Robin Stevens Payes

Vintage photos

5 Keys To Breaking Generational Patterns

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?...

Robin Stevens Payes

Robin Stevens Payes is the author of four novels for middle grade to YA readers. She offers workshops on storytelling and is in the process of launching a company that focuses on relationship solutions for mothers and their teen daughters. She was founding editor-in-chief of LearnNow, an online publication on the science of learning, and has written for The American Leader, Discovery Education, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She lives around the DC beltway in Maryland.