By Brittany Belizor 
They say childhood is a blueprint.
I didn’t know that growing up
I just thought it was a house with too many cracked walls,
and no instructions on how to leave.
I learned early how to read a room like weather.
How to measure footsteps, how silence could be louder than shouting.
I learned love could come with conditions, with bruises you couldn’t always see, with apologies that never arrived.
That was my first draft.
My rough sketch.
Foundation poured by people who were also surviving,
bleeding through the paper without knowing how to stop it.
And for a long time, I thought that was destiny.
That what was built around me would automatically become what I built next.
Because trauma has a way of pretending it’s tradition.
But here’s the part they don’t tell you:
A blueprint is not a prison; it’s information.
It shows you where load-bearing walls failed.
Where wiring sparked fires.
Where doors should’ve been, but never were.
I didn’t choose the house I grew up in.
But I studied it.
I memorized every crack, every unsafe corner, every moment I promised myself,
if I ever get out, I will NOT recreate this.
Healing wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t linear.
It was me, standing in the wreckage, asking hard questions like:
“What did this teach me?”
And braver ones like:
“What do I refuse to pass on?”
I had to unlearn survival and relearn love without fear attached.
I had to sit with the truth that pain explains behavior, but does not excuse repeating it.
I build with open doors and voices that are allowed to be loud.
I build with apologies that come quickly and accountability that stays.
I build with hands that protect, not control.
With rules that create safety, not shame.
My children will inherit many things.
My laugh,
My stubborn hope,
My refusal to give up on softness.
But they will NOT inherit my wounds.
They will know that love does not hurt.
That anger can exist without becoming violence.
That home is not something you brace for, but rather something you soften into.
Yes, my childhood was a blueprint, but I am the architect now.
And every day I choose to break the cycle,
To revise the design, to build something sturdy,
Where something once crumbled.
Not because I wasn’t damaged, but because I was brave enough to repair.
by Leslie Deane-Mountjoy 
