How I Broke the Generational Curse

By Mustardseed

We all have trials and tribulations to overcome in life. But what if the reasons you keep getting the results you dont want is because of you? We become blocked by our unresolved and unhealed pain, and then we become stuck. Then we keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

How I Broke: The Generational Curse sheds a light on how to identify what is blocking you. It may be an attitude or a belief or a practice that has been passed down to you from your family. The author discovers through her own experience the pain of her family which was passed down and how she healed herself to overcome it and break the curse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524618902

Mustardseed

T.R. Mustardseed resides in Westchester, New York. She has a bachelors degree in speech communication from the University of Maryland and a masters degree from the School of Business at Mercy College. How I Broke: The Generational Curse is her first book and a memoir. T.R. worked in television for many years as a producer. She returned to school and then decided to give back to her community through teaching. How I Broke: The Generational Curse is a book about T.R.s struggle and triumph over things we all have experiencedpain. The book delves into the concept that we can become stuck in life sometimes because we dont have the proper tools to move forward. How I Broke: The Generational Curse examines through the authors eyes how to get out of our own way and become and have all that God and the universe intend for us.

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© 2016 Mustardseed. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/16/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1891-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1890-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911618

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Identify your family’s generational curse

Chapter 2 Make The Connection

Chapter 3 Brokenness And Its Effects

Chapter 4 Connecting The Dots To Heal

Chapter 5 Picking Up The Pieces

Chapter 6 Step Into Your Destiny

Chapter 7 When You know Better, Do Better & Step Out On Faith

Chapter 8 Lessons learned & What I know for sure:

References

Acknowledgments

Each of us has our own journey to take and discover and this book is mine. I wrote this book not out of hate or blame or anger, but out of self-love, self-worth and self–discovery. I started out on this journey to heal the broken pieces within which were passed down, taught and manufactured by my own doing. I wrote this book to be healed and set free.

I would not be alive or in my right mind if it were not for the love and support of the family that God placed in my life. To L.P.-my sister from another mother, you are the sister I never had and always wanted. I truly can’t find powerful enough words to express how much you mean to me. To Doctor Barns, I thank you, I thank you, and I thank you! I thank you for believing in me, never giving up on me and never letting me give up on myself. You are a gift from God! To S.B.my soul-sista, thank you for always being my greatest fan and supporter, your love is a sweet aroma unto God. And to Pastor Morris of the Living Church Of Christ, thank you for being my life line and my strength and thank you for helping to push me into the fullness of my destiny and purpose. The emotional support you have offered me is priceless, you are loved very much! To my niece, I thank you for being the bright star that you are. My love for you has given me clarity in my own life. Your sweet and divine spirit propelled me forward and gave me the courage to step into all that God created me to be and I wish the same for you.

It is the culmination of all my experiences which made me into who I am today. As the late great poet Maya Angelou once said; I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now. I now have a platform to hopefully help others unlock and discover their best selves and truly be who God created them to be!

Lastly, and most of all I thank God for his mighty plan for my life!

Introduction

I tell you the story because I was raised the Chinese way. I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery and to eat my own bitterness even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way-maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl and I was born a girl, all of us stairs, one step after another going up going down but always going the same way. But now this cannot be this not knowing what you are worth-this not begin with you-my mother not know her worth until too late-too late for her not for me-now we will see if not too late for you.

The Joy Luck Club, 1993

A Conversation with Rosie and her Mother

CHAPTER ONE

Identify your family’s generational curse

There are many broken people among us living and existing the best they can; they are what I call the walking wounded. Brokenness is a state of being and it doesn’t have one specific look or affect one specific demographic. It affects everyone from all social and economic backgrounds: rich, poor, educated and non-educated. Brokenness is you, me, your mother, father, family members, friends, and your next door neighbor who seemingly has it all together. How can I make this claim you wonder? Well there are two things which will affect us all as human beings, to which there is no escaping; and that is death and pain. But not everyone is aware of their brokenness so they carry it around with them, clueless and unaware. They carry it into their jobs, into their relationships and into their lives. No matter where they go or how much they acquire guess what, the same ole problems appear. Sounds familiar? The problem with brokenness is it can be insidious and therefore difficult to put your finger on, but its affects are real and can be very devastating. I’ll use the example of a broken vase to make my point. If a vase is accidently dropped and broken into many little pieces and put back together incorrectly, it will not work as well as it did before. A vase which once held water and beautiful flowers, now broken has to be used for something else; its original purpose has been compromised. Perhaps it can be used as an ash tray or for mere decoration, but unless it is fixed properly, it will not be used for its original purpose. Ok, maybe you are thinking so what is the big deal? At least the vase is being used-right? But in fact is it is a big deal, because to use one thing as something else is a lie and ultimately it diminishes its beauty and purpose. Just like the broken vase when we humans are broken we are not being used as God and the Universe intended; we are not being used for our purpose until we are healed and put back together properly.

Metaphorically speaking we get dropped throughout our life-time which leaves us broken. Unfortunately, overlooking our wounds and moving on to something else or dressing it up to look different won’t do the trick. When we are broken it affects our mindset, our hearts and in essence we get stuck. We get stuck repeating the same behaviors over and over again expecting different results. According to Webster dictionary; Broken means: ruptured, torn, fractured, not functioning properly, and out of working order. Similarly when we are broken, we are torn and not functioning properly and therefore not living to our fullest potential. Now you may be asking the question I asked myself, how did I get broken in the first place? Well I can’t tell you what caused your brokenness because that is your individual journey of self-discovery. But what I can say is much of who we are today is a culmination of how we experienced our childhood, which includes past hurts and unresolved pains. Each person has a different set of life circumstances and experiences which has contributed their broken parts.

In the past I have always thought of the word Curse as ominous and scary. For most it connotes bad luck and something we cannot control, or even something which is done to us against our will. It is a term which is also often used in religious settings, but rarely is it defined or explained. For instance the media has use the term curse when referring to the many tragedies which have plagued the Kennedy family. When John John’s airplane went down and crashed with no survivors, we all gasped and silently thought… The Kennedy curse, it was their family curse. But the truth is, we use this term in a jokingly or scary manner because we don’t fully understand what a generational curse implies. My definition and explanation of a "generational curse", as discussed in this book; are your beliefs, behaviors and patterns which are passed down from one generation to another, which stand in the way of you reaching your greatest potential.

The best way to describe a generational curse is it is your psychological DNA. We all understand that our genealogy DNA tells us very important things about ourselves; everything from our blood type, to where our ancestors came from and how long we might live. We use this information to learn about what family diseases we are predisposed to, as well as a precautionary tool to prevent other illnesses. Similarly, your family’s generational curse reveals how you have been wired emotionally and physiologically. It explains how you have been pre-programed or predisposed how to believe, think, and act. You can be completely unaware of this predisposition until something triggers you and then you react. We saw this play out in the media when a very famous singer and his then very famous girlfriend, who is also a singer, had an alleged physical altercation, which left her with a bruised eye. It is not unlikely for a person who grew up in a home with an alcoholic parent to attract an alcoholic partner. Nor is it shocking that a woman will attract an abusive man if she grew up in a home where she saw this behavior demonstrated. Or maybe you are a teenage mom and now you are hoping and praying that your child won’t take the same path as you. Unfortunately, just hoping and praying won’t be enough. You see, on some level we all will either repeat or attract what we saw and experienced in our childhood; even the hidden secrets. This rule of attract and repeat doesn’t play favoritism to anyone. To better understand this concept let me explain it this way; there is no excuse for a man to be abusive to his girlfriend, but if we dig a little deeper in his story we are more than not likely to find out that-that individual saw and witnessed abuse. Equally true, the girl who accepts this poor behavior, if we dig deeper will probably learn, she was never taught her worth, or saw similar behavior from the men in her life as well. There is a pattern and the two go hand in hand. Things not healed get passed down. They are passed down from one generation to the next, making it harder for each generation to reach their highest potential and live their best lives.

When triggered, emotionally, we grab the tools in our tool box. These tools have been placed there by our family and those whom had the greatest influence on our lives. These tools which we grab are our default tools. These default tools, are the way things have always been done in your family. I have heard so many times from my own family members and from friends the tired excuse, "that is how it has always been done". But until we challenge and change our way of thinking and doing, we will continue to get the same results. Someone in your family has to be courageous enough to break the generational curse, why not you?

The way I like to explain how a generational curse gets passed down from one generation to another is through our PPB’s; patterns, practices and beliefs. Patterns and practices are our actions and the things we do over and over again. It can also be what the things which we attract into our life over and over again. Our beliefs have more to do with our mindset and our attitude. These predispositions are much more dangerous and far sneakier because they sneak into our sub-consciousness and become our way of life. These wrong mindsets can become strongholds in your life. Often they are the most difficult in my opinion to break because they dictate everything including your patterns and your practices. A wrong mindset for example may be that your family has always struggled and never has enough, so you expect to struggle and not have enough. Or maybe no one in your family has ever gone to college therefore no one believes that they can. Or perhaps in your home growing up you saw men who were no good and cheated and now as an adult woman you can’t shake the belief that all men are dogs. Wrong mind sets and strongholds are dangerous because they hold us back and keep us from stepping into our purpose and destiny. Painful past experiences which have not been healed, are repeated. That’s the universal law, because God and the universe are always trying to get our attention to heal.

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Our family dynamics play the greatest role in who we become and the lessons we learn. It is through our childhood experiences both healthy and unhealthy which have molded us into who we are today. We know that our parents help shape how we think, act and believe. How our parents were raised relates to how we were raised and plays a huge role in who we become as adults. Nature –vs– Nurture, or both? A parent who suffers from addiction passes down to their child through their behavior, that the "tool" you use to solve life’s pain, is addition. The message passed down is; deal with your trials and tribulations through self-medicating. We have all heard the term do as I say not as I do. But the truth is…that is exactly what we do, that which has been shown to us. It is all we know until we learn something better. But I ask the question, can we become greater than what we have been shown or experienced? Is our destiny pre-determined?

Your Family Background Matters

Emotional abuse is elusive. Unlike physical abuse, the people doing it and receiving it may not even know it’s happening. And it can be more harmful than physical abuse because it can undermine what we think about ourselves. It can cripple all we are meant to be as we allow something untrue to define us. Emotional abuse can happen between parent and child, husband and wife, among relatives and between friends.

-Maria Bogdanos

My mother is the oldest of four siblings; two brothers and one sister. Her mother, my grandmother once told me the story of how she and my grandfather came to be. My grandfather who apparently was somewhat of a player back in the day wooed my grandmother and she became pregnant with my mother. They later got married of course because in those days you did not have a child out of wedlock. When I listened to my grandmother tell me the story however, I almost felt like she wouldn’t have married my grandfather had she not gotten pregnant. I suspect as a result things were not easy for anyone including my mom being born into that situation. Throughout my childhood I remember my mother just randomly saying to my sister and I, at least you both were wanted, I always wanted my children. It was an old comment and clearly one which only she understood the meaning. My mom was never the type to talk about her feelings. When I asked her what she meant by that statement I never got a straight forward answer. There was a lot of mystery surrounding my mother’s childhood, or maybe it was just a lack of knowledge. Either way I knew very little about either one of my parents childhood. They grew up during a time when you didn’t speak about the things that bothered you. You didn’t air your dirty laundry, you just dealt with it the best way you could. When my mother was young she was sent down south to the Carolina’s to live with her grandmother, for a short period of time. I don’t know her exact age because my mother suffers from selective amnesia, but I gather it was somewhere between the age of five to seven years old. My great grandmother and grandfather lived on a rural farm, which was very different from the urban setting my mother was accustomed to. Whenever she speaks of this time in her life I hear both joy and pain in her voice; both anger and adventure. Growing up she used to tell me this one story about how she had to help her grandmother ring the neck of a chicken to kill it and then help prepare it for dinner. By the way she told this story I never could tell if this was a good memory or a bad one. It was really only because of my aunt and uncle that I heard stories I did, about her childhood and what she was like back then. Each year at Thanksgiving dinner my uncle would invariability work into the conversation how mean my mother was when they were growing up. He would look my sister and I in the eye and shake his head back and forth and say over and over You mother was mean, mean, mean. This would only last as long as it took for my mother to catch on and then she would shut the whole conversation down. My mom was a mystery, which left me wanting to learn more about her. But I was also torn and scared of what I might find out. I never asked my grandmother why she sent my mother away at such a young age and why she left her abandoned. I just assumed it was for financial reasons. Through my aunt’s many stories, I was able to paint a picture of what my great-grandmother was like. According to her my great-grandmother was a mean, mean, scary lady and not very maternal as well. She had this one wondering eye, so when she spoke to you, you couldn’t figure out where she was looking. My great grandfather on the other hand according to the stories told, was a warm and kind man. He was also an educated man and according to my mother and aunt, he was a principle or owned an elementary school at some point. Oddly enough my mother was the only one out of her siblings that lived with her grandparents. Yet my sister are I the only cousins that never met them. My grandmother was one of four children, but I only kind of remember meeting one of her sister’s; her favorite one I think. I was young and so I don’t remember much, but I do remember my grandmother’s stories about her family always involved so much pain. Each story she told about her cousins or siblings had some horrible outcome or unspeakable grief tied to it. But my grandmother was a wonderful loving person and a woman of great faith. She had a laid back demeanor and personality, which is very opposite from my mother’s personality. We all show love in many different ways and my grandmother’s way was through her cooking. She never missed an opportunity to cook for her grandkids whatever they wanted. And she never missed an opportunity to attend our graduations from high school all the way through to graduate schools. But I never heard her say the words I love you to any of her family members. Even when I said I love you to her, she would say back I know you do and that was it and for some reason it was ok with me. All of my life both my mother and father tell my sister and I that they love us. But I often wondered if my grandmother ever heard her mother say these words to her, or if my grandmother ever said these words to my mom? My grandmother was an old school Christian woman and it wasn’t uncommon for her to pull out a bible verse to share with you when you talked to her. But to her credit, she planted this seed of faith in all of her children and consequently that seed got passed down to me through my mom. Growing up my mom had my sister and me in church every Sunday. We sang in the children’s choir and then when we got older we were church ushers. I continued going to church through most of my childhood, probably because I had to, but after I graduated from high school I stopped going.

My Grandfather who I referred to as Gramps, on the other hand was something all-together different. His personality was over the top, loud and stubborn. He was stubborn to the point of defiance. If you told him to go left he would go right on purpose, just to spite you. He was also mean and verbally abusive to my grandmother; he would put her down and say mean things about her in-front of us at family functions. He usually attacked her Christianity and her cooking; the two things which meant the most to her. Throughout my childhood I never notice them display any love towards one another. It was more like they just lived together and co-existed. Maybe that’s just how it was done back then, or maybe that’s just how they were. I never saw him hold her hand or whisper something sweet in her ear or reminisce about their good old days. Nope, they were like two ships passing in the night, they co-existed but I never witnessed love. My grandfather was cantankerous and he talked to my grandma in an unpleasant way which made me uncomfortable. His language was abusive towards his wife and it is what my mother witnessed growing up; the verbal abuse and disrespect. My grandfather was also a functioning alcoholic or pretty close to it. No one in my family ever labelled him as such, but I remember being over my grandparents’ house for the holidays and my grandfather passed out sleep in the middle of the day. Over the years I overheard my mother and aunt tell stories about how when they were young they had to sometimes put him to bed because he was drunk. They never elaborated and almost always it was my aunt who initiated the conversation. I remember this one Christmas dinner when I was at their house my grandfather sent my uncle to the liquor store to buy wine and liquor which he and only he drank. And often times I would smell liquor on his breath when I kissed him on the check at family functions. Thankfully, neither of my parents drink, my dad not at all –ever, but my mom may have a mimosa on mother’s day every now and then. But I never got a feeling one way or another how my grandfather’s drinking and verbal abuse towards my grandmother affected and impacted her. Nor has she ever shared with me what it was like growing up in such an unstable environment. I barley know any funny or crazy stories from her childhood; it’s like my mother dropped out of the sky; pretty, perfect and in complete control. That’s how I saw her anyway growing up. I never heard her discuss any painful memories, so for a very long time I just assumed she was perfect too. But the truth is we are all affected by our childhood experiences one way or another; seen an unseen.

While my grandfather was never mean to me or to any of his other grandchildren I still kind of felt uncomfortable around him. Not in an I think he is going to hurt me kind of way but in an unpredictable I don’t understand this man kind of way. My grandfather had this odd sense of humor that I am guessing only he understood. When he talked to me it was never a normal conversation, but more like a riddle. My grandmother would ask me questions about school or about friends she had met or about different functions I attended. But my grandfather on the other hand couldn’t name one friend, or one event I was involved in, he just wasn’t tapped into my life in that way. For instance when my mother showed him a picture of me at my prom with my prom date instead of asking how was or where did we go? He would tease me and say odd things like oh that poor boy didn’t know what he was getting into referring to my date and then laugh loudly. He was just odd to me and abrasive and I didn’t know how to connect with him, so usually I didn’t. But my grandfather’s saving grace was that he was good provider. He worked hard