What Happened to You? A Story That Might Explain More Than You Realize

I was nineteen years old with a two-year-old boy on my hip, trying to hold my world together in a crowded Rhode Island city. The old, large house I rented was extremely close to neighbors on three sides. I had multiple roommates, a toddler, and the kind of exhaustion that only young motherhood and survival-mode living can create.

Being that close to neighbors means you don’t just hear their lives, you feel them. You absorb their arguments through the walls, their storms that seem unnatural, their family history spilling out onto the front steps.

Next door lived a woman with five adult children. At first, they were simply “the family next door.” Loud, chaotic, unpredictable. But the more I observed… the more I realized I was witnessing a level of generational abuse that I had never seen up close before.

The Boy Who Just Wanted Love

One of the adult children, I’ll call her Beth, had a little boy about seven years old.

He had these big blue, searching eyes. The kind of eyes that check the room before they speak, that wait for approval before they breathe. You could tell he was starving for affection and love.

But instead of love, he got humiliation.

Beth regularly called her young son "rat fink," “stupid," “idiot," and worse... not in anger, but with a tone so casual it chilled me. As if she were saying “sweetheart” or “baby.” As if tearing down her child was as natural as breathing.

He absorbed every word. He flinched before she even opened her mouth. He shrank into himself as if trying to disappear.

I remember thinking, if this is how he’s treated at seven, what will he believe about himself at seventeen? At twenty-seven?

Words can bruise a child just as deeply as fists. Sometimes deeper, because bruises fade, but lies linger and repeat.

The Little Girl Who Learned to Fear Every Mistake

Another adult daughter in the family, we’ll call her Angela, had a five-year-old little girl.

This little one was tiny, quiet, fragile in that way children become when they don’t know what triggers the storm. She lived on high alert, always watching her mother’s expression, always guessing when the next blow might come.

Because the slapping wasn’t a moment. It was a pattern, a rhythm, a way of life.

I saw Angela slap that child across the face with a sharp, practiced motion. Whether the girl spilled something, asked a question at the wrong time, or simply existed a little too loudly, the slap was already coming before she even finished breathing.

It wasn’t discipline or correction. It was cruelty passed down like a family heirloom.

The child learned quickly: be small, be silent, be invisible… or suffer.

And I knew, deep in my body, this is not how a child is supposed to be raised. This is not love.

Where Did They Learn This?

It took time... week or months... before I learned the truth behind this family’s behavior.

Their mother, the same woman I waved to across the driveway, had been brutal. Not angry, not overwhelmed, not “old-school tough.” Brutal.

She burned her children with cigarettes. Dragged them by their hair down the street while the neighborhood watched. Spat insults at them that no adult should hear, let alone a child. Beat them for minor mistakes. Mocked them when they cried. Made them feel unwanted every single day of their childhoods.

And now? They were raising their own children with the only blueprint they had ever been given.

The cycle was alive and well, playing out next door, right in front of me, shaping another generation in real time.

“Hurt people, hurt people” wasn’t a saying anymore. It was a reality I could hear through the walls.

What Happens to a Child Who Learns That Love = Pain?

Let’s turn this toward you for a moment, not to compare, but to connect.

Think about the messages you absorbed as a child:

• Were you safe?

• Were you valued?

• Were you spoken to with kindness?

• Or did you learn early that love came with strings, conditions, or fear?

Because here’s the truth:

Every adult reaction has a childhood root. We don’t become who we are out of thin air. We become who we are from the stories we survived.

A child who grows up being slapped learns that mistakes equal violence. A child who grows up being mocked learns that vulnerability equals shame. A child who grows up unwanted learns that their existence is a burden. A child who grows up neglected learns that affection is unpredictable. A child who grows up in chaos learns survival, not connection.

So what happens when those children grow into adults?

They react from wounds no one can see. They love from places of fear and speak from places of pain. They parent from the patterns they were given. They enter relationships with expectations shaped by trauma.

And the world calls them “difficult.” But really… they’re wounded.

Angela, the mother who liked to slap, believed herself a good mother, because she wasn't as bad as her own mother.

Whose Standard Do We Measure Love Against?

This is where so many relationships fall apart. People enter adulthood with different histories, different wounds, different expectations and we assume everyone should know what love looks like.

But if your definition of love came from abuse, instability, fear, or inconsistency… you will live out what you learned until something breaks the cycle.

For me, the standard is Jesus Christ...His Word, His example, His love. For those who don’t know Him, the moral law God wrote on our hearts still calls us to goodness, honesty, kindness.

But when someone grows up deeply hurt, even their moral compass can get buried beneath survival.

That’s how a hurt little girl becomes a hurting mother. That’s how a broken boy becomes a broken man. The cycle continues until someone says: “This ends with me.”

So How Do We Break These Cycles?

Breaking generational hurt doesn’t start with perfection, it starts with people paying attention.

It starts when someone chooses to see beneath the surface instead of reacting to the behavior. When someone pauses long enough to recognize the wound behind the anger, the fear behind the attitude, the trauma beneath the coldness.

Here are the foundations that truly begin to interrupt generational pain:

• Understanding

Really seeing the person, not just the behavior. Asking “Where did this come from?” before we judge the outcome.

• Accountability

Holding people responsible without shaming them. Saying, “What happened to you was wrong… and what you’re doing now must change, too.”

• Compassion

Not softness, strength with empathy. Compassion says, “I see the wound, and I believe you can heal.”

• Community Support

Healing grows where people are surrounded, not isolated. No one breaks lifelong patterns alone.

• Faith and Prayer

Because some chains are spiritual, some wounds run deeper than human strength, and some cycles require the kind of restoration only God can provide.

When these elements come together, something shifts. Wounded children become healing adults. Healing adults stop the cycles before they reach the next generation and families that never had a healthy foundation finally get the chance to build one.

Your Voice Matters

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

How do you think we can step into the lives of hurting people before their pain becomes someone else’s pain? Where have you seen these cycles play out in relationships, families, or communities?

Somewhere right now, a child is learning what “love” looks like based on the adults in front of them. Somewhere in that story is an opportunity for someone to intervene with truth, compassion, and courage.

Maybe that someone is you.

With Hope & Love,

Melissa Mills, survivor leader