Walking a New Path: Breaking Free from the Pattern of Generational Trauma
How I Chose a Different Legacy for Myself—and My Children
Introduction: The Street and the Spell
Portia Nelson wrote a poem called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters. When I head it read on PBS by Wayne Dyer, it not only moved me, it made me aspire to have it also become my autobiography because it reflects an emotional journey that lasts throughout one’s life. It’s the journey of a hero. I am including the poem below:
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
II.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I still don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
It isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, I still fall in.
It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am.
I get out immediately.
IV.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V.
I walk down a different street.
Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery
Like Portia Nelson, I have fallen into the same hole repeatedly. Lacking a strong sense of self, I became over-accommodating, hypersensitive to others' moods, terrified of abandonment, and convinced that my very presence was the problem. But what I’ve come to realize is this: the hole was dug long before I ever walked into it. And my ancestors fell into it just like me. Now, after years of painful repetition and deep reflection, I am finally learning to make the same decision as Portia Nelson, walk down a different street. Each chapter in Nelson’s poem marks not just a moment — but a mindset. I’ve lived each one. Here’s how they’ve unfolded in my own life.
Chapter I: Inheriting the Hole
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost…. I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.
I didn’t grow up with emotional safety. My mother—wounded, volatile, and overwhelmed—used me to soothe her pain. She demanded that I only focus on how she felt, at the expense of my own feelings, until I reached the point when I learned to become detached to my feelings, my wants, and my needs. I learned early that love was conditional, fragile, and rooted in fear of being abandoned.
The person I looked to for guidance, looked at me with disgust. Instead of being nurtured and loved, I was an object of hatred from her projections onto me, projections from her own unhealed childhood wounds which she never dealt with properly. I became her mirror instead of her child. And she kept me dependent, doing things for me to enhance her own self-esteem, while undermining my own. The message I internalized? You are only safe if your needs don’t exist. You are only safe if you are trying to soothe your mother’s emotions and trying to fulfill her emotional needs. You need to stay small. You need to stay what she needs you to be. And so I fell into the first hole: a deep confusion about who I was, what my needs were, and what love was supposed to feel like.
“Instead of being nurtured and loved, I was an object of hatred from her projections onto me, projections from her own unhealed childhood wounds which she never dealt with properly.”
Chapter II: Falling Again
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I still don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. It isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
I fell down the same hole of emotional abuse when I fell in love as a young man. Once real intimacy began to form, I found myself in a relationship where nothing I did was ever good enough. I found myself terrified of being abandoned. I kept trying to change—to mold myself into who she wanted me to be. But the more I changed, the more it reinforced the cycle, which was submitting to the control of another. Because that is what I had been programmed to do since childhood, to serve her emotional needs at the expense of my own. My mother’s unhealed trauma had turned me into someone who feared saying no, into someone afraid to take up space. Into a man disconnected from his core. That’s identity damage. And I didn’t know who I was outside of the people I tried to please.
Chapter III: Seeing the Hole
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there, I still fall in. It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am. I get out immediately.
Although I did not realize it at the time, looking back on my college experience, I suffered greatly from undiagnosed anxiety and depression. It became worse with time, and after college, my mental health challenges became overwhelming. After a year of living on my own, I decided to move back home and live with my mother, hoping that this time would be different. But why? Why go back to someone who had hurt me so deeply?
Because emotionally, I was still that child, waiting to be nurtured. Hoping that if I could be good enough, quiet enough, loyal enough—I would finally be loved. Finally be seen. Finally be safe. I still believed the woman who hurt me could one day heal me. But instead of being healed, I experienced the same dynamic of controlling behaviors, emotional instability and emotional abuse that I had grown up with.
“I didn’t feel like a partner. I felt like a boy again — trying to manage someone else’s emotions, walking on eggshells, trying not to fail. It wasn’t a relationship of equals. Instead, I felt like a slave to a tyrant.”
Once I was home, my mother made it very difficult for me to move out again and get my own place. She would tell me, “You’ll never make it on your own.” And she would mock me with sarcasm saying, “Who’s going to take care of those things, you?” implying that I was not capable of handling anything independently. And when I finally moved into my own apartment, I felt ripped in half. As if we had shared the same emotional center. As if part of me had died. That wasn’t just heartbreak. That was the rupture of a self I never had the chance to fully form.
Eventually when I fell in love again and married, I found myself having a partner who was similar to my mother. As time went on, the same dynamic repeated. I didn’t feel like a partner. I felt like a boy again — trying to manage someone else’s emotions, walking on eggshells, trying not to fail. It wasn’t a relationship of equals. Instead, I felt like a slave to a tyrant. I inadvertently fell into the same hole, where I was completely controlled, always responding to her ideas about what is best for us, rather than leading with my own.
What is even more painful, is that I didn’t really notice the pattern in my life until the end of my marriage. And when I left my wife, it was a similar response to when I moved away from my mother. I was attacked. Again I heard, “You’ll never make it without me.” But recognizing the pattern didn’t mean I had failed. It meant I was finally seeing clearly.
Chapter IV: Choosing a New Pattern
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
For a long time I was determined to stay married, no matter what. My parents had divorced, and I did not want my own children to go through the pain and confusion which I had experienced. Plus, my daughter has special needs, and I believed the financial stability from having parents who were married was important for her. But what made me decide to leave was being frequently undermined in front of our children. My ex-wife saw herself as the primary parent, She didn’t see me as a father. She saw me as another child. I thought, “Can I really keep this marriage going when my own children are witnessing their father be continuously eviscerated? What legacy am I leaving for my children? How will this affect them in their own adult relationships? Leaving wasn’t just for me — it was for them. Because the legacy I pass down begins with how I allow myself to be treated. And so I decided that it had to end. That moment wasn’t just a parenting decision. It was the first time I chose self-respect over self-erasure.
“Leaving wasn’t just for me — it was for them. Because the legacy I pass down begins with how I allow myself to be treated.”
After my divorce I realized how deeply broken I really was. I began to realize that if I didn’t change something in myself — in how I saw love, how I valued myself, and what I accepted in relationships — I would keep falling forever. Because I kept reliving the same pattern from my childhood, I decided to stop dating. I needed to fill the hole before I could expect a different outcome, so I could break the pattern. Even after years of therapy, years of practicing yoga. of reading books on personal development, I still had that hole within me.
I’m still working on myself, with gentleness and compassion. And I am getting better. I am finally seeing the hole from far away. Now I see the signs sooner. I recognize when someone’s approval feels too important. When I’m over-accommodating. When I’m shrinking to avoid conflict. I breathe. I pause. I choose differently. It’s not perfect. But it’s conscious. And that’s everything.
Chapter V: Planting Something New
I walk down a different street.
A New Street, A New Legacy: Can you be a good enough parent even while you're still healing? I believe it's not only possible — it's necessary. I'm doing that very thing. Healing is a lifelong journey, but I’ve chosen to walk a different path than the generations before me. My children will not fall into the hole dug by trauma, dysfunction, and silence. Not if I can help it.
I choose to model self-acceptance, kindness, boundaries, and emotional regulation. I choose to step out of the role my mother needed me to play — and into the role God is calling me to become: someone who plants seeds of love, strength, and truth in the soil of my children’s lives.
I want my children to know their worth. I don’t want them to trade their needs for someone else’s approval. I want them to trust their voice, to stand in their truth, to love themselves fully — not because someone else completes them, but because they are already whole. That’s how cycles end. That’s how generational healing begins.
“I choose to step out of the role my mother needed me to play — and into the role God is calling me to become: someone who plants seeds of love, strength, and truth in the soil of my children’s lives.”
The Hole We Carry: They say our reality mirrors our beliefs — about ourselves, about love, about the world. The hole we keep falling into isn’t just in the sidewalk. It’s the one left inside us when our emotional needs weren’t met. It’s the echo of a wound that whispers, “I’m unlovable. I’m not enough. I’m broken.”
So yes — I want my children to walk down a different street. But it’s not enough to avoid the hole. The deeper work is learning how to fill it. Because the truth is: as long as there’s a hole in the heart, we’ll keep seeking pain that feels familiar. We’ll keep reenacting what we never healed. We’ll keep falling in. Until we stop. Until we fill that hollow space with truth, compassion, and conscious love. Until we remember we are — and always were — worthy of something better. Healing isn’t about pretending the hole was never there - it’s about transforming it into something lifegiving. And to do that, we have to recognize the divine seed that we have within, and plant it in the hole left by our ancestors. That is how we can go from buried to blooming.
Parenting the Inner Child: Children are a gift from God, a gift which allows us to nurture them, while at the same time, allowing us to nurture our own inner child. We can be loving to our children. But when we are behaving in those old patterns, we can stop, question, and reflect on our thought process, on our behavior. We can ask ourselves, am I behaving like the parent I wish that I had, like a parent who listens to my needs, who is attuned to how I feel? Because as adults it is possible to do that not only for our children, but for ourselves. That’s how we can fill the hole. That’s how we can break the cycle. And from that place, I write. I reflect. I share. I create stories for others who are waking up to the potholes of their past — and who are finally ready to walk a different road.
“Children are a gift from God, a gift which allows us to nurture them, while at the same time, allowing us to nurture our own inner child.”
I am reminded of Kahlil Gibran’s deep respect for children from his book The Prophet when he says, “ Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.” A child’s soul is not something we can own. It is divine—just like the unhealed child within you. Be gentle to it. Remember where it comes from.
🌱 A Sacred Invitation
If any part of this speaks to you — if you’ve felt the ache of repetition, the sting of enmeshment, or the quiet triumph of finally seeing the pattern — I want you to know: You’re not alone. And you’re not stuck. You are not the person you were when you fell in. You are the one climbing out. The one choosing to walk forward. Maybe, like me, you’re ready for Chapter Five. Let’s walk that new street together.
You're warmly invited to share your reflections on my Facebook page, where we’re building a thoughtful, supportive space for open and healing conversation. If this post resonates with you, please feel free to share it with your network — and tag someone who might be walking a similar path. Your voice matters.
Let’s keep the conversation going on Instagram @transcendencepress and Twitter/X @corey_wolff, where we’re creating a community rooted in courage, compassion, and conscious change. Because healing happens not just through insight — but through connection. Through telling our stories.Through being heard, not with judgment, but with presence and grace. You’re not falling anymore. You’re rising.🌱
