My work with intergenerational business ownership was described as "trauma breaking" by a colleague yesterday and I can't stop thinking about it.

I can't stop because it's a combination of so accurate and so unexpected.

As a business coach, my elevator pitch includes that my sister and I, each on different sides of the cusp of 30, inherited a small sign language interpreting agency when our father died suddenly. It took us years to figure out what we were doing, and to navigate our relationship, before finding our groove and then, after 12 years, selling.

In that pitch, I don't share the sheer dysfunctionality of our childhood. The verbal and emotional abuse we'd endured separately from our dad who had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and narcissism. How fucked up shit just was when we were kids and young adults.

But somehow, in my clinical description of my professional history to a colleague during a zoom, that came through and he labeled that experience as "trauma breaking" and fuck yes, that decade-long sibling business ownership experience was a process of navigating and resolving the harms of our childhood.

It's an honest reframing of the work we did and the work I want to help others do that invokes in me a higher level of compassion for my clients. Thank you, @scottzuniga

And my sister and I? Selling the business was great for our relationship. Now we call weekly talk about each others families, the weather, and the last season of Succession.