I Became the Changemaker

I never set out to become a changemaker. I don’t think anyone really does. For me, it happened slowly, after years of carrying pain that kept getting louder and patterns that kept circling back on themselves. Something in me finally whispered, Not like this. Not anymore.

I became a changemaker the moment I stopped pretending. The moment I finally told the truth. When I stepped out of the silence that shaped my childhood and found the courage to speak, even knowing my speaking would probably sever any remaining chance of having a relationship with my family. I knew the cost. I knew the truth could strip away whatever small crumbs of connection remained. But I also knew I couldn’t keep living inside a toxic narrative that never fit me.

Being true to myself, something that should be encouraged in childhood, became something I feared because I understood it would come with abandonment. That fear kept me cycling back into my family’s narcissistic structure again and again, hoping something would change. The truth is, nothing could change until I did.

My story didn’t begin with empowerment. It began in the quiet corners of a childhood where my emotions stacked up like unopened letters addressed to a girl no one ever truly saw. A girl taught early that her pain was inconvenient. A girl shaped by subtle and not-so-subtle messages to keep moving, keep performing, keep surviving.

My mother had a line she used on me constantly. You only talk to hear the sound of your own voice. She said it like it explained something defective about me. But every time I talked, cried, shouted, or whined, it wasn’t noise. It was a plea. I was trying to be heard behind the scapegoating. Behind the mistreatment my siblings were allowed to aim at me without accountability. I became her emotional punching bag, the one she poured her frustration and unhealed pain into.

And then there was my father. His presence carried a clear disdain for women, and I felt it every time he entered a room. His involvement in my life existed almost entirely as punishment, criticism, and belittling. I feared him. I learned to brace myself in his presence. I learned to shrink so I wouldn’t draw attention. Whatever softness or guidance a father is supposed to offer, I never received. His coldness shaped just as much of me as my mother’s volatility did.

It took years for me to understand that each member of my family was living behind their own prison bars. None of us were free. Those prisons were built long before our lives began, constructed from layers of generational trauma. My prison didn’t look different from theirs, except for one thing. My bars were built from my instinct to feel and speak the truth. In a family built on denial, the one who sees clearly becomes the biggest threat.

By the time I was fourteen, the weight of all of it had settled inside me. Heavy. Lonely. Overwhelming. That was the year I tried to take my own life. Fourteen. Still a child, yet already carrying enough pain to want to disappear. And after it happened, instead of comfort or concern, I was minimized. Brushed aside. Treated like a burden. Like my pain was something I had created to cause inconvenience.

That moment lodged itself into my body for decades.

My journey in the years that followed carried me through long patterns of self destruction. They took their toll on me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Those patterns were driven by two beliefs inside me that constantly collided. One whispered, No one here wants me. The other fought back with, I am worthy and I will prove it. One part collapsing inward. Another pushing outward. Both trying to protect me. Both causing harm. Both exhausting me.

But my becoming didn’t happen in a single moment of clarity. It happened slowly, in steady returns to myself. In the quiet courage of turning toward the places inside me where no one ever came for me. The places I learned to abandon because they held too much pain.

In 2018, I was three years into recovery from my addiction to alcohol. I had returned to ACA and was beginning parts work. I was in the thick of taking responsibility for the destruction and trauma I had caused my own adult children, holding the weight of knowing I had hurt them while still trying to figure out how to heal myself. Every day felt like a mix of I don’t know what the hell I am doing or how to do any of this and a deeper awareness that something bigger than me was guiding me. I felt more connected to the Universe than I ever had before, like something steady and wise was leading me back home.

Parts work felt like opening a forgotten room inside myself. Behind that door were all the versions of me I had left behind. The scared little girl. The furious teenager. The overwhelmed young mother. The woman who tried to soothe her pain with alcohol because no one had ever taught her how to stay with herself. I went back for them. Little by little, I let myself feel what they had been holding. I let myself acknowledge what they survived. I let myself reconnect to the parts of me that had been silenced for decades.

As this healing unfolded inside me, something also began shifting with my younger son. Our communication had been strained for years, covered in his anger toward me and my shame toward myself. But as I learned to speak for my parts instead of from them, he slowly began doing the same. There were moments of softness. Moments where something opened between us that had been shut for a long time. Over the next two years, we moved slowly toward healing our mother and son relationship, welcoming every part that showed up with acceptance and without judgment.

The same kind of movement began with my older son, but his process was more delicate. His mental and emotional conditions, along with his predominantly non verbal communication, made what most people consider simple conversations far more layered. Yet even then, I kept finding my way back to the mother I had been with him in his earliest years, the mother who had been deeply connected to him intuitively. One careful moment at a time, we found small openings, small points of connection, small steps toward repair.

As I continued this work, many young exiles inside me finally unburdened themselves. I experienced deep emotional healing that had been waiting my entire life to be felt. I even witnessed the reversal of physical ailments and conditions that had lingered in my body for years. My body, mind, and spirit all began releasing what they had carried for far too long.

And as I moved through this healing, the generational thread that had woven itself through my lineage started to loosen. Not because someone apologized. Not because anyone changed.

I made two significant attempts to be part of my family again, coming from my healed place instead of my wounded one. Each time, I saw clearly that the disdain my father carried toward me, mixed with the shame that shrouded him, made it impossible for him to even consider taking responsibility for the abuse. If he had ever opened that door with sincerity and trust, I would have stepped through without hesitation. The same was true for my mother. She offered apologies that sounded good, but they were empty. Her behavior, her covert narcissistic undertones, and the way she bent reality to suit her narrative made true accountability impossible.

My siblings were still firmly entrenched in their family roles. They moved like flying monkeys for my parents, staying small, keeping peace, and protecting the illusion that everything was fine. They justified the toxic structure of the family and the roles we had all been forced into. They accepted the gaslighting from my parents and even gaslighted themselves, insisting things weren’t that bad, that maybe we actually deserved it, that things were different back then and we just needed to let it all go. But there was never a sincere connection between me and the three of them. I would always be the truth teller, and they would always choose the rose-colored glasses. None of them dared call my parents out for the same or similar abuse they themselves had endured. And I watched those patterns flow straight down into their own children. I saw nieces and nephews divided by the same scapegoat and golden child dynamics. I saw alcohol abuse. Self destruction. Enmeshment. The same family story replaying itself generation after generation. And somehow, I was still the one framed as the problem.

It finally became clear that the choice was either me, my self preservation, my dignity, and my sanity, or remaining part of something that was not only never going to change, but was deepening through the generations.

I finally made the decision to go no contact and moved out of state. The grief that followed was all-encompassing. Disenfranchised grief, it’s called. A grief that is not recognized, validated, or supported by those around you. A grief society doesn’t acknowledge, leaving you to mourn something invisible to everyone but you.

The loss of my ideals hit me hard. The deep realization that no matter what I had done, no matter how hard I had worked, it was never in the cards for me to be a real person in that family — an individual, seen and included with love. I realized the loneliness I felt wasn’t caused by going no contact. It was the truth that I had always been alone there. I had always been a non-person. A prop.

The pain from this space was unbearable at times. If I thought I was healed, I was wrong. So much came forward after going no contact. I believe those parts finally felt safe enough — and trusted me enough — to let the truth surface.

It was during this time that I became a trauma-informed breathwork facilitator. I already had my somatic release practitioner certification and had been facilitating parts work for six years. Breathwork became the missing link. It connected my mind to my body, opening the floodgates for the emotions and memories those parts had held for decades.

And somewhere inside that unraveling, I realized that becoming a changemaker wasn’t a destination. It wasn’t a title or a moment of triumph. It was simply the ongoing journey of coming back home to myself. Not the home I grew up in, but the home within me — the one I had abandoned over and over again just to survive.

Healing didn’t make everything perfect. It didn’t erase the pain or rewrite my past. It simply gave me permission to walk with it differently. To stop running from myself. To stop judging the parts of me that were scared, angry, grieving, or tired. And even now, there are days when old emotions sweep me off my feet and I feel like I’m right back in the thick of it. Days when it isn’t pretty, when the grief hits in waves, when I have to use every skill I’ve learned just to find my way out. But I’ve learned to trust that process. To allow it. To let it be witnessed by the people walking their own healing paths beside me. I can’t do any of this alone, and I no longer pretend that I can.

Along the way, I’ve learned discernment. I know now who is safe to have in my life and who isn’t. I can love and appreciate humanity with openness and positive regard, but I never again have to make myself small, silent, or untrue just to be accepted. I no longer shape-shift to earn belonging. I belong to myself.

I’m not trying to arrive anywhere anymore. I’m learning to appreciate the journey. I’m learning to let each step count. To feel the ache without making it mean I’m failing. To welcome joy when it shows up, even if only for a moment. To allow the fullness of my experience to exist without forcing it into a lesson or a performance.

My life now is a continual return. A remembering. A soft, steady unfolding toward the person I’ve always been beneath the survival strategies and generational narratives. I’m not rushing toward some final healed version of myself. I’m learning to meet myself in every moment with honesty, compassion, and presence.

That, to me, is what coming home feels like. And maybe that’s what it truly means to be a changemaker. Not the loud declarations or the dramatic breaking away, but the quiet, steady choosing of yourself over and over again. The courage to return to who you really are, to honor your truth even when it shakes, to allow your life to unfold in honesty instead of survival.

And the most powerful part of this journey is knowing that my adult sons will never have to stand at the crossroads I faced. They will never have to choose themselves over a relationship with their family, because they are now living in the change that generations before them never had. They are seen. They are heard. They are accepted. They know they matter. Their value exists simply because they exist. They get to be fully themselves, fully human, fully loved without having to earn it or perform for it.

That alone makes every step I have taken worth it.

Being a changemaker, for me, is the lifelong journey of coming home — and staying home — within myself.

Teresa Napierala

Somatic Wellness Practitioner

Founder of Energies in Motion