March 16, 2025
Generational trauma exists and we live in the best time to begin peeling back the layers and making changes to help ourselves and all the generations that follow.
Good morning!
I am currently on an airplane heading to Oahu to spend Spring Break with my daughter. I feel incredibly excited! I am always genuinely excited to be with her and create experiences together.
I honestly never thought I’d have a relationship with my daughter, like the one I have now. It feels almost experimental. lol I mean, technically, it is. I’ve never been a mom before her, so she is my one and only experience. I balance between being her bestie and her guide and it’s really heart-warming because she actually wants to hang out with me. I stopped forcing our relationship and instead, became present within it. She calls me all the time and is vulnerable and comfortable enough to tell me everything. The other week I told her my hope is to move back to Oahu before the next school year and get a place where she can have her own room. She said, “Mom, you know I can always sleep on the couch. I don’t mind. I just want to be with you.” We joke around a lot, play games and have many deep conversations about life. lol she’s 12, but her ability to translate her emotions into words are really developing and I do my best to listen and intuitively plant seeds. Which I feel is a whole other set of skills. lol
I do my best to reflect and see what I could do to grow and improve our relationship. Our relationship inspires me to put my best foot forward and that seemingly carries over into everything in my life.
To be completely honest, I wasn’t always this intentional with her. The first seven years of her life, I was just sort of going through the motions and using my relationship with my own mother as a light house. It wasn’t a bad thing, it just wasn’t very intentional. Meanwhile, I was juggling trying to figure out what I wanted in life, too. Working, building a business, competing in Muay Thai and dabbling in all kinds of different things. I was either trying to find myself or avoid my true self. lol either way, I spent minimal time really considering the example I was setting and the actions I was taking as a mom.
It wasn’t until I left Oahu and moved to the Big Island, that I started to really see myself. In really seeing myself, I was able to figure out what kind of mother I wanted to be and how I was going to take action on it.
I realized that I was repeating cycles that existed within my family. Cycles that I know wouldn’t serve me or Ayva. It broke my heart. The last thing I ever want to do is set her up to develop these habits and perspectives in life that do not serve her. There is so much more intricate detail to this experience and, tbh, it wasn’t anything huge. It was little habits and ways of doing things that have the potential to keep someone making mistakes that do not make them better. It keeps them in survival mode. Conditioned behavior can be detrimental to the quality of someone’s life.
Generational trauma exists and we live in the best time to begin peeling back the layers and making changes to help ourselves and all the generations that follow. I value this whole-heartedly. Perhaps I will go more into detail in other posts, but generally, it was this experience that helped mold me into, not just the mother I am now, but the human being I choose to be in the world. All of my relationships have improved because of it.
In many ways, to work on one relationship, allows you to look at and improve all of your relationships. It seems that the act of relating is a skill and therefore, can be improved through intention and aligned action.
And of course, the first step to improving your relationships with others, is to shed light on your own truths. Even more, to intentionally improve the relationship you have with yourself. What I’ve found in doing this work is, you often treat others the same way you treat yourself. for many of us, we treat ourselves worst.
I should also mention, that a by-product of improving your relationship with you is this incredible unconditional love and acceptance of self. You show up differently in the world when you love yourself.
With that said,
I pray you choose you more often.
I pray that your relationship’s improve, as you choose you.
I pray that you begin to realize how deserving and worthy you are and choose to bless the world with the best version of you.
Love always,
Ariel