Breaking the Cycle: A Reflection on Family, Abuse, and Choosing Peace

There comes a moment in every life when silence becomes too heavy to carry. Not because we owe anyone an explanation, but because speaking the truth—gently, clearly, and without bitterness—can be a way of reclaiming our own story. My story spans generations. It begins with my father, and it continues with my eldest daughter, with whom I eventually made the painful decision to go no contact. These choices were not made in anger. They were made in clarity. They were made in self‑preservation. And they were made with the hope that the cycle of harm might finally end with me.

Where the Pattern Began

I grew up in a home shaped by fear, volatility, and emotional instability. My father was a man who carried his own unhealed wounds, and those wounds became the lens through which he parented. His anger was unpredictable and often explosive. I still carry the physical scars from those years—reminders of moments when rage was taken out on my body instead of anyone taking responsibility for their behavior.

I remember being slammed against a closet door my senior year of high school, his hands around my throat. I remember the belt buckle that struck my shin so hard it chipped the bone. I remember being punished for things as trivial as not folding clothes perfectly or taking too long to wash dishes. And I remember the silence afterward—the way no one spoke of it, the way the world pretended nothing had happened.

These memories are not shared for sympathy. They are shared because they shaped me. They taught me what harm looks like. They taught me what silence can cost. And they taught me, even as a child, that I wanted something different for my own children.

How the Pattern Repeated

But cycles do not break simply because we wish them to. They repeat when the people who carry them refuse to acknowledge their part in the harm. My eldest daughter grew up surrounded by adults who projected their own failings onto me. She watched her father neglect me. She heard both grandmothers speak harshly about me. She heard my own parents do the same. She absorbed a chorus of voices that painted me as the problem, the flaw, the scapegoat.

Children believe the adults around them. They have no filter for manipulation, no internal compass strong enough to override the stories they are fed. When a child hears the same narrative repeated by multiple adults, it becomes easier to adopt the lie than to question it. It becomes easier to blame the person everyone else blames than to examine the behavior of the adults doing the talking.

My daughter learned to see me through the distorted lens handed to her. And eventually, she reenacted the very patterns she had witnessed.

Seeing It Clearly

A few years ago, after two serious accidents, I stayed with my daughter for about six months while I healed. I am genuinely grateful for the roof over my head during that time. But living with her also opened my eyes to the way she treated others. I saw firsthand the volatility, the hostility, the way the entire household braced itself the moment her car pulled into the driveway. We all felt it—that tightening in the air, that instinctive cringe that comes when you know chaos is about to walk through the door.

One day, I said to her husband—her life partner—that I dreaded her coming home because of the hateful, frantic energy she brought with her. He shrugged and said, “It’s no big deal. I’m used to it.”

My response was simple: “No one should be used to being abused.”

But he couldn’t see it. Or perhaps he had lived with it so long that he no longer recognized it as abuse at all. That moment clarified something for me: when dysfunction becomes normal, people stop questioning it. They stop imagining that life could be different.

And I realized that the cycle I had tried so hard to break had found its way into another generation.

Choosing Distance, Not Hatred

My decision to go no contact with my daughter was not an act of punishment. It was an act of protection—of my spirit, my peace, and my future. I cannot save someone who refuses to see the truth. I cannot heal someone who reenacts the very patterns that harmed me. I cannot sacrifice my well‑being to maintain a relationship built on manipulation and cruelty.

People often respond to stories like mine with, “I want to hear both sides,” as though abuse is a matter of perspective. As though the scars on my body are open to interpretation. As though the man who choked me, beat me, and terrorized me becomes harmless simply because he grew old. Age does not erase accountability. Time does not rewrite history.

The same is true for my daughter. Her pain does not justify her cruelty. Her inherited wounds do not give her permission to inflict new ones. Understanding where her behavior came from does not require me to endure it.

Love With Boundaries

I share this not to reopen wounds, but to clarify why I stepped away—from my father, and later, from my daughter. I still love my daughter. That love has not disappeared. But love does not require proximity. Love does not require enduring abuse. Love can exist from a distance, and boundaries can coexist with compassion.

I pray that someday she will find her way back to herself. I pray she will see through the lies she inherited. I pray she will choose healing over projection, accountability over blame, and compassion over cruelty. Whether she does or not is her journey, not mine.

The Cycle Ends Here

What I know is this: I have chosen truth over illusion, healing over repetition, and peace over chaos. I have broken the cycle that began with my father and echoed through my daughter. And I will not apologize for choosing a life that honors my worth, my safety, and my hard‑won clarity.

The cycle ends with me. And that is an act of love—both for myself and for the generations that follow.