By Shannon Wright 

Last year, I flaked out.

I wrote one article, got scared, and quietly disappeared. Fear and anxiety convinced me it was safer to stay silent than to be vulnerable. But the thought kept coming back to me: What if my story could help someone else?

Wouldn’t it be terrible if I let fear stop me from sharing something that might matter? Would that mean everything I went through was in vain? Would all the hard work I’ve done to become a better woman be for nothing? And, hardest of all to admit, would it mean I didn’t fully trust God?

So here I am.

This year, I’m telling my story. Not all at once, but little by little. And as it unfolds, my hope is that somewhere along the way, it gives someone else the courage to face themselves and break free from their own self-destructive patterns.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional environment. I don’t share that to place blame on my parents. One of the most eye-opening things I’ve learned through the last four years of trauma therapy is this: my parents were carrying their own unhealed wounds.

Plus, they were just two kids trying to raise a little girl without really knowing what they were doing. They were “winging it”, as they say.

Like so many parents, they weren’t intentionally trying to cause pain, but the pain still happened.

For most of my life, I carried everyone else, especially my mom. I tried to keep everything under control. I tried to save her when I was still a child myself. I lived in a constant state of fear, confusion, and overwhelm.

Healing has given me something I never expected: deep compassion for my mom. Forgiving her and recognizing her pain has been one of the most powerful parts of my journey. Our relationship still isn’t perfect, but the love and compassion I feel for her now has changed everything.

Forgiveness really is the key.

If you want to change your own self-destructive patterns, you must get to the root of them. You must dig until you uncover the REAL issue, then do the hard work of making sense of it so you can forgive.

Forgive the people who hurt you.
And forgive yourself.

Without forgiveness, we become bitter, angry, and controlling. Our bodies hurt. Our relationships suffer. We may not even realize how deeply unforgiveness is affecting us, but it’s powerful enough to quietly destroy our lives.

Forgiveness is hard. Very hard. Many of us have built our entire identity around being right. But I beg you: QUIT TRYING TO BE RIGHT! This isn’t about who is right or wrong. It’s about healing relationships that matter.

Not just that relationship, but every relationship you’ll ever have, including the one you have with yourself and the one you have with your children.

So, unless you want the cycle to continue, even if your kids are already grown, heal your past. Forgive. In doing so, you don’t just change your own future, you change the future of your family forever.

This is how cycles are broken, not by perfection, but by courage, truth, and the willingness to forgive and heal.(Shannon Wright is a real estate agent and digital journalist for Webster Parish Journal who lives in Sibley.)

(Shannon Wright is a real estate agent and digital journalist for Webster Parish Journal who lives in Sibley.)