The family tree was warning me
"I used to believe I could outsmart it.
Addiction I mean".
It was the ghost in every room of my childhood homes — never named, but always present. It showed up in the slurred speech at dinner, in the sudden outbursts over nothing, in the long stretches of silence that followed. It was in the way the adults disappeared emotionally, even when they were physically right there. It was in the way we all learned to pretend.
No one ever said, “This is addiction.” But I knew. I felt it in my bones before I had the language to name it. I watched people I loved unravel slowly, quietly, behind closed doors. And I made a vow to myself: I will never be like them.
So I became the opposite.
I got good grades. I followed the rules. I was the helper, the achiever, the one who made things look okay even when they weren’t. I thought if I could just be perfect enough, I could outrun the chaos. I believed that if I stayed busy, stayed in control, stayed good, I could rewrite the story.
But the family tree was warning me...
The Roots I Didn’t Want
My family didn’t talk about feelings. We talked about weather, sports, work — safe things. But grief, fear, shame, trauma? Those were buried deep. I learned early that emotions were dangerous, that vulnerability was weakness, and that silence was survival.
I didn’t realize it then, but I was already learning the same coping mechanisms that had been passed down for generations. Emotional avoidance. Denial. Over-functioning. I wasn’t drinking or using, but I was numbing in other ways — perfectionism, people-pleasing, overachievement. I was addicted to being needed, to being seen as “the strong one.”
And underneath it all, I was terrified. Terrified that I wasn’t enough. That I was broken. That I would eventually become what I feared most.
Trying to Outrun the Pattern
I thought education would save me. I threw myself into school, into work, into building a life that looked nothing like the one I came from. I believed that if I could just get far enough away — geographically, emotionally, socially — I could escape the legacy.
But addiction isn’t just about substances. It’s about pain. It’s about the ways we learn to survive when love feels unpredictable or unsafe. It’s about the stories we inherit without realizing it.
I didn’t understand that I was still rooted in the same soil. I was still carrying the same wounds. I just dressed them up differently.
I was high-functioning, yes. But I was also disconnected — from others, from myself, from the truth of my own story. I didn’t know how to sit with discomfort. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I didn’t know how to feel without trying to fix.
And eventually, all of that caught up with me.
The Legacy Beneath the Surface
Looking back, I can see how addiction shaped my identity long before I ever touched a substance. It shaped how I saw myself, how I related to others, how I moved through the world. It taught me to be hyper-independent, to never show weakness, to always be “fine.”
But I wasn’t fine...
I was anxious. I was exhausted. I was emotionally malnourished. And I didn’t know how to stop performing long enough to actually feel anything real.
The truth is, I didn’t just inherit a family history of addiction — I inherited a family history of pain. Of silence. Of survival at the expense of connection. And that legacy doesn’t just disappear because you get a degree or a good job or a mortgage.
It lives in your nervous system. In your relationships. In the way you talk to yourself when no one else is listening.
The Moment I Saw It Clearly
There was a moment — years later, deep in my own addiction — when I looked in the mirror and saw my mother’s eyes staring back at me. Not literally, but energetically. The same hollow look. The same exhaustion. The same ache to be anywhere but here.
It hit me like a wave: I became what I swore I never would.
But it wasn’t because I was weak. It was because I was human. Because I had never learned another way. Because my mother hadn’t either, nor the generations before her. Because I had spent my whole life trying to outrun something I didn’t fully understand. Something that they, themselves didn't understand. I wish I didn’t spend so much time resenting the woman I didn’t want to become, because I now know that it wasn’t her fault either.
And in that moment, I realized: the family tree wasn’t just a warning. It was a map.
Rewriting the Story
Healing, for me, has meant going back to the roots — not to stay there, but to understand them. To see the patterns clearly.
"To grieve what I didn’t get.
To forgive what I can.
To break the silence."
It’s meant learning to feel without fleeing. To speak without shame. To love without losing myself.
It’s meant accepting that I am both the product of my past and the author of my future.
I used to think healing meant becoming someone new. Now I know it means coming home to who I was before the world told me who to be.
What I want my daughters to know
I have another daughter now. A bright, beautiful soul with eyes like the sky after a storm. And I think about what I want her to know as well as my two teenage daughters and the ones I have added on and been a mentor to alone the way.
I want them to know that feelings aren’t dangerous. That asking for help is brave. That they don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
I want them to know that our family history is real — but it’s not their destiny.
I want them to know that healing is possible. That cycles can be broken. That they are allowed to write their own story.
And I want them to know that I’m doing the work — not just for me, but for them. For all the generations before us who didn’t have the tools. And for all the ones who will come after, who deserve a different legacy.
They will be the ones the break the chains and I hope that in time with my own healing, that those chains will become easier to break.
Coming Home isn’t just about getting sober.
It’s about reclaiming the parts of myself I had to abandon to survive. It’s about honoring the truth of where I come from, while choosing — every day — to walk a different path.
"The family tree 🌳 was warning me.
Now it's teaching me.
And I am listening".
Until Next Time,
Stephanie Kay 🙃
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