A Lesson in Cycle Breaking My Dead Mom Taught Me

A few years ago, my mom died from lung cancer. Last year, I found her prayer journals tucked away in my basement. I wasn’t prepared for what was inside them—or for how it would forever change the way I thought about being a cycle breaker.

Generational Chains

My mom started smoking in fourth grade.
Her mother started in second.
It was normal. It was generational. It was a chain passed down before they were even old enough to understand it.

Even after her diagnosis, she kept smoking. She tried to quit more times than I can count. She would stop. She would start again. The cycle had its grip.

The Journals

As I read her journals, I sobbed.
Page after page, she wrote about hating herself for not being able to quit. She begged God to take the desire from her heart. Every. Single. Day.

She wrote about wanting to stay here for her grandkids.
About not wanting smoking to win.
About feeling ashamed.
About trying again tomorrow.

She was fighting a cycle that had been planted generations before her. And when she left this world, it probably felt to her like she had failed.

Breaking the Cycle

I picked up smoking young, too. It felt almost inevitable.
But I quit right before I got pregnant with my first son.
None of my children have ever seen me smoke. Not once.

“Holding her journals in my hands, I realized something that broke me open: Sometimes the cycles we fight like hell to break—and feel like we failed to break in our lifetime—our children break with ease.”

We show up.
We fail.
We repair.
We try again.

Maybe our job isn’t always to finish the work, but to move it forward.

My mom may have felt like smoking won.
But it didn’t win the generation after her.

Her ceiling became my floor.
And my children will never carry this chain. That is her legacy.

To Anyone Trying to Break a Cycle

Keep showing up. Keep trying.

You may never see the full harvest of the seeds you plant in your lifetime, but they are growing. And one day, someone will step into freedom because of your faithfulness to keep showing up. If you need more support click here.