14/12/2025
I sat across from my therapist the other day, searching for the right words, the right memory, the right reason why my chest would tighten for no apparent cause, why certain silences felt like drowning, why I wake some mornings already grieving losses I can’t name. When she asked, “When did this start?” I came up empty. It felt like trying to remember the first time I learned to breathe. It had always been there, woven into me, quiet and constant, as fundamental as my own heartbeat.
I thought I was failing at healing because I couldn't locate the wound. Every self-help book promised that if I just dug deep enough, I'd find the moment, the betrayal, the loss, the specific event that broke something inside me. But what if there was no single moment? What if the breaking happened before I was even born?
By the end of the first chapter of It Didn't Start With You by Mark Wolynn, I was crying in a way I hadn't cried before, not from fresh pain, but from recognition. From finally understanding that some of what I carry isn't mine. That I've been trying to heal wounds that belong to people I've never met, grieving losses I never experienced, but somehow inherited anyway. Wolynn didn't just give me a book. He helped me to stop searching for a memory that doesn't exist, and start tracing the invisible threads that connect my pain to the unfinished stories of those who came before.
1. What You’re Feeling Might Not Be Yours
Wolynn opens with a radical truth: not all wounds are self-inflicted. Some are inherited. That deep fear of abandonment? That overwhelming shame? That inability to feel safe in your own skin? They might belong to someone else in your family line—your mother, your grandfather, even someone you've never met. The body remembers what the mind forgets. Trauma doesn’t vanish; it finds somewhere to land. Often, that landing pad is us.
2. Unspoken Family Pain Doesn’t Disappear, It Echoes
What we don’t talk about in families doesn’t just go away. It sinks. It shows up as illness, as anxiety, as patterns we can't break. Wolynn explains how traumas that weren’t processed get passed down, not through stories, but through silence. And that silence has weight. This book made me realize: healing doesn’t start with blame. It starts with curiosity. With asking: What didn’t get to be grieved in my family? What’s been buried?
3. You Heal by Turning Toward the Pain, Not Away From It
Wolynn doesn’t offer quick fixes. He asks you to sit with what hurts. To look at your family tree not just for names and dates, but for patterns, ruptures, losses. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s freeing. Because when you trace the thread of your suffering to its source, it becomes less overwhelming. It becomes something you can hold, instead of something that holds you.
4. Words Matter, Especially the Ones You Didn’t Know You Were Repeating
One of the most fascinating tools Wolynn offers is the “Core Language Map.” It’s the emotional script that lives under your everyday language—the phrases you say without thinking, like “I feel like I don’t belong,” or “No matter what I do, it’s never enough.” These aren’t random. They’re clues. Echoes. Your core language can lead you directly to the origin of your pain. And once you hear it clearly, you can begin to rewrite the story.
5. You Are Not Doomed by Your Inheritance, You Are the Turning Point
This was the most hopeful part. Yes, trauma travels. But so does healing. Wolynn reminds us that awareness is power. That by facing what we’ve inherited, by grieving what wasn’t ours to carry, we begin to change the legacy. We become the ones who say, this pain stops with me. And maybe that’s the most sacred work any of us can do.
This book didn't erase what I carry. But it changed my relationship to it. It taught me that healing isn't about cutting away the parts of ourselves that hurt. Sometimes it's about understanding where they came from, honoring what they're trying to tell us, and deciding that the story can change with us. That we can be the generation that finally grieves. That finally breathes. That finally breaks the cycle not by forgetting, but by remembering differently.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/4aMS9Ro
