Break Every Chain? The Challenge of Ending Generational Curses

We often pride ourselves on talking about the importance of “breaking general curses”. There is often a chorus of “amens” and clapping that come when we discuss how harmful familial patterns of toxic relationships, abuse, and dishonesty can be.

Many people go to therapy to address the impact of such family legacies on their own relationships and view of self.

While many others find themselves as another link in the family defective chain, struggling to figure out why they just cannot seem to cut it

Yet, the actual process of ending family patterns of dysfunction although important, is not often encouraged.

Although destructive, chaotic ways in which the family has existed, still allowed them to exist (however poorly that is defined) — — -and the normalization of “the pain we know” often results in backlash on the one who dares to not just shine a light in the dark spaces of family secrets and trauma, but who also insists on speaking on it, and finding solutions that will result in the next generation thriving instead of merely surviving.

Know this, in taking on the challenge of confronting and resolving “the family business”, there are many barriers that will try and block your path.

1. Prepare for the isolation-the family will fight to protect the toxic status quo. At times, the way that this has been maintained is by ostracizing those who seek to expose it. You will be lonely. You will find that there will be “threats” that you will “no longer be family”, if you go on this journey

2. Minimization and denial are the standard-When one resides in filth or garbage, the smell, although still there — -no longer is deemed as “bad” and it may not be noticeable. The same is true for abusive family systems — -many become “noseblind” to the trauma and will view your acknowledgement of the severity of it as being out of proportion or will simply deny that the abusive interactions are such

3. You will be attacked — when someone feels threatened, going on the defensive is a natural reaction. Your motivation for opening the doors (and windows) on the problems within the family will be met with questioning your motivation, insistence that you are trouble, and occasionally violence.

4. The flowers for “righting” the family wrongs are not coming anytime soon — -your own generation (and definitely the ones before) will not praise you for this work. At times, it is because they are struggling to adjust to what healthy looks like. At other times, they are still fighting to return to the “chaos they know”. The family state did not develop in one generation, and it will take several to fully move towards healthy. You may not even be there to witness the fruit of your labor

5. Redefining family may occur-There may be those that you realize just do not deserve your emotional labor, because you are realizing that, on some level, you also got used to not fully breathing. Now that you know the life you have been living, you may come to the realization that every family member cannot take this walk with you. You may also decide that you want to design your own family system comprised of friends, colleagues, and others with whom you can have a fully reciprocal and satisfying relationship

In spite of all of this, remember it is worth it.

It is worth it to not pass on emotional, sexual, or physical abuse

It is worth it to develop a culture of honesty and transparency

It is worth it to know that the next generation will have it better than the ones before

It is worth it to redefine existing by “Speaking into existence” a family system that does not leave those within it traumatized

It is worth it to push for the chains of unstable, harmful, destructive family patterns to be broken

Break every chain, Sis.

Dr. Dent is a licensed psychologist. Her hardest job is being a Black Woman who centers the experiences of Black women and girls. She works diligently to assist others in confronting and breaking generational curses. She hopes to leave her own family system better than she found it. Make sure to “Like” her Facebook page (@DrTyffani) and listen to her on the Centering Sisters Videocast on Facebook Live (@CenteringSisters) and on Youtube