My Journey as the Family Curse-breaker

 La siguiente entrada en el blog está en inglés ya que fue lo que escribí para participar del concurso mundial de escritura "The Hope Prize 2025."

No gané ni estoy entre los finalistas, así que ahora ya puedo publicarlo por mi cuenta. Ahora que lo pego aquí, Grammarly me dice que "hay 31 errores". Debe tener razón, no me animé a usar ese corrector antes de enviarlo, principalmente porque no tuve tiempo de hacerlo.

Me enteré de la existencia de dicho concurso una semana antes de que se cerraran las inscripciones, así que me dediqué a escribir, conseguir el dinero para inscribirme, y como el concurso era en Australia (estaban más de 12 horas adelantados) llegué justo a tiempo.

No he corregido los errores, mi principal preocupación (aparte de llegar a tiempo) era el tema espiritual y paranormal, y cómo explicarles que pertenece al género autobiográfico y no fantasía.

My Journey as the Family Curse-breaker

Hello, I’m a Beta Reader, book reviewer, and Writer. Oh! I’m also an empath and a healer; like many others, I heal and break the hurtful generational curses of my family tree.

The following story is part of my journey as a generational healer, how I became one, why I continue, and how these experiences can be called “Hope.”

Due to the nature of these experiences and the fact that they are part of my spiritual beliefs, they cannot be scientifically proven unless science finds a way to interview people who have already passed away.

Wait, what?

When I describe myself as “Generational Healer,” the question I mostly get is “What is that?”

As I provide the answer, I get to see the person blinking a few times to cover for the mental gymnastics their brain goes through to process and understand what I’m saying, because my response to the question is as follows:

I heal the accumulated generational trauma passed down my genealogical tree by finding ways to break its patterns of conduct in the fewest actions possible.

Oh! And I call these traumas, curses. Simply because “traumas” need a medical professional with a psychology degree to treat and heal them, while curses require a healer, or even a witch, and that sounds like so much fun.

Dear reader, if at this point, you’re rapidly blinking, have one or fifty questions, and a few protests come to your mind, then that’s the most common response I get too. Unless you’re already familiar with the subject, your brain might be doing mental gymnastics right about now.

Let’s try again:

A baby coming into the world gets their physical appearance from their parents and ancestors further back in their genealogical tree. Pretty much everybody already knows that and the “other” traits this baby also receives, such as some predispositions to certain hereditary diseases, or skills to do well in certain areas.

But what’s not considered common knowledge are the social and economic curses that pass down from generation to generation through the bloodline, until somebody decides to heal them, with the intent that future generations won’t have to relive those in whatever form they may show up.

Yes, I believe curses pass down from parents to children, and then to their children’s children, and so on. The contrary hasn’t been proved, so, why not?

Based on that, I’ve decided that I am the one to heal those curses in my family tree. If it works, great! If not, then I’m having fun, and this is one of my eccentricities.

How did I start?

I fell for the carrot.

In the trending spiritual beliefs going on social media, everybody proclaims the same thing, which goes as something along the lines of “emotionally heal yourself to unlock the life of your dreams.” To achieve this, a lot of people promote their books, classes, and private sessions. No judgment to the people who buy and read books, sign up for classes, and attend private sessions, in a way, I did the same thing too, and after all, they do want a better life.

That’s the carrot everybody follows. A prize that is within your sight, but just outside of your grip, and regardless of how much you chase it, it remains out of your grasp. Frustrating.

At the time, I wasn’t looking for a better life; I didn’t know what that would look like, didn’t consider the possibility of that being possible for me, and didn’t go into social media. So, I set my goal to graduate from living on this planet, so I wouldn’t have to reincarnate here ever again. Yes, you could say I was fantasizing about suicide. It was August, 2.021.

I thought that instead of listening to the religions of the world, I should pay attention to the people who had crossed over and came back, that is, those who had survived near-death experiences (NDE). What was the other side like? What had happened? Was there really a hell for the ones who exited themselves?

Instead of jumping from the top of a tall building the moment I found out that there’s no hell, at least, according to the NDE stories I read, I started to forgive myself for having to live through all the hurtful things I had lived through until that point in my life.

That led me to forgive those who had played any part in those experiences. The more I remembered about my childhood and early teen years, the more I forgave; it became my obsession.

Back then, I believed I was alone. I hadn’t spoken to my older sister and brother since we had a disagreement and fight in 2.016, so I called my sister, invited her to go out for coffee, and proceeded to apologize for every single thing I had done to her since I could remember.

Six months later, she called me, and we went for coffee and caught up on the goings on in our lives. Then the get-togethers and coffee started happening once every couple of months, then once a month, and finally once a week. Now, we’re constantly chatting, going out, and enjoying being sisters.

I plan to do the same when my older brother is geriatric and no longer has any strength left to get violent with me. Just need to wait another twenty years to be on the safe side.

Was it easy to forgive myself and others? No.

Reliving, remembering, and allowing myself to feel whatever I didn’t get to feel when those hurtful experiences took place took more from me than I thought it would; it was hard and painful.

You could say that by 2.023, my life had changed for the better, and it had, but only superficially. Back then, I didn’t realize that I had to dig deeper for any real change to happen. That’s when I learned about breaking a family’s curses.

Did I want to break family curses? No.

I cried, protested, abandoned the whole healing thing, cried some more, and wanted to die. But I didn’t because I got curious enough to investigate what the “breaking family curses” would involve.

My first experience as the family’s curse breaker

I recalled my parents’ attitudes to several situations. Did they react differently from their parents in that regard? When faced with the same type of situations, did I do anything different? At the time, my answer was a “no.” These days, either the same situations haven’t shown up, or my responses have been different enough that the situations are no longer registered in my memory due to their lack of importance.

For my first experience, I decided that I’d do something generic, so a lot of ancestors could use it. The topic: Body-shaming.

When I was a teenager, my mom body-shamed me because I had not yet developed an adult body, but wasn’t a child anymore. At the time, an aunt had died, the funeral would be the next day, and we all had to dress up to attend it. And while shopping for new clothes, my mom had directed me to try out a slim white blouse with black pants. Due to the blouse’s fabric and material, my not-yet body showed the first stages of development, but my mom had called out that little growth, something along the lines of a shameful sight. Yeah, instead of breasts, I had something smaller than lemons.

I would’ve left it alone if she had verbally attacked only me, but sadly, my sister went through similar experiences, and that got me thinking: Where did all this shame come from? When did the need to point out our “flaws” become necessary? When my sister or I displayed a fault, did we trigger something in my mom that make her lash out? My mom was a shy and sweet person, full of love and warmth, until one of her daughters stopped looking “perfect” for the world to see.

Did somebody point out what my mom got wrong while growing up? If the answer was a yes, who would this person be? The obvious answer would be her mother, my grandmother, because according to the general opinion of both my mom and her brothers, my grandmother did not love my mom, and used to criticize her regardless of what she did or said.

Well, if my great-grandmother pointed out, criticized, or body-shamed my grandmother in any way like she did to my mom, then that’s a pattern of behavior, and a curse to break.

According to the instructions on how to break and heal generational curses that I had found on the TikTok account of Seek-Zeek 3-4 at https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMApKcATs/, the following steps had to be followed:

1.      Investigate how far back does the curse go,

2.      Acknowledge how this curse shows up in my life,

3.      Write a letter to the ancestors telling them about the curse I’m about to break, a future memory as if it already happened, and sign the letter as if you were the first person of a new family, one that will live without the curse,

4.      Burn the letter as a way of sending the letter’s contents to the place where people go after they pass away, then dump the ashes in the trash,

5.      Take an action in a way that it can be perceived as radically contrary to what my family would usually do, and

6.      Carry on with my life.

Well, the instruction were a little more complicated than that, but I summarized them because I may have the best intentions, but my ADHD brain runs the show.

How far back can I go?

Mothers do criticize their daughters, as the receiver’s end, it became my wound to heal, but what about when siblings body-shame each other? Or did it come from society?

Asking these questions made the issue broader and more generic, but at the same time, overwhelming. On the other hand, the term body-shaming is fairly new, so even if my tenth great-grandmother heard somebody call her body with disregard for her feelings, then whatever action I could take to heal that wound would apply, even if she didn’t have a name to describe what she felt.

Whether my first ancestor had climbed down from a tree or came to be through a different way, that’s not my business. What is my concern is how their actions emotionally affected their offspring and how that trauma became part of the life experiences of their descendants, creating what I now call a curse.

Whatever trigger had caused a sweet and nurturing person like my mom to say such awful things in her attempt to protect us from “what others might think” became my first official generational curse to heal.

So then, I began to gather what information I could about my mom’s early life, plus accepting the fact that neither my sister nor I knew anything about our maternal grandmother other than her name. My mom didn’t like to talk about her. So, let me introduce you to my mom:

My mom was born at the end of the year 1.938 in Machacamarca, a small mining town near the city of Oruro, Bolivia. Because her father was a doctor, she had a private tutor who taught her how to read, write, some geography, and a bit of math; she started going to grade school beginning in the third grade. Once she completed high school and got her diploma, she moved to the capital city, Sucre, where she studied and became a math teacher.

Later, she moved to the city of Oruro, where she worked for a few years, teaching math at girls high schools before she met my dad and got married in 1.965. Two years later, my brother was born, then my sister in 1.968, and finally, I was born in 1.977. Fifteen years later, a doctor diagnosed my mom with cancer, and seven years after that, she went into the Light.

How was this trauma showed up in my life?

When a person is criticized for the way they dress, the common response is to people-please by modifying the colors, fabrics, or even the style. Through these actions, the person can become, in a way, smaller; trying to get the approval of an authority figure, the acceptance of peers, or simply stop drawing others’ attention. Those actions hurt the self-esteem of said person, both at the time of the incident and in the long run.

The opposite reaction could be true too, for some families, but not in mine.

My aunt used to say, “You’ll be criticized whether you do it or not. So, do it anyway.” The first time I heard her say that, I thought she was the bravest person alive, but at the time, I didn’t follow her advice; I was too busy trying to make myself as small and invisible to the world as possible.

My mom’s insecurities become part of me. The way I looked and how I dressed in front of other people had always been a stress factor for me. Sure, children are cruel, and I went through bullying at school, but schools in Bolivia require their students to wear a uniform, so I was shielded from that kind of criticism, but not at home, where I was judged both for the way I wanted to dress and for the way I physically looked.

If I had it my way, I would’ve mixed as many bright colors as possible in one single outfit; instead, I had to wear beige, and soft colors like baby-blue, soft pinks, and the like. Shopping for clothes was my nightmare because t-shirts with a big logo, or image, were always out of the question. This lasted until I was almost forty years old.

Even though, my mom had died when I was almost twenty-one years old, her fears had created a life of their own inside me, so, I didn’t need her to tell me what she thought about my clothes, my self-criticizing did an excellent job.

Fast forward fourteen years, I got a job at a hard work store where I figured it was more important to be dressed comfortably to work in retail sales of manual and electrical tools, than wearing a “nice” outfit. So, I started wearing big dark blue industrial apron with sleeves that made me look like a rectangle walking around the store, but that allowed me the freedom to begin exploring fun clothes with bright colors and images that wouldn’t be seen by anyone but me. At least not, during the day.

Without knowing, I had taken the first steps to break the curse.

The letter and mailing system to the Light

By now, I’ve learned my lesson about keeping a copy of each letter I send the ancestors, mostly because the general idea is still imprinted in my memory, but not the details, so if my ADHD head offered more things than the ones I remember, I have no way of knowing, so I hope my ancestors don’t hold me too responsible for those “extra” things.

Anyway, I don’t remember any extra things because I was already nervous about doing something radically opposite to what my family would usually do. I’ve done some crazy stuff in my life, but never sent a letter to the higher-ups confessing what I was about to do!

I know I wrote the letter explaining what I wanted to do as a way to heal the family curse, explained that I’d take an unthinkable action from the point of view of the family, and that it would have a wonderful result because now, “I’m able to go out and about in whatever clothes and look I feel like.” Or something along those lines.

Oh! I also invited them to come and visit me sometime.

Only once before have I burned a letter; that time, I set a bonfire in a can to burn the stuff my ex-boyfriend left behind as a way to cut him off from my life.

This time, I went into the kitchen, opened a window for the smoke, and used a coffee can. I felt very excited thinking about a bunch of dead people would get to read my letter, wonder who I was, and maybe laugh a little. Mostly, I felt I had a family again.

All in all, I didn’t know if I had to say something, pray, or chant, so I said to the open window, something along the lines of “this body-shaming energy and feeling are no longer mine, I return them to the Light for healing and transmutation.”

Once I made sure that every single part of the paper had burnt and the fire had gone out completely, I dumped the ashes in the trash.

The Action

The question then turned into “what do I do?” I had promised an action, but still had no idea what that would be.

Going back to the first step of the instructions, I watched a few documentaries about Victorian and Edwardian etiquette and lifestyle. I figured that was the most relevant period of time for my mom and her mother because if my mom’s words came from a fear of what society might think, then the British rules of etiquette and the lifestyle trends seemed like a good place to start.

I knew that following the British influence was the right choice because of the books my mom inherited from her father, which included a Morris MA, Langmead F, Holmes GM. Dictionary of Practical Medicine. Montaner & Simon, Editors. London, 1909; some of his medical instruments, and a manual of etiquette, whose author and edition I don’t remember anymore, as I threw it into the trash after my mom died.

I have ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. This manual of etiquette never stood a chance against my combination of “fun” aspects. I remember something about napkins or silverware, or perhaps that came from watching the movie “Titanic” one too many times? Who knows, but what I did remember was that it had small print, and it was so boring!

Anyway, after watching the documentary titled “Death by Wallpaper: The Hidden Killers in The Victorian Home” by the Little Dot Studios Network on the Absolute History YouTube channel, I concluded that corsets and bras were women’s enemies because of how society’s expectations around their “correct” use had shaped the feminine image through time.

I was indignantly angry; it was time to take action, and now I knew what to do.

I decided to go to a public park near my house wearing a t-shirt of an inconvenient color and not wear a bra underneath it because if society dictated how “proper” ladies dressed correctly, then I would reclaim the title of proper lady using my own rules, no society would tell me or my family anymore ho to dress, or body-shame us based on that.

Easy! Right? Eh… No.

Let me explain the part of a t-shirt of an inconvenient color:

Back in October 2.019, presidential elections were celebrated where the Bolivian President, Evo Morales, committed a huge electoral fraud, but he and his government were discovered replacing thousands of valid votes with fake ones, all favoring him.

Obviously, it became a huge scandal. People began protesting, blockages were placed in every corner of cities, and international observers assigned by the European Union, Organization of American States, and others agreed with the Bolivians that there were clear signs of fraud.

Bolivia was deeply divided between the government followers and the rest of the population. First, there were clashes between the police and the protestors, then the government followers clashed with the population. The conflict, which lasted a month, ended with the Bolivian President and his government quitting and escaping from Bolivia.

It was a happy ending, until the political figures that had escaped from Bolivia started calling the whole thing a “coup d’état,” and the world media believed them, and not us, the Bolivian citizens. Anyway, I’m getting too far away from the story, and you can Google all these events. 

All this brings me back to one afternoon, sometime during the conflict, when I was walking back home from my job at the hard-work store, and I was wearing an orange t-shirt, which was the opposition’s party color. By then, it was a well-known fact that blue was the color of the government’s followers because it represented the M.A.S. political party.

Suddenly, a middle-aged woman walked out of a small grocery store with a bundle in her arms and stood in front of me, blocking me from walking any further. She began questioning me about my name, where I lived, where I was going, and why. I was three blocks away from my home, we were standing by the door of my old high school, and no other people were around.

Apparently, she wasn’t satisfied with my answers because from the bundle in her arms, she pulled a kitchen knife and pointed it at my face. I thought that the bundle in her arms contained a sleeping baby. She told me to go away and never come back, then she let me go, and as I walked home, I kind of promised myself that I wouldn’t wear again a t-shirt that could be suspected of belonging to a political party due to its color again. So, no blue, light green, orange, or even red t-shirts anymore. Funny enough, I stopped walking down that block for the next six years.

I never found out why this woman came at me with a kitchen knife, if it was because of the color of my t-shirt, maybe she objected to my skin or hair color, or perhaps she was just having a mental health crisis. Who knows?

Going back to the inconvenient color I selected for my radical action, I chose to wear the exact orange t-shirt I was wearing the day of the knife. I was terrified of being attacked again for that color, plus, I planned not to wear a bra. I had worn a bra since the smaller-than-lemons incident all those years ago!

Did I mention that I have ADHD? Well, the afternoon I decided to go, I put on the orange t-shirt, my favorite pair of jeans, and shoes, and went out. When I was about half a block away from my house, I looked down at my t-shirt and realized that it had the stomach area dirty. I had forgotten that I used that t-shirt a few days earlier to clean my house!

It took everything in me not to turn around and go home. I was so embarrassed! I don’t know what my face looked like, but I felt like a walking tomato. When I got to the park, I thought everybody looked at me, judging; yet, I put on a calm and happy face, as if I was saying “this is me, look at me because I don’t care.”

I stayed at the park for half an hour, just walking around, trying to hold my head high. When I felt that my beating heart wouldn’t jump out of my body to run away and hide, I left and went home walking slowly.

I had kept my promise to the ancestors.

My life afterwards and conclusions.

Somewhere I’d read that “the thing that you’re most afraid to do was the one that would help you grow the most.” I don’t know who said it first, but it has become my mantra. That’s why I face my fears even though I’m terrified the entire time.

So, what changes had this event brought? Well, I can say that my insecurities about the way I dress are down to a solid thirty percent. It was embarrassing for me to go to a public park looking like that, but I also kept reminding myself that if my mom had been looking from the side of the Light and understood what I was trying to achieve, then she would’ve smiled.

Facing my fears and insecurities in that radical way helped me in other ways; for example, I opened myself to the possibility of being seen and posted a TikTok video. Because I wasn’t looking for followers or likes, only a way to challenge the fear of being seen, I’m quite happy with the 179 likes I got.

I included my ancestors in that challenge, sent them the letter, did the whole thing; I called that “Fear of persecution.” Now, I know I made a mistake there, because Persecution, as I understand it now, is different from the idea that I had in my head at the time. So, another lesson was to get a dictionary BEFORE doing the challenge because life supplies you with chances to “grow” in other areas. And, yeah, I made it through those other challenges, but that’s another story.

Finding a pattern or curse to break comes hand in hand with self-healing, a lot of self-compassion, and creativity to find a way that is the opposite of what my parents would’ve done if they were in the same situation. It also brings me closer to them, because I miss them so much.

Finally, I like to think that my ancestors had a laugh, maybe some sense of validation, and the curse that had been passed down the tree has been broken.

I’ll ask them, after I cross over… or get an appointment with a medium. However, I set my intention of doing this for them and for myself, so deep down in my heart, I know it’s working. My life has changed so much already, and all those changes were for the better. I no longer fantasize with suicide either.

Writing this story and submitting it to the Hope Prize is, actually, another challenge I set for myself. Besides the fact that it’s in English and my maternal language is Spanish, I’m opening myself up for the world to see me as I am, writing from my heart, learning to write every day, and enjoying it even though it wasn’t as easy as I initially thought it would be because I haven’t done anything like this before.

If you’re reading this, thank you.