When moving forward means being the cycle-breaker in a family

Carlie Schofield pictured as a baby, with her mum. (Supplied: Carlie Schofield) Link copiedShareShare articleMy whole life has been shaped by breaking cycles or watching the people I love try to break them. Growing up in a household with an Aboriginal mother and a non-Indigenous father in the 1990s meant navigating racism that was often overt and socially acceptable. They were used to the stares and comments and defended each other as much as they could. But those pressures also created fractures in our extended family. I watched the difficult relationship my dad had with his parents, and the complex one my mum had with her foster mother and foster siblings. The through line in both was something harder to name at the time: unspoken trauma and very little emotional awareness. I grew up knowing that my dad's parents disapproved of his marriage to an Aboriginal woman. Sometimes my grandparents were present in my life, and sometimes they weren't. As a child, I didn't fully understand why. I remember us all having lunch together as a family with my grandparents and it ended with them telling me that I could come for a sleepover, all I had to do was call them. I was thrilled. Having grandparents felt like being "normal", like the other kids at school who talked about staying at nan and pop's house. A few days later, my parents let me call them to ask if I could come over. My grandfather answered the phone. When I said my name, he paused as if trying to place who I was. I was devastated. I handed the phone to my dad. Not long after, my parents decided to cut contact. I never saw them again. Carlie Schofield with her dad in the 90s. (Supplied: Carlie Schofield) Growing up without grandparents meant missing out on small things most people take for granted — asking questions about family history, birthday cards in the mail, having them at big milestones. But I accepted that my parents had made the decision they felt was best. My mum's side of the family carried a different kind of complexity. She had been taken from her birth mother and raised by a non-Indigenous foster family who expected gratitude for the life she had been given. That expectation left little room to acknowledge the grief or loss she carried. My parents tried to build a life on their own terms, without the influence of the people who had hurt them. They were labelled the black sheep. The outcasts. Watching this as a child was isolating. And as I got older, I carried my own grief about the childhood I didn't have — and sometimes frustration that my parents hadn't found a way to repair those relationships. It wasn't until I became a mother that my perspective began to shift. Motherhood has a way of making family patterns impossible to ignore. Suddenly you start asking questions you never asked before. Why didn't we say "I love you" more often in my family? Why do I feel so anxious about getting things right? I had always been the peacemaker in my family, the sensitive one, the empathetic one. This meant I was always the people pleaser and often disregarded my own needs to put others first. When I began setting boundaries and stepping away from situations that didn't feel healthy, the people around me noticed. They asked: "who are you?" and "why are you like this?" Motherhood was the hardest experience of my life, but it was also the most liberating. Looking at my daughters made something clear to me: this was not the emotional inheritance I wanted to pass down. Carlie with her parents and newborn daughter. (Supplied: Carlie Schofield) There are moments where my approach to parenting is questioned. But I explain that I want my children to feel safe coming to me when they struggle. I want them to learn how to regulate their emotions, not suppress them. That looks different from how I was raised. This doesn't mean my parents got everything wrong. In fact, the remarkable thing is that they can now see the changes I'm trying to make. They are learning, slowly, to be more emotionally attuned grandparents. In my work as a therapist, I see how these patterns don't begin with one person — they are carried, adapted and often misunderstood across generations. Sometimes the people closest to you question your choices, and there are moments when it feels easier to go back to the old roles and to keep the peace and avoid the discomfort of change. But keeping the peace often means living with constant stress and worry about those relationships. Breaking cycles often means holding love and disappointment in the same breath. It means acknowledging the strength of those who came before you while choosing a different path for the generations who come after. It is often talked about as healing, but it can also come with grief — grief for the childhood you didn't have, and grief for the relationships that may never become what you hoped they could be. Change rarely begins with grand gestures. With one person deciding that the story will n

When moving forward means being the cycle-breaker in a family

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When moving forward means being the cycle-breaker in a family

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