I Broke The Cycle

Describe one of your favorite moments.

What, like in a dream job I never landed, a wedding I never had, or the perfect first-home key handover that never happened? Yeah, none of those.

I used to avoid answering this kind of question because it feels like it assumes everyone’s been handed a string of milestone moments tied up in pastel bows. But some of us didn’t get the bows. We got the silence. The sulks. The subtle emotional sabotage that made even good things feel like they came with a warning label.

But now?

One of my favourite things is this:

My son, walking through the door and just chatting. Telling me about his day, his mates, that random TikTok thing I don’t understand, the crap someone said in class, whatever. Full noise. No filter. No flinching.

Because that wasn’t my normal growing up.

I learnt early on to shrink myself. To overthink. To sense when not to speak and exactly how long silence could last when someone was pissed off.

And now I get this loud, unfiltered joy pouring out of a teenager who doesn’t think I’m going to emotionally shank him for existing.

That’s my favourite moment. It happens all the time, and it never gets old.

I broke the cycle.

And I didn’t even need a dream job, a wedding, or a bloody gender reveal party to do it.

Just me. Healing. One quiet, loud, messy, honest day at a time.