The Courage to Break Cycles
One of the most frequent requests I receive after Branch Out coaching sessions and retreats is for more opportunities to connect and build community around the topics that surface during our work together. There’s such beauty and power in gathering with people who share similar values, who seek growth, and who long for meaningful connection.
While a few times a year, I co-host intimate themed dinners with my dear friend and fellow coach Elisabeth to do just that, I’ve long wanted to bring the Branch Out community together in a more ongoing way. For a while, I couldn’t quite see what the focus should be. But recently, it became clear. It had been right in front of me all along.
Across my sessions and events, one common thread keeps emerging: cycle breaking. Whether I’m supporting parents who want to stop passing on inherited pain to their children, or adult children learning to set boundaries and heal old family dynamics, almost everyone I work with is uncovering patterns that keep old cycles alive and learning how to release them with compassion.
In the end, this is the work that allows us to reconnect with our most authentic selves, creating space for our children and those around us to do the same.
A Space for Reflection, Connection, and Shared Healing
So this is it! On November 6, I’m introducing The Healing Roots Circle, a space for growth, connection, and shared healing. And it’s completely free, because I want this opportunity to be accessible to as many of you as possible. You’ll find all the details here, and if you feel called to join, please reserve your spot soon, as our first circle is already filling up. Depending on interest, I’ll open additional small groups to keep the experience personal, warm, and intimate.
In that same spirit, I’m thrilled to share something very close to my heart, the very first Branch Out Journal. Think of it as your companion for releasing what was never yours and creating what is. It’s a beautiful gift for yourself or someone you love this holiday season. It’s an invitation to awaken to the patterns you’ve inherited, release what no longer serves you, and create a legacy rooted in presence, compassion, and freedom.
What It Means to Be a Cycle Breaker
Now, let’s talk about the theme of cycle breaking that has been so present for me lately. What it really means to be a cycle breaker, and why I’m so passionate about this work.
A cycle breaker is someone who recognizes an unhealthy pattern in their family of origin and consciously chooses to end it. These people amaze me. They are not only freeing themselves but also freeing future generations from carrying the same pain. It truly ends with them.
For many of us, family is both a source of love and of deep challenge. And like all challenges, it can become a place of profound growth and learning. We grow up longing for closeness and wholeness, often mistaking that longing for the hope that others will meet us exactly as we need. In childhood, our protective self (the ego) steps in to help us feel safe and connected. We try our best: by adjusting, overachieving, pleasing, giving more than we have, or even rebelling. These are simply the ways we’ve reached for love and belonging. Yet so often, what we receive may look like connection on the surface but is shaped by unmet needs and inherited limitations. Still, our hearts persist, longing, reaching, doing their best to find love that feels unconditional.
For others, especially parents who want to stop passing on inherited pain, this awareness can bring up deep feelings of shame and helplessness. You may not like the way you’re showing up, yet you don’t know how to stop the cycle. Or, in trying to give your children what you didn’t receive, you may end up overprotecting or parenting from fear and lack, rather than from presence and compassion, leaving you feeling frustrated or even defeated.
The truth is, what’s needed most isn’t more striving or perfection, but courage to go to the very pain you’ve avoided, the pain that once felt too overwhelming to face. Because that pain holds the key, it’s the doorway to healing, and the place that unlocks the patterns you’ve been trying so hard to break.
Sometimes this awareness leads to redefined family dynamics, relationships that feel fragile or one-sided, and at times, it can even mean navigating estrangement or emotional distance. Family patterns can take many forms:
Bending and conforming to preserve harmony or the image of a perfect family
Gossiping disguised as “confidentiality”
Staying silent in the face of bullying or oppression
Tolerating mistreatment or disrespect to keep the peace
Saying “yes” when the heart is clearly saying “no”
Every time you choose differently, you end a cycle.
The Paradox of Healing
But here’s the painful paradox of breaking cycles: choosing your truth can look like rejection to those still inside the pattern. The story can easily be twisted, painting the cycle breaker as the problem while the deeper issues remain unseen. The greatest heartbreak often isn’t the setting of the boundary itself; it’s the ripple it creates. The loss of closeness with those who once felt safe, the silence where connection used to be, the fading of relationships that once felt foundational. Yet even within this rupture lies a hidden gift, for it often becomes the very catalyst that awakens us to growth, self-inquiry, and the courage to honor ourselves with healthy boundaries.
These are the moments that test us. Do we betray ourselves to preserve the image of harmony or to pretend all is fine? Or do we stand in our truth, risking misunderstanding, distance, or discomfort, while staying rooted in our dignity and self-respect?
This is the essence of cycle breaking. It is saying no to mistreatment, bullying, disrespect, and unhealthy dynamics and patterns. It is refusing to perform for the comfort of others while your own heart goes unseen. And it is realizing, perhaps painfully, that protecting your wholeness is not rejection; it is love in its truest form.
The Phases of Breaking a Cycle
Cycle breaking is a process, not a single moment. It moves through phases:
Awakening, when we begin to notice something feels off and we start naming the patterns.
Releasing, when we grieve and let go of what no longer serves us.
Restoring, when we return to our essence and rebuild trust with ourselves.
Repatterning, when we learn new ways of relating.
Integration, when the new becomes our natural way of being.
Each phase calls for tenderness, compassion, and care, especially for the younger parts of us who once had no choice but to carry what was never theirs.
And here lies the deeper gift: when we choose freedom, the next generation no longer has to carry what we carried. Our children get to grow up free of burdens that were never meant to be theirs. They don’t have to inherit the unspoken pain of generations past. Because we reclaim our freedom to live as ourselves, they, too, get to live as their true selves.
When we choose to heal, we do it not only for ourselves but for those who came before us and those who will come after.
This is what makes cycle breaking sacred work. It’s an act of courage, of love, and of deep responsibility to life itself. Each boundary, each moment of awareness, each act of self-compassion plants a seed of freedom that will keep growing long after us.
May this season invite you to pause, to listen to what your heart is ready to release, and to honor the part of you that is choosing a new story.
For yourself, your children, and generations to come.
