Breaking the Chain: Healing Lineage, Holding Legacy | 04.29.2025

Joshua Tree looks like another planet. Giant boulders stacked like forgotten altars, brittle blossoms blooming defiantly from thorny stems, the desert wind humming a truth only the soul can hear. It was Eden’s first national park—dressed in a twirly dress I’d sewn for her, layered with pants I insisted she wear beneath. Not exactly hiking gear, but she was determined to wear something that could spin. And somehow, it fit—her joy, her spirit, her wild refusal to blend in.

We only had a day to play. The kind of day where time folds in on itself and makes everything shimmer with meaning. She was overtired but enchanted, too mesmerized to rest. And honestly, I was too.

Because somewhere between Cholla cactus blooms and stretching a quarter mile loop into 3, I found myself in a conversation with my Uncle Brent—a man whose presence had always felt like a soft place to land in a family full of sharp edges.
Where others in my family move with intensity or fire, Uncle Brent holds a gentle kind of clarity. A quiet you can trust. A jovial spirit you can feel.

We spoke of the family stories—ones I’d heard in fragments, often whispered or cloaked in shame. Of control and codependency. Of unchecked abuse. Of people trapped in unconscious roles, passed down like heirlooms no one ever questioned.

And then, while riding in the car between stops, with Joshua trees flickering past the windows like sentinels, he said it—gently, without drama:

“We always knew you’d be the one to break the chain.”

I didn’t cry. Not right then. We were moving, both literally and figuratively, and his words landed deep—like a seed settling in good soil.
I turned to him and said, “Wow… thank you for seeing that.”
I didn’t need to say more. Because somehow, in that moment, I knew he always had.

Born on the Outside

I used to think something was wrong with me.
That I was too sensitive. Too emotional. Too “different.”
But as Uncle Brent and I talked, I realized: I wasn’t the broken one. I was simply the awakened one. The one who noticed.

I was born into a story scripted by survival.
On both sides of my family, there are tales of abandonment, addiction, abuse.
People who loved in ways that wounded.
People who stayed in patterns because they didn’t know there was another way.
It wasn’t malice—it was inertia.
They were sleepwalkers.

But even in the thick of it, I felt… apart.
Not better, not above. Just aware.
Like I could see the threads being pulled before anyone else noticed the unraveling.

As a little girl, I remember watching adults with the eerie sense that I didn’t quite belong to the world they lived in. That I was in the family, but not of it.
And now I know—that wasn’t disassociation. That was discernment.

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” —Hebrews 11:13

Scripture tells us we are strangers here. Aliens. Citizens of a different Kingdom.
So maybe that feeling of not-belonging wasn’t a wound.
Maybe it was a whisper.
A spiritual homesickness.
A nudge that said: You’re not meant to conform to this. You’re meant to transform it.

And that’s what I’m learning lineage healing really is.
Not about hating the people who hurt us.
Not about cutting off the family tree.
But about becoming grafted into a better one—
one that bears the fruit of heaven, not just the habits of earth.

Eden, and the Pattern I Refuse to Repeat

Before I became a mother, I thought breaking generational cycles would be about big, sweeping decisions.
No contact.
New traditions.
Moving far away.

But I’ve learned it’s subtler than that.
It happens in the soft moments, the mundane ones:
When I get low to Eden’s eye level instead of yelling.
When I choose a deep breath instead of a door slam.
When I soothe her at night and remember that no one did that for me.

Lineage healing happens in the interruptions.
In the space between what was modeled for me and what I now choose.
And it is holy work.
Exhausting, clarifying, painful, redemptive holy work.

Some days I see her—twirling in the garden, silently ‘reading’ to herself, singing off-key—
and I’m pierced by this deep ache.
Not because she’s hard to love.
But because she’s so easy to love—and that reveals all the ways I wasn’t.

It’s jarring, sometimes, to realize how simple it is to offer comfort.
How repair doesn’t require perfection—just presence.
A soft word. A held gaze. A whispered “I’m sorry.”

And it makes me wonder how many adults walk through life never knowing they were lovable all along.
Not because they were too much—
but because the people around them were carrying too much to see clearly.

Cycles do that.
They distort.
They forget.
They pass down pain like an gene no one asked for.

But this—this is my turn to remember.
To return love to its rightful shape.
To make repair feel normal, not revolutionary.

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” —Romans 12:2

Motherhood has become my altar.
The place where I bring all that’s been broken and lay it down.
Not just for Eden.
But for the girl I used to be.
And the daughters born from us down the line.
And for the woman I’m still becoming.

When Someone Names the Work

There’s something about being seen—not for what you do, but for what you carry.
For the invisible weight you’ve chosen to bear so your children don’t have to.
For the work you’ve done in the shadows.
The healing that’s cost you tears, time, tenderness—and faith.

Uncle Brent didn’t say much that day.
He didn’t need to.

He sat with me in the car, quiet and present, as we named the broken stories in our bloodline.
The brother who never found his voice.
The sister whose silence let darkness settle in.
The long stretch of years where dysfunction was mistaken for normalcy.

And his words carried life:

“We always knew you’d be the one to break the chain.”

Not “You’re doing a great job.”
Not “Your daughter is lucky.”
But: You were chosen for this.

Like the desert itself, his words didn’t need embellishment.
They just stood there—bare, true, ancient.
Like a prophecy already fulfilled.

I’ve realized since then that not all validation comes from the ones we expect.
Sometimes the people closest to the pain can’t name the healing when it begins—because it exposes what they’ve buried.

But the outliers, the watchers, the ones who live on the edge of the family story?
They see.
And their words carry weight because they come from beyond the performance.

That moment with Uncle Brent wasn’t just sentimental.
It was spiritual.

It was the voice of God speaking through someone else, confirming what I’ve been carrying in secret:

That this work matters.
That breaking the chain is real.
That the ripple is already reaching backward and forward.

And that healing doesn’t erase what’s come before—
It redeems it.

In Closing…

Later that night, Eden finally gave in to sleep, curled up with Cholla, her new desert rat tucked under her arm, desert dust settled between her toes.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to prove I was doing enough.
I just let myself believe it:

I am the one who broke the chain.

For the Ones Wondering How to Begin

If you’re sensing old patterns in your family—if you feel like the outsider, the too-sensitive one, or the one who sees what others won’t—that may not be a flaw.
It might be your calling.

Start by observing, not judging.
Notice the dynamics. The roles. The lines people repeat without thinking.
Ask yourself, What script is playing out here? And do I want to keep it going?

Lineage healing often begins not with confrontation, but with quiet interruption.
A different response.
A softer tone.
A single breath between trigger and reaction.

That’s what breaks the recursion.
That’s what shifts the inheritance.

You don’t need to fix it all at once.
You don’t need to do it perfectly.
You just need to begin—awake, aware, and willing to choose something new.

This is sacred work.
And if it feels like it’s yours to do…
It probably is.

In love + light,
April