'I don't want to be a cycle breaker'
And our February book club pick!
Upcoming book club! We have had many volunteer community members come forward, eager to help maintain and sustain the Diaspora Reads book club. Our first book club for paid subscribers will be on February 24 at 9-10pm ET. We are reading Hijab Butch Blues. See you there! Link will be sent out day of.
Membership price for the newsletter will increase on February 1, so if you’ve wanted to join the community, 2x Zoom community discussions, upcoming book club (see above), and get the monthly guided meditation, full essays, reflections, and content, do so now! You can lock in the price you have even when the price increases! I have so many exciting things in store here in the new year! I am keeping today’s post open for everyone!
Mark your calendars for the upcoming paid subscriber community conversations over Zoom: January 7th, January 21st, Feb 4th, Feb 18th — all at 6pm ET (we are trying a new time slot for the first couple of months).
I have had many community members and clients say this to me: I don’t want to be a cycle breaker. And I get it. Being a cycle breaker is hard. Painful. Isolating. And so much more. Being a cycle breaker isn’t just about breaking cycles or disrupting patterns. It’s about the privilege of insight, awareness, and actualization that so many in your family before you have not had access to. It’s about being able to feel and hold your complex and dual emotions. It’s about being present during experiences, deepening your sense of self and your connection to others. It’s also about discerning between what in your family history, or inheritance, needs to be “broken” and what works.
Being a cycle breaker means making changes that are difficult, leaving you to often feel like the scapegoat and can force you to question: “Why am I the only one doing this work?”
Change is hard. Not just the big, cycle breaking choices you make, but also the smaller changes. You know:
Breaking a pattern you have in a relationship
Communicating differently
Distancing yourself from someone who makes you feel bad
Speaking up for yourself
Practicing gratitude
Trying to form a new habit
Reframing the way you think about things
Building discipline and doing hard things anyway — like going to the gym when you don’t want to
Change can be hard because it means interrogating the stories we have learned to believe as Truth about ourselves and others (more on this next week).
Being a cycle breaker means knowing the difference between tolerance and acceptance
Tolerance is the endurance of, or act of putting up with a behavior or situation. It can be passive, or negative. Often, it’s more about keeping the peace or maintaining a status quo. This can feel easier for many of you especially when you have been taught not to rock the boat or to be grateful or that speaking up is “unladylike” or rude.
Acceptance, on the other hand, involves a deeper understanding and empathy of what is happening. This does not mean excusing it but rather receiving this information. There’s an active and conscious choice in acceptance that involves finding the positive in situation, or making a change so situation is more positive for you. Sometimes these changes are internal not external.
Only you can decide what you are willing to accept and how much more you are willing – if at all – to engage. Please note that acceptance does not mean accepting harm.
The stages of change
Wanting something to change and being willing and ready to make a change are different. And it can take some time to move from want to willingness. In my work, I help clients identify what they feel stuck in and how to get unstuck but the reality is, we all cycle through stages of change (see below) known as the The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of change.
Many of you will reach a point of resignation before you actually do anything differently. Though this resignation can feel like defeat, it is usually what I call a defeated acceptance in what is — whether it’s an immigrant parent who won’t talk about certain issues, or a sibling who refuses to see your side of childhood experiences, or even a boss who micromanages. This defeated acceptance, I think, is the precursor to real action or change. It’s the space between preparation and action. It’s uncomfortable and it means reckoning with reality and whatever consequences (even if positive!) come from doing things differently.
I know being a cycle breaker is hard and it’s a burden — and a privilege — that can be heavy to carry. It can help you create a legacy of healing in your family — for those before and after you and it allows you to connect more deeply with yourself and others, creating richer relationships. You deserve both of these.
Next week, I will share more tangible tips on how you can take action and actually start to make changes in your life.
Bonus: I’m starting a podcast and want to include your voices!
I’m starting a podcast!!!! I am so excited and have been working on it for so long now — it’s literally been a year in the making! But it’s finally taking shape. It’s a way for me to go deeper into highlighting cultural nuance and diving into topics I haven’t been able to really address here. Simply, it’s all the things we want to talk about but no one else is talking about in wellness. It’ll combine education with culture and storytelling and expert advice and takeaways.
One of the things that is so important to me is that the podcast centers community voices, which means your stories, your voices, your questions answered. This is where you come in. We are asking for voice notes from you to help answer some really important questions we are considering in season 1. Questions are below but first a few things:
Keep voice notes under 2 minutes and email them to podcast@sahajkohli.com or simply reply to this email!
Your name and email won’t be shared in the podcast unless you say it in the voice note
By emailing it you give permission for us to potentially use it in the podcast
Questions to answer in voice notes
You don’t have to answer each one. Pick one, and send a voice note! If you want to answer more than one, then please send separate voice notes!
Share a family secret that you’ve discovered, how you discovered it, and what happened next?
What questions do you have about ‘family secrets’?
Have you ever/are you living a double life in your immigrant family? Tell us about it.
Tell us about the romantic relationship you’re in right now that you’re scared your immigrant family/community won’t support.
What’s a breakthrough you’ve had with your immigrant family?
What’s something you’ve done that’s “against the grain” of what is expected of you and it worked out? Tell us about it!
If you’ve been estranged from your immigrant parents (or a member in your immigrant family), what did you try before going no contact? At what point did you know it was time to go no contact?
If you have tried everything with your immigrant family except estrangement: What keeps you from even considering this as an option?
I cannot wait to hear from you and for you to be a part of this amazing new endeavor. I am doing it the way it’s never been done and want to center YOUR voices!