Episode 110: You’re the Cycle Breaker. So Now What?

If you say you want to raise emotionally healthy, grounded kids—but you’re not doing your own healing work—this episode is your sacred wake-up call.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about power.

Because what we choose not to heal, we unintentionally pass on.

In this firecracker solo episode, Pam dives deep into the uncomfortable but necessary truth:
If we don’t face our wounds, our children will carry them.
And if we keep waiting for the “perfect time” to do this work—we’ll miss the moment our soul is ready.

Inside this 15-minute hit of heart and truth, you’ll hear:
✨ Why unhealed patterns don’t disappear—they echo
✨ The sacred choice point we’re being asked to face as the world shifts
✨ What it means to be the cycle breaker in your family line
✨ A loving but bold invitation to stop waiting and start healing
✨ How to know who’s coming with you into your next chapter—and who you may need to set down

This is the episode you might want to turn off halfway through…
But trust us—you’ll want to lean in.

Because your healing?
It doesn’t just change your life—it changes your lineage.

🔗 Ready to take the next step?
Join Pam inside Living CALM—the nervous system-centered parenting and healing program for moms of big-feeling kids (ages 7–16).

Living CALM link here

📩 Loved this episode? Screenshot it, share it to IG and tag @ParentingTherapistPam! Let’s keep breaking the cycle—together.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your kids is effectively regulate your nervous system. And a great place to start >> to wire the brain for gratitude. Research tells us that gratitude increases happiness and a peaceful mindset. Make the shift and watch how things in your life start to change. Sign up today! www.pamgodbois.com/gratitude

Transcript

Pamela: 1:03

So I wanna start this episode a little differently today. Imagine this scene, your child, 10, maybe 12 years old, is sitting across from a therapist in 15 years, unraveling a lifetime of people pleasing. They're working to rebuild their confidence. After years of perfectionism, they're trying to reclaim their voice, their identity, their nervous system, and somewhere in that conversation they say. Yeah. I love my mom. She did her best, but she was always so anxious or angry or tired or checked out. I never really knew what version of her I was gonna get. That's the moment I want you to sit with. Not to scare you, but to wake you, because if you don't choose to heal, your kids will have to do it. I say that with all the love in the world, but also all the urgency. What you choose not to address. Your anxiety, your rage, your guilt, your emotional shutdown becomes, the energy your children have to navigate, metabolize, and recover from. And I know that's not what you want for them. You're here, you're listening. You want to break the cycle, but it's not enough to want that wanting without action still passes on the pain. And I know you might be saying, but I'm trying, Pam, I'm surviving. I'm keeping it together. I see you. I feel you. And now it's time to shift from surviving to healing because you didn't come here to pass down trauma in prettier packaging. You came here to transform it. Let's get real. Most of us weren't raised with emotionally available parents. We were raised with parents who were doing their best, but were overwhelmed, overstressed, or emotionally shut down. Some of us had parents who yelled. Others had parents who went silent. Some had parents who ignored hard feelings, laughed them off, or made us feel weak for even having them. Maybe love was conditional. Maybe affection only came when you performed. When you got the grade made, the team acted right, looked presentable, didn't cause trouble. So we learned early whether it was spoken or just absorbed energetically. My feelings are too much. My needs are inconvenient. My job is to be easy, pleasant, helpful, good, and listen. That stuff runs deep without even realizing it, we internalize this idea that our worth is directly tied to how well we suppress, how quiet we can be, how much we can tolerate without breaking. So we become adults who push through exhaustion, smile while suffering, say fine when we're not, and apologize for needing anything. We became adults who pour from an empty cup, who take care of everyone else while abandoning ourselves, and then we wonder why we're angry, anxious, exhausted, why we lose our patients over things that feel small. Why we feel numb in moments that are supposed to feel good. Why our kids' big feelings send us over the edge. This is the cost of carrying unhealed wounds. And here's the part that gets me every time our kids are watching all of it, even when we think we're hiding it. Even when we think they're not paying attention, they're watching how you speak to yourself after a mistake. They're watching how you react when plans change. They're watching how you crumble under pressure or mask your pain with a joke or shut down when it's too much. And because they're little meaning making machines, they start building their blueprint. This is how I'm supposed to act when I'm sad. This is what love looks like. This is how to treat myself when I mess up. That is the inheritance, not the one you meant to leave, but the one that gets passed down. If we don't interrupt the pattern and hear me when I say this, you are not to blame for the ways you've coped, for the ways that you've been surviving, but now that you see it, you get to change it because what if your healing. Became their foundation. What if instead of handing down patterns of silence, self abandonment and shame, you gave your kids a map to wholeness. What if your work now meant they never had to sit across from a therapist 20 years from now untangling the emotional mess you never felt safe to face? What if instead? They sat in that room and said, yeah, my mom, she wasn't perfect, but she did the work. She taught me how to feel, how to rest, how to take up space, how to choose myself. That's the power you hold, and I know it can feel like pressure, but I want you to see it as permission. Permission to stop performing. Permission to stop waiting. Permission to stop pretending that doing it all is what makes you a good mom. To start choosing healing for you, for them, and for everyone who comes after, because this doesn't have to be how the story ends. You get to change the narrative, not later now, and you don't have to do it alone. The world is shifting, and whether you're into astrology energy work or just noticing how nothing feels the same anymore, you can feel it. Things are speeding up. Truth is rising. What's no longer aligned is falling away. Relationships, jobs, roles, identities, old stories. The old way of parenting, the ones built on obedience, fear, and because I said so, they're crumbling. The old way of coping, overworking, numbing, self-sacrificing, dismissing your needs, crumbling. The old ways of womanhood where we shrink, stay small, hold it all together with a smile while dying inside, cracking open, and it's not just happening out there, it's happening inside of you. You're feeling the friction, the pressure, the ache for something realer. You're seeing your old habits and wondering, why am I still doing this? Why am I still carrying this? You're noticing how the mask feels heavier. How the noise feels louder. How your soul is whispering. This isn't it, because it's not. You're being called, not nudged, not suggested, but called to wake up, to step out of autopilot, to stop performing perfection and start reclaiming your truth. And this right here is your choice point. This is the fork in the road moment where you ask yourself, who am I becoming in this next chapter? What parts of me have been clinging to survive for far too long, just out of habit, not because they're working. What patterns have I chalked up to? Just how I am when really they're just old wounds. I've never given myself the space to heal, and maybe the biggest one of all. Who am I taking with me on this sacred healing journey, and who or what am I gently, lovingly setting down? That might mean releasing certain relationships that no longer support your growth. It might mean setting down identities that were based on who others needed you to be, not who you really are. It might mean walking away from roles, responsibilities, and expectations that made you feel valuable. Cost you your truth. That's not selfish. That's sacred discernment because you can't carry the weight of the world and your healing. At the same time, you are allowed to lay things down. You are allowed to say, this gets to change. I am no longer available for pain driven living. I choose to evolve whether or not they understand it. You are allowed to want peace without having to earn it. You're allowed to want joy, even if you've never seen it modeled. You're allowed to rewrite every story that told you you had to suffer to be worthy. You are not becoming someone new. You're remembering who you were before the world told you who to be. And no, not everyone will understand. Not everyone will clap. Not everyone will come with you, but this is your life, your legacy, your healing. You don't owe anyone the old version of you just because they're comfortable with her. You owe yourself the truth and that truth is rising right now. Okay, so now what? You are, the cycle breaker. You feel it in your bones. You are the one who sees the patterns. Who wants to raise emotionally healthy, grounded, connected kids? It may be for the first time in your life, you're realizing no one is coming to do this work for you. This, this is your sacred work, not because you have to be perfect, not because you have to fix yourself, but because you finally understand that healing starts with you and ripples through everything and everyone you touch. So let's get honest again. Are you waiting for some perfect moment to begin? Are you telling yourself once things calm down, once the kids are older, once I have more time or energy or space, here's the truth. You already know life won't hand you the perfect moment. There's no neon sign that says this is the week. Your nervous system heals itself. The laundry will still be there. The to-do list will still grow. The mental load isn't going to magically shrink, but you can change. You can choose to stop waiting for your life to settle, and instead start creating this steadiness within yourself. You can decide that this is the moment you begin messy, uncertain, imperfect, but ready. You don't need to heal everything overnight. You don't need to read 12 books or meditate on a mountaintop. You just need to start maybe today. That means saying no to something out of alignment, putting your hand on your heart and whispering. I'm here crying in the car and not apologizing for it. Journaling the truth instead of pretending you're fine. Getting support instead of toughing it out alone. Tiny sacred acts of rebellion against the patterns that told you, be small, be quiet, be perfect, be pleasing. Your nervous system doesn't need more performance and needs presence. Your kids don't need perfection. They need a parent who's willing to do the work and your legacy doesn't get rewritten. In some grand sweeping act, it gets rewritten in the small daily choices to pause, to breathe, to feel, to stay. I'm not inviting you into this work because I think you're broken. I'm inviting you into it because you're ready, because your soul has been whispering for a long time now that there has to be more. And there is, and you don't have to find it alone. That's what Living Calm is for. It's not just a parenting resource or course, it's nervous system work, emotional regulation, reparenting, boundary building, inner healing, and actual tools that live in your body, not just in your head. It's where you learn how to feel again, how to stop passing on the patterns, how to parent your children while also parenting yourself. It's the next right step. If you're ready to stop surviving and start living, and if you're not ready yet, that's okay too. But don't lie to yourself. Don't say it's not the right time. If the truth is you're scared.'cause healing is scary. Change is hard, but so is staying stuck in a pattern that leaves you burnt out and disconnected. You've waited long enough. The world is shifting. You are shifting and this is your invitation to rise. I'll meet you there. So let me say this to you straight from my heart to yours. In case no one has told you lately, you are not behind, you are not broken, you are not too much, you are exactly where you are meant to be. Standing at the edge of the old version of you staring into the possibilities of something new, you are already worthy. Already enough, already powerful, and you are the one your family was waiting for. The one who sees clearly the one who feels deeply, the one who is willing to go first, so no one else has to. You're not here by accident. You didn't stumble on this work. You are here because your soul is ready. Ready to stop surviving. Ready to stop repeating, ready to stop performing, and ready to start healing. And if you are feeling the pull, if your gut is saying, this is it, I'm ready. Then I want to invite you to join us inside Living calm. It's where we do this work together, where we learn to regulate your nervous system, where you stop yelling and start connecting where you clear the guilt, the rage, the exhaustion, and parent from a place of calm, clarity, and self-trust. It's the place where you get to change the story for you, for your children, for everyone who comes after. If this episode cracked something open in you. Share it with someone you love. Talk about it. Don't go back to sleep. And if you're ready to say yes to this sacred work, to your healing journey, to becoming the parent, the person you were always meant to be, I'll meet you inside. Living calm, let's go. Thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you in our next episode. Take care.