The quiet work of not passing it on

There’s a kind of work that rarely gets named.

It doesn’t draw atten­tion.
It doesn’t come with recog­ni­tion.
But it hap­pens every day in the lives of peo­ple who have known hurt—

the qui­et work of not pass­ing it on.

And yet, there’s a phrase folks like to use when they want to explain cru­el­ty with­out get­ting too close to it:

“Hurt peo­ple hurt peo­ple.”

It sounds like wis­dom. Like some­thing set­tled and true.

But I’ll tell you plain—

I don’t believe it.
Not the way it’s used, anyway.

Because more often than not, it isn’t used to under­stand harm.
It’s used to excuse it.
To soft­en it.
To make it feel inevitable instead of accountable.

And sometimes—whether folks mean it or not—it car­ries some­thing heavier.

A sug­ges­tion that peo­ple like me…
peo­ple who have been hurt…

are some­how clos­er to cru­el­ty than good­ness.
Closer to caus­ing harm than offer­ing care.
As if what we endured marked us not just as wounded—

but as sus­pect.
Less trust­wor­thy.
Less safe.
Less wor­thy.

And I reject that.

Because this say­ing doesn’t just over­sim­pli­fy harm—

it feels cru­el in its own way.

Like label­ing peo­ple who have been hurt as not only dam­aged goods, but as infe­ri­or to those who have lived charmed lives… as if they deserve a cau­tion light attached to them, because they were forced to car­ry a bur­den they didn’t ask for or choose.

I am what some would call a “hurt person.”

I come from a child­hood that carved things into me I didn’t ask for and didn’t deserve. I have lived through vio­la­tions that don’t just pass through you — they take up res­i­dence. They shape how I move in my own body, how I mea­sure safe­ty, how I decide who and what to trust.

And that shap­ing doesn’t go away.

It fol­lows you into adult­hood.
Into rela­tion­ships.
Into ordi­nary moments where oth­er peo­ple seem to move freely… and you don’t.

Because when the peo­ple entrust­ed to pro­tect you are the ones who cause the harm, some­thing fun­da­men­tal shifts.

You don’t just learn that the world can be unsafe—
you learn that safe­ty itself can’t be assumed.

So you move carefully.

You watch more close­ly.
You lis­ten for tone, for shifts, for what isn’t being said.
You learn to read a room before you ever relax in it.

Not because you want to live that way—

but because some­where along the line, you had to.

I come from women who car­ried things they were nev­er taught how to name.

My moth­er lost her own moth­er at twelve — old enough to feel the weight of it, too young to under­stand what to do with it. What fol­lowed was a kind of grief no one helped her hold. A father who felt dis­tant. A loss that set­tled deep with­out any­where to go.

And grief like that… it doesn’t just disappear.

It hard­ens.
It reshapes itself.
It turns into anger when it has nowhere else to land.

She car­ried that grief her whole life. And with every new loss, it grew heav­ier, sharp­er — lay­ered on top of some­thing that had nev­er been tended.

She didn’t know how.

No one had shown her.

But I did have one place where things felt different.

At my Great Gran’s house, the sharp edges soft­ened. The air smelled like warm bread bak­ing in the oven, tiger lilies grow­ing just out­side the door. Things moved slow­er there. Steadier. And with­out any­one say­ing it out loud, I learned that not every­thing had to be car­ried the same way.

That les­son stayed with me.

Because here’s what doesn’t get said enough:

Healing is not automatic.

Softness is not instinct when you were raised in survival.

Empathy is not some­thing you always know how to give when it wasn’t con­sis­tent­ly giv­en to you.

Those are things you learn—

slow­ly,
imper­fect­ly,
some­times painfully.

There are days you get it wrong.

Days when your defens­es come up too fast.
Where your reac­tions are shaped more by what hap­pened to you than what’s hap­pen­ing in front of you.

But there is a difference—

a dif­fer­ence between liv­ing uncon­scious­ly out of your pain…

and liv­ing with the aware­ness that you car­ry it.

The dif­fer­ence is intention.

People doing this work wake up every day with it.

With the inten­tion to be bet­ter than what they were shown.
To pause instead of react.
To choose soft­ness even when it doesn’t come nat­u­ral­ly.
To offer care in places where they were giv­en harm.

That doesn’t mean they always get it right.

But it does mean they are trying.

And that try­ing is not small.

It is dai­ly.
Deliberate.
Often invis­i­ble to any­one who hasn’t lived it.

It looks like catch­ing your­self mid-reac­tion.
Like apol­o­giz­ing when you didn’t used to.
Like learn­ing how to sit with your own emo­tions instead of plac­ing them on some­one else.

It looks like going to bed at night and knowing—

you didn’t pass it on today.

That mat­ters.

More than any phrase.
More than any easy expla­na­tion for why peo­ple hurt.

Because the truth is—

some of us are liv­ing lives shaped by things we nev­er chose…

while also choos­ing, every sin­gle day, not to let those things shape how we treat others.

We are learn­ing what we were nev­er taught.
Building what we were nev­er giv­en.
Becoming what we need­ed… with­out ever hav­ing had a clear exam­ple of it.

And there is noth­ing easy about that.

But there is some­thing hon­est in it.

Something inten­tion­al.

Something that says—

this is where it stops.

So no—
don’t reduce me to a catchphrase.

What hap­pened to me is not a warn­ing label.

It is the very rea­son
I choose — every day—
not to become it.