Essay

Breaking a Pattern You Were Raised In

You may believe deeply in God’s plan for families and still have painful questions about your own.

If a parent, family member, or someone you trusted neglected or abused you physically, emotionally, or sexually, you may wonder what healing is supposed to look like. Can you really move forward? Can you learn to trust, love, marry, or create a healthy family when your earliest experiences taught you very different patterns?

The answer is yes, although healing often takes time. Jesus Christ can help you understand what happened, heal what was wounded, and build a future that is not controlled by someone else’s choices.

Can Jesus Christ Really Help Me Heal?

When Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30), He was speaking to people carrying burdens they could not remove on their own.

Some burdens come from our own choices. Others come through mortality or through the choices of people around us. Abuse belongs in the second category. What someone else did to you is not your sin, and you are not responsible for carrying the shame of another person’s actions.

Alma gives even more depth to the Savior’s invitation. He taught that Jesus Christ would take upon Himself “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind” so that He would know how to help His people. In Alma 7:11–12, the word succor means more than feeling sympathy from a distance. The Savior comes to our aid with perfect understanding of suffering and healing.

He understands not only what happened to you but also how it may have affected you afterward: difficulty trusting, complicated feelings about your body, anger, grief, fear, uncertainty about relationships, or anxiety about creating a family of your own.

None of these experiences place you beyond His ability to help.

Elder Richard G. Scott taught in “To Heal the Shattering Consequences of Abuse” that deep wounds may require time, faith, supportive relationships, and skilled professional care. Healing may be gradual, but it is possible.

Gracie’s Story: Healing Can Change the Future

Gracie Leavitt shared her experience after experiencing pornography exposure and sexual abuse as a child. The trauma affected the way she understood sexuality and led her to struggle with unhealthy behaviors as she tried to cope.

For a long time, it was difficult for her to believe that something connected with so much pain could also be a gift from God. She had questions about whether Heavenly Father cared about her struggles, especially those involving sexuality.

Her healing began to change as she spoke more honestly with God. She also reached out to her bishop, became more open with her parents, accepted support from trusted people, and worked with mental-health professionals who helped her understand the effects of trauma and develop tools for healing.

Gracie emphasizes that her healing is not finished, but she is further along than she once was. Through Jesus Christ, supportive relationships, and professional help, some of the confusion and pain she carried have gradually been replaced with greater peace.

Her story shows that healing does not require pretending the past did not happen. It means learning that the past does not have to determine how you see yourself, your body, sexuality, relationships, or future.

What Does Abuse Say About Your Divine Identity?

Sexual abuse can affect the way a person experiences the body, trust, intimacy, dating, marriage, or sexuality because the harm touches powers that God calls sacred.

Healing may therefore include learning again what the body and sexual intimacy mean in God’s plan. Your body remains part of your divine identity and eternal purpose. Another person’s misuse of agency cannot change what Heavenly Father created you to be or diminish the eternal possibilities He has prepared for you.

Elder Patrick Kearon taught this in “He Is Risen with Healing in His Wings: We Can Be More Than Conquerors.” What happened to you is not your defining identity.

Your deepest identity remains what it has always been: you are a son or daughter of heavenly parents with divine worth, purpose, and eternal possibilities.

What Does Forgiveness Look Like?

The Lord teaches His disciples to forgive. In Doctrine and Covenants 64:10, He says, “Of you it is required to forgive all men.”

But forgiveness does not mean forgetting what happened, excusing abuse, or immediately restoring trust. It does not require you to remain in an unsafe relationship. Trust grows through honesty, repentance, changed behavior, respect, and time.

In “Beauty for Ashes: The Healing Path of Forgiveness,” Sister Kristin M. Yee taught that forgiveness is part of healing and that the Lord can help us do what initially feels beyond our capacity. She also taught that a person can work toward forgiveness while following spiritual promptings about appropriate distance in a relationship.

Forgiveness is not about giving another person control over your life again. As Christ helps you forgive, He helps you become freer to choose your future without anger, resentment, or another person’s actions remaining at the center of your life.

What If Forgiveness Takes Time?

Deep healing often happens gradually. Elder Scott taught that when forgiveness feels overwhelming, a person can first focus on gaining greater experience with the Savior’s healing power.

Sister Yee similarly taught that healing follows an individual timetable. Forgiveness may unfold over months or years as Christ gradually changes the heart. Christ works with real people and real wounds. He is patient with the pace of your healing.

Can Relationships Become Different?

Your early experiences can influence the way you relate to other people, but they do not determine the only way you can relate.

If you grew up around control, you can learn to respect agency. If communication in your home involved anger, withdrawal, secrecy, or manipulation, you can learn honesty, listening, patience, repentance, and healthy communication. If affection felt unpredictable, you can learn to become steady and trustworthy.

These changes often happen through practice, good examples, supportive relationships, counseling, and the help of Jesus Christ.

A harmful pattern may have existed for generations and still stop with one person who decides, with the Savior’s help, to learn another way.

What Can Make Healing Harder?

One of the adversary’s most damaging messages is that what happened earlier in life determines your future.

Pain can make that message feel convincing. If trust has been difficult, you may wonder whether relationships will always be difficult. If your parents had an unhealthy marriage, you may fear that marriage itself will eventually become painful. If destructive patterns have appeared in several generations of your family, it may feel as though those patterns are simply “who your family is.”

The gospel gives you a larger view of agency and becoming. Through Jesus Christ, you can recognize what has been passed down, learn from it, receive help, repent of anything you have begun repeating, and make different choices.

The Savior’s Atonement can heal what you received and help change what you pass on.

Can I Build a Different Kind of Family?

Your family of origin influences you deeply, but it does not contain the full blueprint for the person you will become. You can become a turning point in your family—the person who passes something healthier and more faithful to the next generation.

One useful study by BYU professors Dean M. Busby and David C. Dollahite, “The Strengths and Challenges of Contemporary Marriages of Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” examined more than 16,000 people who were seriously dating, engaged, or married.

Among the groups they studied, highly religious Latter-day Saints reported lower levels of negative communication and strong levels of emotional connection, relationship satisfaction, and stability. The researchers suggested that Latter-day Saint beliefs and practices—including preparation for temple marriage and the commitments associated with temple covenants—may help shape how couples relate to each other in everyday life.

The study does not mean that faith removes every difficulty or guarantees a perfect family. It does suggest that beliefs, practices, and covenants can help people build healthier relationship patterns than the ones they may have experienced growing up.

The Family Proclamation Can Become a Vision for Your Future

Reading about ideal family life can be painful when your own family looked very different. But The Family: A Proclamation to the World can also become a hopeful vision for the future.

You may communicate more openly than your parents did. You may apologize sooner, show affection more freely, create greater spiritual consistency, or build a marriage in which both husband and wife feel respected and secure.

Through Jesus Christ, you can create something good that is genuinely your own while still being rooted in God’s eternal plan for families.

Questions to Consider

• What healthy qualities from my family do I want to carry forward?
• Which patterns would I like to change with the Savior’s help?
• How has my experience affected the way I think about trust, marriage, intimacy, or family life?
• What does Gracie’s experience of gradual healing teach me about giving Christ time to work in my life?