Chain of Pain

There’s an insidious myth circulating in our culture. One that has spread like wildfire. It blames and shames people instead of addressing the root cause of relational dysfunction. The impact of our childhood terrain. This is a cultural phenomenon with systemic implications. Parents who loved us. Did their best. Had no idea how the environment they created would shape our nervous system.

This is not just my personal chain of pain… it’s cultural. That truth doesn’t fit neatly into a morality tale. Love can exist and still train a child for endurance instead of ease. Make them masters of surviving instability. Ones who make sense of absence. Carry burdens that were never theirs to hold… that dug into their spine before they could walk.

Then there’s the flip side. Those who develop narcissistic traits. It has nothing to do with money, race, gender, or the superficial divisions the world loves to point at.

It’s human. Pure and simple. It grows from environments where love was conditional. Attention depended on performance. Vulnerability met with abandonment… where being impressive mattered more than being known. Inflating the self became survival. Control became safety. Admiration became oxygen. Intimacy felt dangerous. Pain lived there too. And… later spilled outward and burned everyone nearby.

Two conditioned systems meet. That’s the collision. Not fate. Not evil. Conditioning.

I never felt I deserved less. The trauma story many attempted to give me. I had fire. Opinions. Edges. I pushed back. What I didn’t have was a lived sense of steadiness. A consistent anchor that didn’t disappear, detach, or require me to manage emotional upheaval.

My mom loved me and was repeatedly taken away by severe mental illness, medication, institutions, shock treatments. My dad loved the idea of me, especially when there was an audience. Still he opted out of the daily responsibility of raising a daughter.

My mom’s mom did her best with what she had. And then she died on Christmas Day when I was nine. The rest of the family was caught up in their own melodrama. Untouched by what was happening in my world.

The reality of my childhood wasn’t betrayal or abandonment. It was lack of capacity that I learned to compensate for. Plain and simple. A wound that shaped how I moved through relationships. What I expected. Provided. And longed for. Someone who could stay. Whose presence didn’t call for me to carry the weight of constant negotiation or endurance. Loyalty became the echo of my heart’s longing. Not a horoscope. Diagnosis. Or weakness. A non-negotiable.

Love wasn’t absent in my childhood. It just wasn’t reliable. Care existed, but it could vanish overnight. Connection came with long pauses. Silence that demanded I manage it. I did. I waited. Adapted. Stayed upright while something essential was missing. I developed master-level skills. Smart. Necessary. They kept me alive. And made me a magnet to the wrong people. Endurance was my default, not a choice.

Those with narcissistic traits don’t smell weakness. They recognize competence. Capacity. Emotional stamina. Those who can carry chaos and relational load without cracking. They keep going. They are the glue that holds even the most shattered pieces together. That is who I was trained to be. There is no romance in it. It’s being chosen to be the infrastructure. The one who glues the shattered pieces back together. Again. And again. Because no one else will.

We live in a culture that slings the word narcissist like it’s both diagnosis and absolution. Label it. Block it. Move on. A refusal to examine the ecosystem that produced these dynamics at scale. Obsession with image, productivity, and self-branding. Performance rewarded over presence. Quick-fix psychology sold. Not an ethical reckoning of why so many are terrified of intimacy. Starved for it at the same time. No wonder relationships feel like war zones.

I don’t use the word trauma lightly. It flattens history into defect. I prefer roots… conditioning. Quiet rules absorbed early. How love feels. What you can reasonably expect. And your role in filling the gaps.

In my case, the rules were clear and relentless. Don’t expect much or assume anyone will stay. Carry yourself. Be patient and persistent. Make sense of neglect. Call it growth.

That worked. Until it didn’t.

When someone tells me I accepted the bare minimum because I didn’t believe I deserved more, I call bullshit. My body rejects that story immediately. It is not the truth of my lived experience. I accepted it because it was all I had known. It matched the emotional climate I was raised in. Steadiness felt foreign, not comforting. That isn’t low self-worth. It is imprint.

And no, I am not attracted to chaos. I am capable of being the calm in the center of it. There’s a difference, and I won’t pretend there isn’t. I didn’t seek disorder. I survived it. Repeatedly. Skillfully. At great cost. For six decades I proved, even celebrated, my endurance. I’m done doing that. I am not an emotional dumping ground or infrastructure for the weak. Never again will I be the calm in another’s fucking chaos.

Culturally, the chain of pain continues behind the scenes. It ripples into relationships. Expectations. Wiring of the next generation. Breaking it requires awareness that’s exhausting. Unglamorous. But absolutely necessary.

Reliving my life through the first book in my Sovereign Path Series—Forged by Fire, Baptized by the Sea—led  to deep integration of what shaped me. The explanations given no longer had weight. Labels lost their shine. My spirit, mind and body settled on a truth that cannot be negotiated. That’s where I am now. Nearly 63. Not broken. Not bitter. Not confused. Done.

Done with endurance as a prerequisite for love. Relationships that require my nervous system to carry both of us. Crumbs. No matter how cleverly packaged.

I am not in denial. Nor am I refusing to acknowledge my roots. I am awake. Aware. Carving a path toward the loyalty I long for. A standard that holds both my heart and spine. A life that doesn’t require me to be exceptional at surviving. My root system did its job. It kept me alive. It doesn’t get to run the rest of my life.

This is not my trauma story.

It is my refusal to live a lie.