There is a certain feeling that comes from being the first person in your family to notice that something isn’t right. And at that time, I didn’t even know that what I was feeling was grief.
Was called the dramatic one—
but not dramatic enough to name that grief.
Was called the “black sheep”—
but not enough for people to call it harmful.
Just years of emotional tension, silence, survival, unspoken expectations, and wounds everyone quietly learned to live around.
Yup, that’s how I was raised.
The eldest of the eldest.
Eldest daughter,
granddaughter,
great-granddaughter.
And yes—the expectations were extremely high.
For a long time, I thought maybe I was just too sensitive.
Too emotional.
Too dramatic.
Too aware.
Too affected by things that everyone else seemed able to move past.
Too much.
Just too much for them to handle someone like me.
Too much for someone who was never enough.
“You’re the only one who ended up like that.”
I can still remember the things they told me when they found out I was seeking counseling and psychotherapy. That I was too weak to handle things compared to everyone else. Compared to their own children from a different generation who “turned out fine.”
And honestly, part of me believed them.
Somewhere in my healing journey, I started wondering if maybe I really was just weak.
Why was I the only one seeing the dysfunction?
Why couldn’t I cope the way my aunts and uncles did?
Why did it hurt me this deeply when everyone else seemed to survive it?
Maybe they were right.
Maybe I was asking for too much.
Because the generations before me stayed silent about it too.
They didn’t agree with a lot of it.
But they learned to obey anyway.
To avoid conflict.
To avoid misunderstanding.
To survive.
They have already settled on the idea that the generations before them will just simply not listen.
And somewhere along the way, silence became normal.
I used to think being “the sensitive one” in the family was a flaw.
Like maybe I just took things too personally.
Or maybe I asked too many questions.
Or maybe I noticed things other people learned to ignore.
I was really convinced that I was the problem and started asking God why I was seeing these things, and told him I didn’t even want to see them.
i could still remember the time that i told them i was exhausted,
overwhelmed, and just really feeling burned out
and oftentimes, it was met with disappointment,
looking down, instead of compassion and understanding
it’s not as if i was just being lazy,
because i knew i gave my best,
gave my all, which was also the reason why
i felt burned out
but instead what i felt was treated with
as if exhaustion was a character flaw
as if needing help automatically meant weakness.
i remembered hearing things like:
“everyone goes through hard things”
“no job was easy”
“we experienced worse”
“you’re just too emotional”
“you need to be stronger”
“it was your decision to take that kind of job anyway”
and somehow, i realized,
that because they survived without naming their pain,
my generation learning to name ours started looking like a rebellion instead of honesty
so instead of feeling supported, I started questioning myself even more
Maybe they were right.
Maybe I really was weak.
Maybe I just couldn’t handle life the way they did.
But healing has taught me something painful:
surviving something does not automatically mean it was healthy.
And just because the generations before me learned how to function through pain doesn’t mean the pain disappeared.
Sometimes it just gets inherited quietly.
And honestly, I think my body eventually reached a point where it couldn’t carry everything quietly anymore.
The exhaustion.
The emotional breakdowns.
The heaviness I couldn’t explain.
The constant feeling of being overwhelmed even when nothing “big” was happening.
For years, I kept trying to fix it.
I went to series of healing,
2 years of Bible College,
continuous counseling.
At some point I thought I was already done with it.
That I was already healed.
And whenever I will feel tired, I would think:
maybe I just needed more rest.
Better routines.
More discipline.
More resilience.
Maybe I was simply burned out.
Then I found myself asking again,
why am I burning out again?
I thought I was already done with this?
Not gonna lie, some of it was exhaustion.
And at least I could get to acknowledge that.
But I think this week, God showed me that part of what I was carrying was much deeper than stress.
Because unresolved grief has a way of living in the body.
So does survival.
So does years of silencing yourself just to keep peace inside a family system.
I thought I was already voicing it out.
I thought I was already being vocal about it.
I didn’t realize how much pressure I had been carrying just trying to survive emotionally while convincing myself nothing was actually wrong with me anymore.
and this week
during ministry time
i think God finally brought much more deeper roots into the light
not to shame me
not to expose my family
but to finally show me
what had been quietly shaping so much of my exhaustion,
grief, fear, and emotional heaviness for years.
the thing that i thought i was already healed and delivered from
was just revealed to me on a deeper level
things that i can only handle right now
things that if was revealed a little sooner would break me
instead of healing me
There’s just a level of self-awareness and revelation that we can handle in every stage of our lives.
I remembered reading somewhere that “you should never force a revelation to someone who doesn’t have the capacity to handle it.”
And this week, that’s what I realized.
God literally had to wait for my capacity to reach a certain level (this level) before revealing to me the deeper wounds that I have to address.
Honestly, I think that’s why this encounter with God felt different.
Because for the first time, I wasn’t just trying to manage the symptoms anymore.
God was finally exposing the roots.
Not just the exhaustion.
Not just the burnout.
Not just the emotional breakdowns.
But the years of grief, pressure, silence, survival, fear, and emotional burdens that quietly lived underneath all of it.
Things I learned to normalize.
Things my family learned to normalize.
Things generations before us probably never even had the language for.
And during ministry time, while I was crying on the floor, I remembered asking God again, “Why did it have to be me?” But this time, I asked in awe. I was in awe, thinking that God trusted me to bring influence and be an instrument of healing to my family.
Then I looked up and saw my younger brother onstage, leading worship on his guitar—weeping.
I can’t fully explain what that moment felt like. But I was grateful that God brought my brother and me to a church that has a heart for freedom and deliverance. That we are surrounded by leaders and pastors who are not afraid of our wounds.
Deep inside me, something just knew:
things won’t continue anymore.
Not the silence.
Not the emotional suppression.
Not the survival-based patterns we kept calling “normal.”
Not the heaviness we quietly inherited and carried for years.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel crazy for noticing the pain.
I didn’t feel weak for struggling under the weight of it.
I just felt… free.
Not perfectly healed overnight.
Not magically unaffected by everything.
But free in the sense that the root was finally brought into the light.
And sometimes healing really does begin like that.
Not through pretending everything was okay.
Not through forcing yourself to “be stronger.”
Not through surviving quietly.
But through finally telling the truth about what hurt you.
I used to ask God why I had to be the one who saw everything so deeply.
Now I think maybe awareness was never the punishment.
Maybe it was the invitation.
Maybe healing really had to begin somewhere.
And maybe, by God’s grace, it gets to begin with us.
🤍
Til next time!
With love,
Jea