sarah this evening, I was hit by the heartbreak and loneliness that’s inherent in the path she’s chosen.

Like a large number of the people who are drawn to my work, Sarah came to me because she shares the parenting intention I had raising my daughters: she is committed to obliterating the generational pattern of dysfunction in her family. She is committed to her daughter never having to experience even a smidgen of what she did as child.

Yes, it can be done. My grown daughters are a living proof of it. They are free of all the addictions, low self-worth, dysfunctional relationships, etc, that plague all my siblings and I. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Sarah’s daughter will be free of all that as well.

And yes, it’s wonderful and incredibly rewarding to have been able to successfully break this long pattern that’s present in both my parents’ families.

And I’m so so so grateful that all my daughters are free of the pain I still struggle to live through!

But there are unique challenges for those of us who have committed ourselves to this Herculean task.

Here are some of the things many of us have to live with, as our children grow up, especially in the early years of parenthood:
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• Our family of origin doesn’t understand us. Though they’re ‘supposed to be’ our support system, as well as the people with whom many of us celebrate our holidays and birthdays, they have no understanding of and ability to relate to the thing we’re most passionate about and focused on. And we can’t even talk to them about what we’re doing because it would hurt them, they wouldn’t understand, or they’d even just attack us back for it.
• We are judged, and often outwardly criticized and ridiculed.
• Even though we’ve put tons of time researching and working out an optimal way of being with our children, people who have never spent any time researching about effective parenting feel free to make dire predictions for our children, fully believing they know better than us.
• Often times, the reason we looked for and committed ourselves to a more nurturing form of parenting is because we are highly sensitive, and we realized how damaged we were by the way we were parented. But being this sensitive, being criticized and judged is very painful, and often even debilitating.
• We are often pressured to justify our choices, even though our answers are rarely taken seriously.
• It’s hard to ask our family to treat our children in the way we want – for example to not tickle them, not pick them up without their permission, not call them 'good girl' or 'bad girl,' because they have no frame of reference or understanding of our reasons for wanting our children to be treated respectfully.
• We have a different set of values than our family! This can be incredibly painful to live with, and make our time with our family unpleasant to downright traumatic and repulsive.
• Our children will NEVER relate to us! Though this is what we so desperately want for our beloved children, it’s also incredibly hard and sad that the beings closest to us have no way of relating to the pain and inner challenges we live with.
• We’re re-inventing the wheel, having not experienced, and often not even witnessed the way we want to parent. So we often feel like we’re moving in the dark, knowing what we don’t want to do but being clueless as to what to do instead.
• We have to continually fight our conditioning, our default, which is to react to our children the way we were reacted to.
• We’re doing something incredibly difficult, while being weighed down with lots of baggage and issues, which make things that may be simple and even non-issues for others challenging for us.
• And we’re doing something absolutely incredible, what’s needed to create a world we would all love to live in, and for some of us no one even sees it.​

(Please note that I'm not blaming our relatives for being the way they are. They are also a product of their upbringing, and many had really good intentions but just didn't know better.

I also know that I presented the worst case scenario in the points above, and that for many of us things aren't as extreme as I presented them.)

I’m not saying this to depress you, my friend. I want to tell you that I understand you. I feel for you. The task you’ve undertaken is Herculean and I wish the whole world would rise up to celebrate you in it.

I hope you find some real support for yourself. That you figure out ways to take care of your own needs. That you can get some really good professional support, which will provide you healing and lots of empathy and understanding.

You’re a hero.

I see you.

Thank you for what you are doing. For your children, and for the whole world.

Lots of love to you,​

​    If you recognize yourself in
this article, my book is
dedicated to you. ♥

​Click the image to purchase it.

​And here’s something I shared with an incredibly brave and committed young mom in my Clean Parenting™ Program today. A bit of insight from a mom who’s made it through parenting and done loads of emotional healing work. This may apply to you as well if you’re resonated with this article so far:

“It is mind boggling to me what you've been able to do, given your history. You are incredibly strong, courageous and wise. I see in you something that a therapist has called in me a drive to wholeness. Even though we never received what we're trying to give our children, and even though we came from shit, a part of us for some reason knows what's possible. Has a vision or at least an inkling of what's whole and right, and we will not stop until we find it.
 
It's not an easy journey. We fall, lose it, go into depression. And then we somehow find our strength, fight, make headway, and release some of the baggage. 

Something I accepted in the past 2 years is that this is just my life journey. I'll likely never have the smooth, peaceful and reliably productive life I long for. Because of my past and because I'm an HSP (highly sensitive person,) those ups and downs are par for the course for me. Accepting it and being compassionate to myself, and cutting myself lots of slack when those lows happen has removed some of the edge of the pain for me.

But what I'm also seeing is that over the years, huge layers of baggage are dropping away. Every year, I realize that something that used to be painful, triggered me, or left me in a fog of confusion no longer has any impact on me. I'm growing more into myself. And as I work through all this shit, I develop a clarity that only comes from having intimately experienced something and made it through, which then helps me help other people.

I predict really amazing things for you, my friend. No, it won't be easy. But do what you can to make it as easy on yourself as possible. I can tell you that once you've made it through enough of this crap you're pulling yourself out of, the rewards, the self-connection, the beauty of real connections, the deep satisfaction of living from your truth, the exhilaration of freedom from lifelong baggage, are feelings unlike any others I've experienced.”
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WANT SUPPORT? I offer several programs to support moms both in parenting in alignment with their values, and in healing the trauma from their childhood. If you're interested in working with me, email me at [email protected], and we'll schedule a free 30 minute Strategy Session.

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