Robin Stevens Payes

Looking closely at my grandparents’ story, I could see the ways that their fear had been passed down to my mother. While they never discussed stories of the “old country” or the dangers they escaped, my mother had learned this survival lesson: success meant fitting in. I began seeing the ways in which I had inherited it, too. I grew up walking on eggshells, worried that my mother might sulk if I didn’t live up to her expectations. When my brother chose his own path, my mother renounced him. Meanwhile, I shaped my life to be the child who would make her proud. In grappling with my own multi-generational trauma, I began asking myself, how do we examine these negative patterns and break them?...