There’s a popular narrative among the newest generation of mothers:
We are cycle breakers.
We are the ones healing generational wounds, doing the work, making different choices for our children.
We are the ones healing generational wounds, doing the work, making different choices for our children.
And while all of that is true, there’s something we don’t talk about enough, we are not the first.
Our mothers, and their mothers before them, were breaking cycles too. Maybe not the ones we needed, or maybe not as many as we hoped, but they were doing the work in ways that were possible for them. They just didn’t talk about it as much. It wasn’t as acceptable. They didn’t have Instagram posts or podcasts to process their struggles out loud. But if you look closely, you may see the ways they tried.
Maybe your mother left an abusive marriage when divorce was still taboo. Maybe she made sure you got an education because no one encouraged her to pursue one. Maybe she spoke up in ways her own mother never dared to. Maybe she was softer than her parents were to her, even if she still carried rough edges.
And here’s the truth: we could not break the cycles we are breaking now if they had not broken cycles first. We are standing on their shoulders, reaching for what they could not. Every change they made, every small rebellion, made it possible for us to go further. Maybe they didn’t get as far as we needed them to, but they moved the needle. Without their courage, without the cracks they made in the foundation, we wouldn’t have the space to break the cycles we are breaking today.
No mother is perfect. No generation will heal everything. But progress doesn’t happen in one sweeping linear motion, it happens step by step, over time, passed down through the hands of imperfect mothers doing their best.
You will break cycles. Your children will break even more. And in 30 years, I hope they look back at your parenting with both gratitude and critique, just as you do now. Our hope is that they do so with empathy, with an understanding that we were standing on the shoulders of the women who came before us, doing what we could with what we had.
Parenting is hard. We will make mistakes. But if we can see our mothers with more compassion, we model for our children how to do the same. We show them that healing isn’t about perfection...it’s about progress, generation by generation.
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