Chapter 1:

 The Map Starts Here

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

-         Carl Jung 
 

If you had told me many years ago that I would, one day, call myself a cycle breaker , I would’ve laughed in your face. Yet, in 2017, someone actually did tell me I would, and I did, indeed, laugh in their face. During a session with an astrologer and psychic medium, they told me that I would work with a woman who would become my mentor and who would teach me how to help heal my family. My jaw suddenly dropped and I definitely rolled my eyes more than once, as I scoffed, “Kelli, you don’t know my family. I find that hard to believe, because I feel like my family doesn’t even like me that much....”

I began having flashbacks to all those moments in time that were proof. Moments where I felt that my family tolerated my existence more than anything. I felt my heart sink, as my inner voice began berating me about what a horrible person I was, reminding me of all the pain I carried from the past. The medium remarked confidently, “Nope, you are here to help them. And it doesn’t have to be with them in person; it’s going to be different. You need to look up Family Constellation Therapy and the woman I told you about.” I wrote her response down in my journal and then closed it for two years.

Fast forward two full years later. I’m divorced, living back in my hometown of Del Mar, California, having just broke up with a COVID boyfriend and feeling unfulfilled in life. On the outside, it looked like I was living the dream life. I was working with my family at our winery, managing the winery’s social media pages, traveling the world hosting winery events and dinners, becoming friends with celebrities and influencers, and making a good living. Someone might take one look at my life and think I had it made. Yet somehow, I went to bed every night feeling lonelier than ever and wondering why I felt that all my life experiences had no purpose. I asked myself:

Why are romantic relationships so damn difficult for me?

Why do I keep attracting the same unhealthy toxic men?

Why have I struggled with suicidal ideation since I was in my late teen years?

Why have I been depressed and anxious since I was a young girl?

Why was I so insecure?

What was that 14 year eating disorder all about?

Why did my inner voice hate me so much and say such mean things to me?

What the hell has my life been, if it was supposedly so picture perfect?

What did I do through all that for?

I knew deep down, within what I recognized as my Soul, that my life was supposed to have meaning. My path of becoming cycle breaker was just starting to show its light to me then, but I was still stuck in the dark depths of my past, in the mindset of a black sheep.

For quite a long time, I felt like I was an outsider in my family. To be clear, my family is not made up terrible people. Actually, quite the opposite. They are good natured, incredibly smart, and loving people. But I couldn’t see that behind all the pain I carried. I had all these unresolved feelings like guilt, anger, and resentment, and a heavy sense that something was deeply wrong with me, even when I couldn’t explain why. I tried “fixing” myself through traditional talk therapy, had been on and off antidepressants since I was 16 years old, and had spoken to every spiritual healer recommended to me. However, I kept running into the same struggles. Relationships of all kinds felt hard to me and trusting myself was difficult. I had a very deep abandonment wound that controlled my relationships. I had very low self-esteem and I isolated myself from others, was chronically depressed and suicidal more times than I want to admit, and even tried to take my life in my twenties. Constantly comparing myself to my family, I felt that I never would make enough money or that I would ever be good enough. Battling an eating disorder from the age of 10, I also had a handful of other health issues that never seemed to resolve themselves. I was painfully aware of how different I was from my family, yet I deeply resented myself for all the ways that I found myself similar. I had been raised to be the overly-responsible oldest daughter, the perfectionist good girl, the quiet people pleaser, and I had grown up to be all of that and deeply parentified.

When I found Family Constellation Therapy (FCT), things finally began to make sense. I learned that much of what I was suffering from wasn’t only mine to bear, but that it originated from inherited family trauma which had been passed down through generations. Trauma that was woven into my DNA and into how I was raised. Through FCT work, I learned more about familial ancestral stories of immigration, war trauma, financial hardship, addiction, abandonment, abuse, illness, early loss, and so much more that had quietly shaped how my family related, coped, lived, and survived. In growing up inside that environment, I had absorbed much of that ancestral trauma and started to unconsciously repeat patterns simply because I knew no different.

In my family, I was told that we “don’t air our dirty laundry outside the family.” I understood that, as I didn’t think we needed to expose our families deepest and darkest pasts for the world to see. But the problem was, no one was talking about them in general. It took people dying and moments of conflict or frustration where a family secret would revealed, for me to be able to begin putting pieces together about how my family’s past affected me. However, putting said puzzle together wasn’t always challenging. Much of it, in fact, was a result of Family Constellation Therapy, which showed me the systemic power of being a part of a family.

Something magical occurred during my Family Constellation Therapy work as well. I even learned how to explore my personal money story in connection with my family’s money patterns in one session (without anyone in my family knowing), only to receive a call within 24 hours from a family member. They had suddenly felt compelled to share a long-misunderstood family money story—a story that had quietly shaped my relationship with money all these years. The phone call’s timing was impossible to ignore and spoke to the “ripple effect” this work has, which those who practice it call a phenomenology (or to explore how things are lived and felt in direct experience, rather than how they can be measured or analyzed). Once again, I was reminded that, even in the muck and guck of healing inherited trauma, the universe sends little gifts my way as a reward me for being brave enough to look at, speak about, and feel the things many people in the lineage had been so good at avoiding.

Through this FCT work, I learned that what we avoid doesn’t just go away. It gets passed down generation to generation. But when we’re willing to look at what’s been hidden within ourselves with honesty and compassion, it can become a doorway to healing. What once felt confusing and overwhelming slowly became my path to moving forward in my life. I realized that being someone who felt everything, questioned it, and still didn’t quite fit in wasn’t a flaw. It was actually an important role that I didn’t learn I had held until much later on my journey.

Through FCT, I realized that healing doesn’t erase the past, but it changes the future. It taught me to be the kind of person who could see pain and patterns clearly and confidently and choose something different for myself and my life. In those moments of realization, I stopped viewing myself as the negative black sheep who was incapable of a beautiful life, and I began to feel super empowered to take my life back into my own hands and rewrite my own story. Over time, I began to see how little shifts in my own life added up to be big ones over time. When I became a wife and a mother, I really began to feel that all the work I had done on myself finally resonated. The lessons and struggles all made sense for what the journey was for, and it wasn’t just about me anymore—it was also for future generations.

Here’s the beauty of the cycle breaker’s journey. As a cycle breaker, you don’t need to have children to make an impact on future generations. In my practice, I meet people constantly who have chosen not to have children or who cannot bear children. They often don’t always connect to this part of the cycle breaker’s journey—breaking the cycle for future generations. I then ask them to think about what their impact is on those they meet daily. As a cycle breaker, the way you transform yourself will ripple outward and affect all your connections and experiences. Sometimes, you’ll never know how your words, actions, or choices affect those around you who are privately dealing with issues that you know nothing about. Your impact on this world doesn’t always happen directly through your bloodline; it effects the people around you  every single day. Your impact goes beyond your DNA. It ripples out into the world!

My hope for you in this book is not that you read it and are suddenly and completely healed from your identity as your family’s black sheep. Life has a funny way of humbling us when we think we have it all figured out, only to be triggered by something we thought we’d healed that then reveals the deeply human parts of us. We are imperfect and so is this journey. I am offering you the gentle but powerful permission to look at yourself with curiosity, courage, and compassion. I encourage you to explore the parts of yourself that are tied to your lineage, including those unseen histories and emotional burdens that were never yours to carry yet have found their way into your body, voice, and mind. It’s through your exploration that you can learn to release these burdens and reclaim your own inner freedom as a cycle breaker.

The truth is that this work is an ongoing process. Thinking that you’ll arrive at a place where you are “fully healed” simply isn’t realistic or something I can promise you. What I can promise you, however, is that I have poured myself into this book through my own life experiences of becoming a cycle breaker. Over the last several years, I have learned and taught extensively on how to support others in their cycle-breaking journeys. It’s a journey that requires an immense amount of courage and commitment to truth.

In this book, I will give you the tools to help you show up to each page with curiosity, even when doing so feels hard. By the time you’ve finished reading this book, I hope that you are more intimately aware of yourself and from where you originated, and that have more clarity about where you want to go in your life. I promise, at the very least, to bring you awareness. I hope that you can start viewing yourself through a lens of more love and curiosity, rather than distaste or guilt. Awareness is the first step on your healing journey, because with it, you can then learn to choose differently, and that is what breaks cycles and changes the story for your future and the future of the ones to come.

Who Is the Black Sheep?

Contrary to what society would say, in my work of Family Constellation Therapy (FCT), the black sheep of a family are not the family’s problem. They are the mirror of the family. They are the ones who feel different, out of place, or like they don’t belong even before they can explain why. They may even look different! I call this a “felt sense” in your body that indicates something is off or not quite aligned. Black sheep might bring up unresolved issues that nobody talks about, want to have uncomfortable conversations, or address those topics other family members have tried so hard to deny. When I was writing my book, I shared with many different people the idea behind why I was writing it. Every single person I told said, “I am the black sheep of my family!” When I asked them why, they often said, “I’m just different than them. I’ve always felt that way.” This is usually the sentiment of most black sheep, they can feel that something about them is different even if they can’t always explain why.

What all black sheep have in common is the feeling that something in their family is off, and that they have an inner instinct to create distance in order to survive. Sometimes, that distance can be more emotional, with clear boundaries on how involved they are with their family members. Sometimes, that distance from the family can be full-on estrangement. Where a person’s familial boundaries lie are very personal and intimate choices they make for self-protection. Sometimes, that distance can be emotional, withholding connection or love. Each black sheep has their own story that they’ve lived, which has led them to their beliefs that who they are and who their family members are simply don’t feel the same. As humans, we are all hardwired for connection, love, and belonging. The hard part of the black sheep’s experience is that their existence can feel threatening or confusing to the rest of their family, who want to avoid deeper issues and continue to remain comfortable in their own dysfunction. Black sheep may not always get to experience familial connection, love, and the feeling of belonging that the rest of the family does.

In addition,, if you claim that you are the only resident black sheep in your family, I would argue that there’s some ego behind that statement. Every family can have multiple black sheep, but not every family will have multiple cycle breakers, and that distinction is very important. Not every black sheep in a family will do the inner personal work to grow and evolve beyond their wounds. Not every black sheep will learn how to be a cycle breaker.

One thing that I’ve always observed about the term black sheep is that it has a very negative societal connotation. When people describes themselves as one, it’s almost said with self-deprecation or even egoic pride. However, behind that claim lurks a lot of emotional pain. A black sheep is a family member who’s frequently described as angry or bitter, dismissed as being dramatic or overly sensitive, and accused of holding grudges or creating problems where none exist. Due to their limited healthy coping and communication skills, dysfunctional families often isolate family members who they to pick on or blame. So much frustration and pain can be felt by the Black Sheep in this experience, because they shoulder the family’s pain as no one steps up to take accountability.

It doesn’t feel good to feel different from those who’re supposed to love us yet feel that our experiences with them at times are anything but loving. It doesn’t feel good when we feel we must change ourselves just to feel loved. It doesn’t feel good to walk into a room of people that we’ve known our whole lives and still feel alone. It doesn’t feel good when no matter what we do, even if we’re following our hearts, that we are still awaiting validation or approval from family who might never be able to give it to us. It doesn’t feel good when we feel that no matter who we are or become, we will never belong or fit in. We end up losing our primal sense of having a tribe to belong to, making us feel unlovable and outcast. We then start to believe we are the problem. In reality, the black sheep represents the truth and having a voice in matters, which many people don’t want black sheep to have.

From the lens of Family Constellation Therapy (FCT), the black sheep of the family is the person who accumulates all the unhealed ancestral trauma, which has in a sense piled up like cars in traffic on the 405 freeway. A black sheep is the person who is holding the pain of the family’s past in their hands and who is lugging around the baggage full of issues that no one else has looked at, healed, or paid any attention to. It’s been repeatedly passed down until the black sheep senses that something is off, only to blame themselves when truthfully they’re just the one mirroring what they’re holding. As a result of that, the black sheep starts to feel different from everyone else who is sitting around with their own baggage and unsure how to move forward without it.

In my work not only as a FCT facilitator, but as an intuitive medium, I’ve come to see and believe that the black sheep signed up for the role of being different to have the opportunity and privilege before coming to Earth to grow, evolve, and learn in their own ways that they need and to help transform and heal a lineage of people. As cycle breakers, we don’t get into FCT work for our families, because we are the ones who are suffering and need help. But the magic of the work’s ripple effects travels through our family systems, and they, too, will feel the effects of the transformation we’re going through—even if they can’t name it. Again, phenomonology.

Now that we’ve discussed how a black sheep feels and experiences their role, let’s dive into some of the traumas and wounds that they may experience in their lifetimes. Not all black sheep share the same traumas or wounds, but there are certain patterns that definitely show up repeatedly. While every black sheep’s experience is unique, these are the wounds I often most see:

·       Chronic emotional neglect: When a person grows up without consistent emotional responsiveness and connection, it can lead to difficulty feeling seen or safe in connection.

·       Denying emotional expression: When a person isn’t encouraged to cry or let out their feelings, or they don’t have a free and healthy space to feel human as children within safe boundaries, they grow up learning it’s better to be quiet and repress their feeling. We learn to caretake others’ emotions before our own.

·       Scapegoating: Someone who is blamed, shamed, or held responsible for problems they didn’t cause, which allows others in the family to look away from deeper issues and avoid taking responsibility themselves.

·       Inability to repair conflict: Conflict is inevitable within all human relationships, but how it’s handled is the difference between healthy and unhealthy. Dr. Gabor Maté has said many times in his talks, podcasts, and books that if we can master the art of repair after conflict, that impact has longer lasting effects than the conflict itself. If a person doesn’t feel safe to repair, they might find ourselves in a constant state of hypervigilance, internal struggle, or even perpetual victimhood, with no chance of feeling like they can have healthy human relationships.

·       Invalidation and gaslighting: Either of these can happen when a person has emotions, perceptions, or memories about experiences they have dismissed, minimized, or reframed, leading to self-doubt or confusion for the purpose of manipulation.

·       Internalized shame (toxic or inherited): This shame is felt when a person feels a sense of “wrongness” or guilt about who they are or what they do, even when it doesn’t match their actions or values and isn’t something they actually caused. They end up holding other people’s shame that isn’t their own.

·       Parentification (emotional or psychological): This happens when a person takes on adult emotional and even physical responsibilities prematurely as children, often at the cost of their own needs. They stop playing the role of child and start to grow up too quickly.

·       Attachment disruption (anxious, avoidant, or disorganized): When a person struggles with closeness, trust, or consistency in relationships due to the way they did or did not feel secure in their relationships with their caregivers or parents. (Note: This might be one of the most profound discoveries of the self one can make on their healing journey. I highly recommend everyone learns about their attachment style. It will truly change the way one can view their childhood and hopefully give them a chance to work with their inner child to feel more compassion and love towards themselves.)

·       Hyper-independence: This is an extreme form of self-reliance where a person relies excessively on themselves as a learned survival strategy rather than a true preference and trust; it’s a common protection mechanism.

·       Chronic outsider identity (belonging trauma): This identity type is created when a person develops a consistent felt-sense that they do not belong within their family, a feeling which never goes away and begins to affect how they view themselves within all group or interpersonal relationships. (I discuss this topic in-depth in Chapter 2, because it’s truly found at the core of familial experiences and what gets in the way of those experiences.)

This list is not a full list of what someone might experience in childhood as a black sheep. However, it is definitely a good place to start. You may find that as you explore the ones you resonate with, you branch off into other avenues of your experiences growing up and learn a lot more about yourself.

Now that I’ve explored the common traumas and wounds many black sheep experience within their families, let’s now turn to the characteristics that often develop as a result. If you recognize yourself in even a few of the wounds previously described, the traits that follow likely reflect how your mind and body adapted in order to survive. These patterns formed not because something was wrong with you, but because you had to change, sometimes at the cost of your most authentic self. You don’t need to see yourself in every characteristic, as most people will recognize only a handful:

·      Highly sensitive and perceptive: You pick up on unspoken emotional tension and unspoken truths, even when nothing is said aloud. Many people use the words sensitive and empathic interchangeably, but I would argue that they are different.

·      Truth-oriented: You feel compelled to talk about what other people avoid, especially when it comes to questioning family narratives or challenging the way things have always been done.

·      Feels different or out of place: From a young age, you have felt that you don’t fully belong, even if you can’t explain why. It’s simply a feeling you’ve always had.

·      Emotionally expressive: You may show anger, grief, sadness, or vulnerability more openly than others in your family, even if it appears messy or confusing at times.

·      Deeply empathetic: You feel as though you can actually feel the pain of others as if it were your own, and you may carry emotional burdens that do not belong to you unconsciously. Empathy, however, is not the same as compassion, which is an important distinction to make on the healing journey, especially healing relational trauma. (I talk more about this distinction on my podcast Heal With Kat in episode #50 titled The Shocking Difference Between Empathy and Compassion. Take a listen and see if it resonates.)

·      Strong sense of inner morality or integrity: You struggle to go along with behaviors, beliefs, or dynamics that feel misaligned or dishonest. They merely feel wrong to you in every way, and when others do act out, it infuriates you.

·      Often labeled or misunderstood: You may be called dramatic, difficult, selfish, rebellious, sensitive, or “the problem,” especially when family tension rises.

·      Drawn to healing, spirituality, or self-inquiry: You may feel pulled toward therapy, personal growth, spiritual practices, or alternative ways of understanding life. Something about how you were raised carries grief or pain, and you feel that finding peace may come from a different path than the one you are on with your family.

·      Experiences relational challenges: You may struggle with boundaries, feeling like you fit in, or feeling truly safe and seen in relationships both inside and outside the family. (Don’t forget to figure out your attachment style!)

·      Feeling overly responsible without knowing why: You often experience an unknown sense of carrying something heavy (i.e., guilt, shame, responsibility, or pressure) without knowing a clear reason why. Your body may also pick up on your emotional patterns by holding emotions in your body like struggle with shoulder or back pain when you feel unsupported or overly responsible.

·      Resilient but tired: You are often strong, resourceful, and capable, yet feel deeply exhausted from navigating the trauma and emotional complexity of your family alone, especially if you suffer from C-PTSD (a form of trauma that develops from long-term, repeated exposure to relational or environmental harm, often in childhood, and affects emotional regulation, self-worth, and relationships).

·      Longs for authenticity and freedom: More than approval, you crave the ability to live truthfully and be accepted and loved for it. This is another reason why many black sheep find a group of people they call their “chosen family” who they feel they truly belong with and who more aligns with who they are.

What black sheep don’t always see is that they possess special superpowers that others in the family are unwilling or unable to see, such as speaking about unspoken pain, facing unresolved trauma, reconciling with emotional unavailability, or addressing toxic patterns that no longer serve anyone yet keep being repeated. They are typically more sensitive, perceptive, and truth-oriented, but because of traumatic experiences they’ve gone through with their family, they view themselves as “too sensitive”, hypervigilant, or “loud-mouthed.” People may call them a rebel, outspoken, or too opinionated, when they’re really just saying what everyone is feeling but no one else will speak aloud or let themselves feel. Black Sheep ask the questions no one wants to answer, poking and prodding the secrets behind the veil, which to anyone else naturally feels invasive. Because of this, they are often labeled as too much, dramatic, difficult, or the odd one out, not because they are wrong, but because they disrupt the unspoken agreement to keep things as they are (which is going to be important to remember in the coming chapters). In many families, the black sheep becomes the holder of what the system cannot work through or heal. They can carry shame that isn’t theirs, express emotions others have suppressed, or act out pain that has been buried for generations.

What Is the Family System?

When I talk about family systems in this book, I am referring to both your nuclear family and extended family. Your nuclear family refers to the household and caregivers who raised you, not necessarily your biological parents (in the case you were adopted or raised by people other than your biological parents). Your extended family includes cousins, aunts, uncles, and everyone who extends out beyond your nuclear family.

As I mentioned earlier, Family Constellation Therapy (FCT) is really work that benefits the self (our human parts), the self (our Soul), and our family lineage. The beautiful part of being a part of a family system is that you are a part of something much bigger and greater than you can conceptualize. In my work, I call your entire family system a constellation—similar to a star constellation. Each star in the makeup of a constellation (the entire family) has a role and a purpose and helps hold the shape of said constellation. Your role as a child, sibling, cousin, niece, nephew, and so on, is intrinsically important in helping to hold the shape of the family system. You are needed and you play an important role in it, even if it doesn’t feel like it. When you start feeling like the cycle breaker, you will see exactly why this is so.

Speaking of cycles, let’s dive into what this term means. Arguably, it’s one of the most important terms I will name in this book, because well, it’s a huge part of the purpose of it . Figuratively, it’s place the black sheep will aim to find themselves, once they can reconcile with their identity with the black sheep.

By definition, a cycle is something that repeats over and over again, without disruption, like a pattern. So, as a cycle breaker, you are disrupting or breaking the cycle of toxicity, addiction, emotional unavailability, ill health, manipulation, abuse, inability of expression, avoidance, and so on. Sometimes, being a cycle breaker may feel like it costs you your feeling of love and belonging in order to face the pain you’re carrying. Breaking a cycle isn’t always a joyous or liberating experience—it can be extremely difficult to bring up and face old wounds. As you learn how to move from being black sheep to becoming a cycle breaker on your healing journey, it’s important to remember that saving, fixing, or healing others isn’t part of the gig. What this kind of behavior does[JLN19]  most of the time is enable others in their own behaviors and blocks them from being able to experience their own beautiful and transformative journey of healing. Being a cycle breaker is a delicate balance of focusing on yourself, while also acknowledging that as you help yourself, the magical ripple effect is occurring naturally around you.

Now, before I move onto the next chapter, I need discuss the term Spirit. If you know me and my work, I know you’re not surprised. If you don’t, however, you might be ready to stop reading. Trust me, I get it. I’m not trying to get you to buy into what I believe and how I live my life, that’s for you to decide if you vibe with it or not. However, please know that there will be moments in this book where I mention my Guides or Spirit. As I define them, they are a group of spiritual beings who are guiding me through my life to make sure that I stay on course for what my Soul signed up to do while I am here. They don’t control me or force me to do anything I don’t want to—they are more like a council of Spiritual Beings who are there to help me if I want it and if not, that’s OK too. They also honor and respect my free will and choices for my life, in the case that I choose not to follow that Soul path I signed up for.

I connect with my Guides intuitively and psychically in my everyday life, and I ask them for a lot of help, because some days I really need it. I also connect with them through meditation, nature, and stillness with my thoughts. Their entire job is just to help. Even if you don’t use your Guides or don’t believe in them at all, everyone has them, and they will still help you and be by your side if you need divine support. You may not experience them that way, but they are always there for support in your life.

My guides not only inspired me to write this book, but they also helped me write a lot what you’re reading and even guided me through the book’s editorial and publishing process. I love calling on Spirit for support, because, for as lonely as I’ve felt in my life, knowing they are there has given me faith that I truly am not as alone as I felt. For example, Chapter Nine is entirely channeled from Spirit to help you view your relationship with your family (and the world) differently. Sometimes, when we talk to Spirit, their messages can fly right over our heads, because the way they communicate has so much wisdom and expertise to it. But I am here to help you make sense of it all, don’t worry. You may call your spiritual helpers Spirit, Wonder Woman, A Guy in the Sky, whatever you want to name it. Seriously, it doesn’t matter. They are still going to help.

As an intuitive medium, working with Spirit is deeply important to me because they are the guardians of protection, safety, and information. Each of us have Spirit teams consisting of Souls who were once human but now serve solely as guides, animals, ancestors, and so forth. When I’m in an intuitive reading with someone, I am both channeling information for the client and speaking with their Guides for help. It’s an honor and privilege to work with them and to be able to communicate with them. Finally, just because I can communicate this way doesn’t mean I’m more special than anyone. You can communicate with them as well! All you need to do is ask them for help, meditate with them, and give yourself the space to hear and feel them. They will show up, I promise.

Now that I’ve defined the terms black sheep, the family system, cycle breaker, and Spirit, I’ll dive next into the nitty gritty of the black sheep’s journey in Chapter 2. However, before I end this chapter, I want to leave you with one last reminder. Being a black sheep doesn’t mean that you are broken at all. A black sheep isn’t separate from the family system. They are deeply connected to it, and their difference exists because of the system, not outside of it.

In Chapter 2, I’ll introduce the idea of belonging. If you knew, truly knew, that no matter what you did, said, or felt, you still belonged, how might that shift things for you?

Would you stop fighting your family … and start accepting yourself?