Let the Apple Roll: What We Don’t Heal, Our Children Carry

On Monday, June 16, I was on a train headed back home to Northern Virginia from Richmond. It was one of those quiet rides, your body still, but your mind moving nonstop. A few rows ahead of me sat a mother and her teenage daughter. They were on their way to D.C., and I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

The mother leaned in gently and said, “You have so much potential. You just need to be around the right people and stay focused.”

That moment stopped me.

Not because I hadn’t heard those words before. I had. My parents used to say the same thing. I was raised in a military household. My childhood was full of love, structure, stability, and support. I wasn’t raised in chaos. I wasn’t raised in trauma. I had parents who showed up.

But like many teenagers, I didn’t always hear them. I brushed off their words, thinking they were just lecturing me. I didn’t realize they were speaking from love, from wisdom, from a deep desire for me to have more than they did.

Motherhood Changed Everything

But this time, those words hit different. Because now, I’m a mother. Now I understand what it means to want your child protected—not just from harm, but from heaviness. To want them to live freely in a world that tells Black girls, in a thousand different ways, that they’re too much and still never enough.

The truth is, my shift didn’t come from childhood. It came from adulthood.

Trauma Rearranges Everything

I was assaulted. And it changed me. It stripped away parts of my light. It hardened pieces of me that used to be soft. It made me question everything—safety, trust, my body, my voice. That’s what trauma does. It doesn’t ask permission. It rearranges your life in silence.

And even when you’ve had a good upbringing, trauma doesn’t care. It still breaks things. If you don’t face it, it doesn’t just stay inside you—it spills out. It shapes how you love, how you parent, and how you show up. It lives in your silence. It shows up in the way you overcompensate, overcorrect, or overprotect. We think silence shields our children, but more often, it shapes them.

What She Sees, She Learns

For example, after my attack, my weight and self-care spiraled out of control. I stopped caring about my health because, deep down, I believed that if I were heavier, I might be safer. Less desirable. Less likely to be hurt again.

So what does Tahiry see? Me eating fast food. Me skipping workouts. Me ignoring my body.

And that plants seeds. It creates a cycle, one that could have her fighting battles with self-worth and health that she never asked for.

My Vow to My Daughter

I thought about my daughter, Tahiry—her laugh, her curious eyes, her tenderness—and I felt it deep in my spirit: clear, firm, unshakable. She will not carry what broke me.

Not because I’m afraid, but because I’m intentional. Because I know how heavy unspoken pain can be. Because I know the cost of not healing. And I refuse to pass that price to her.

What We Don’t Heal Repeats

The truth is simple and heavy: what we don’t heal doesn’t just stay inside us—it repeats. Trauma, pain, unspoken wounds—they don’t disappear quietly. They show up in how we live, how we love, and especially in what we pass on to our children. Healing isn’t just a personal journey; it’s a necessary act of breaking the cycle, so the next generation doesn’t inherit what we never faced.

They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But I hope mine does. I hope it falls, rolls, and lands in soil I spent years preparing—with therapy, with truth, with faith, with rest. I hope Tahiry takes the best of me and her father—the resilience, the fire, the wisdom—and leaves the rest behind without guilt. She can carry our love, not our losses. She can honor our story without being weighed down by our wounds.

The Truths I Need Tahiry to Carry

These aren’t just lessons—they’re anchors. I want her to hold onto them when the world tries to confuse her worth or dim her light. They were shaped in pain, sharpened by healing, and covered in prayer.

You’re Not Here Just to Make It Through

You’re not on this earth just to survive. You’re here to shift things. You’re here to take up space, speak up, and live fully. Freedom isn’t something you arrive at; it's something you choose every day, especially in a world that keeps telling you to shrink.

You’re Not Here to Heal Everybody

You are not anyone’s emotional Band-Aid. You are not a rehab center for people who refuse to do their work. Love people, but don’t lose yourself trying to fix them. That’s not healing. That’s sacrifice, and you weren’t born to be sacrificed.

Your Peace Doesn’t Need a Justification

You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your stillness. If God gave you peace, protect it. If something steals your joy or your clarity, let it go. Rest isn’t a reward, it’s your right.

Don’t Keep Loving People Who Keep Hurting You

Stop bleeding for people who keep cutting you. That’s not love, it's self-abandonment. If you have to shrink to stay loyal, it’s time to let go.

You Are Whole, Even When You’re Alone

Being alone is not a death sentence. You don’t have to settle just because you want to be with someone. True strength is knowing your worth and waiting for the love that lifts you up, not the one that weighs you down.

Your ‘No’ Is a Full Sentence

You don’t have to say it sweetly. You don’t have to explain. No is enough. Boundaries are not mean, they’re necessary. You are allowed to protect your peace.

Your Softness Is a Superpower

This world will try to harden you. Don’t let it. Being soft in a world that’s rough is strength. Your tenderness means you didn’t let life turn you cold. That’s power.

You Were Already Chosen

You don’t need a spotlight to matter. You don’t need applause to be valid. You were chosen by God before anyone knew your name. Walk like it.

You Don’t Have to Carry My Wounds

You’re not here to fix what broke me. You are not a continuation of my pain, you’re a new chapter. My silence stops with me. Your freedom starts with you.

Forgiveness Doesn’t Require Access

You can forgive and still not let someone back in. Forgiveness is about peace, not proximity. Some doors need to stay closed for your sanity to stay whole.

You Are More Than What the World Sees

Beauty is not your only value. Your soul, your mind, your spirit, that’s where your real power lives. Don’t just take care of your looks. Feed what’s inside you, too.

God Is Not Your Last Resort

He’s not your Plan B. He’s your foundation. Trust Him when the way is blurry. Praise Him before the blessing comes. He sees you, especially when the world doesn’t.

This Is How We Change the Story

We break cycles by breaking silence. We rewrite legacy not just with words, but with our choices... by healing, by resting, by loving ourselves enough to do it differently.

So let the apple fall. Let it roll. Let it land in soil we prepared with prayer, with therapy, with faith, with truth. Let our daughters walk into rooms we were never allowed in and know, without question:

They are not just our hope. They are our healed prayers in motion.

A Call to Reflect

As you finish reading, I invite you to pause and sit with this: What are you carrying that you don’t want your children to inherit?

It could be the silence you thought was protecting them, the habits you normalized without meaning to, or the unspoken pain you’ve learned to live with but never healed.

This isn’t about shame, it's about honesty. It's about making room for truth, because awareness is where healing begins.

Ask yourself:

• What do I want the next generation to be free from?

• What cycles can stop with me?

• What kind of soil am I preparing for those coming after me?
  

We don’t have to pass down everything we’ve been through. We get to choose what continues and what ends. We get to choose healing. We get to choose freedom.

Let this be your invitation to start the work, to keep going, to break what needs breaking so those after you can build something new.

Because legacy isn’t just what we leave behind. It’s what we lift off their shoulders.