Sculpture Reflected in a Shop Window

Now, it’s normal.

While I’m always aware of how my words might impact my career goals, nowadays, you can mostly talk about mental health without fear.

As a “X-ennial,” the rarest of the generational labels, born on the cusp between Gen-X and Millennials, I grew up having open conversations about mental health.

However, it’s only recently that I’ve come to understand the concept of generational trauma and it how it impacts the way I think about those conversations.

I’ve realized that the issues I’m dealing with aren’t just the result of my own experiences, but also the cumulative effective of traumatic events passed down through generations before me.

I can always feel the weight of my family’s history on my shoulders.

It’s not easy to face the reality of generational trauma, especially when there’s nothing you can do to change the past.

But I’ve found that acknowledging this aspect of my life, of my experience on Earth while I’m alive on it, is an important step toward my journey of self-actualization.

By recognizing the ways that my life is inseparable from the lives of my ancestors, I can begin to unpack the huge weight of those complex emotions—and the behaviors that extend from them—passed down to me.

It takes patience. It takes compassion.

But, in the end, it’s about healing and (god willing and the creek don’t rise) it’s about breaking the cycle of toxicity for future generations.