End-of-Summer As Growth Metaphor

Someone sent me an image the other day that said something like, “If you’re not breaking toxic cycles, you’re perpetuating them.”

I love it when shit is direct and clear like that.

That sentiment is also factually accurate; if we’re not doing one, we are indisputably doing the other.

It’s important to remember that cyclebreaking, like all things, works its way through us in waves. We can’t and won’t and shouldn’t and aren’t built to be in Active + Alert + Engaged CycleBreaking-At-All-Times mode. Hypervigilance isn’t healthy long-term, and the quiet times are an essential growth period for many of us who are engaged in the often-grueling minute-by-minute process that is cyclebreaking.

What I’m saying here is: you’re not not cyclebreaking if you’re taking time to enjoy yourself. Or if you decide you simply don’t have the emotional reserves to engage with your family again about that same thing again right now. Keeping yourself going is an essential part of breaking intergenerational trauma long-term; we can’t break cycles that took generations to build by driving ourselves into the ground.

This pep talk is brought to you by someone who forgets the above approximately every single summer. The lack of structure, the inconsistent schedule, the desire to provide constant fun and memories while needing to also have money to buy groceries – all of these things toss me into a sea of internal turmoil every June-August, and this one has been no different.

In an effort to control and manage my experience of the world this summer have, at varying intervals: unfollowed every single person I followed on Instagram, started a secret account so I can follow people I’m confused about being intrigued by (see: beauty accounts and God-loving Southern women who say “y’all” a lot and make me dream of being a preppy gal in gingham and sensible designer flip flops), come this close to deleting my Insta profile all together and “starting over”, decided I should abandon my ever-growing coaching business because I’m not independently wealthy and working from a beach yet, consumed a fresh-squeezed carrot/ginger/orange/turmeric juice and assumed it would fix everything, said, “No, just hear me out…” to my bestie as she smiled and tolerated listening to my sound and (I thought) convincing plan to “rebrand” myself as an Emotional Health Lifestyle Blogger a la those Southern belles who seem to have it all figured out.

Loves, I’m a dumpster fire when it comes to willingly accepting that not every season is the season of Extreme Action in Cyclebreaking – that some seasons are the Mellow + Restorative ones. This could be my forever work – who can really say. Good thing I’ll have this essay to reference next summer when I feel compelled to blow up my whole life in an effort to feel like I’m doing something, dammit.

x.