An alchemist can transform a less valuable piece of metal into gold. They can take abundant, and sometimes harmful, material and turn it into something better for their world.

Like an alchemist, a hero transforms the harmful material of their experiences. A hero may have endured suffering in their journey, but instead of passing it along to future generations—as is the case with generational trauma—they hold that suffering with care and transmute it into something truly precious: a tool that breaks the abused-becoming-abuser cycle.

It's much easier to avoid this alchemical process and let past abuse flow through us onto others. The true challenge of heroic alchemy lies in doing the inner work to transform that pain into a springboard for authentic connection and wisdom that we can pass down.

A modern example of this heroic alchemy is a parent who has gone through childhood abuse and is determined not to pass it along. Too often, the bitter pattern of abuse endlessly repeats, with abused children morphing into abusive adults.

Rather than perpetuating that same abuse to their own child, this hero takes a moment to think about that abuse, transforms it through the lens of an alchemist, and creates a parenting style far better than what they experienced in their youth.

As an abuse survivor myself, I like to think that I have done this inner work of facing my own traumatic memories. My painful childhood memories once felt like radioactive waste, leaking toxic traces throughout my psyche with their stench following me into adulthood. Now, in my mid-thirties, I think that my inner work has alchemized the abuse into something healthier. All that time in therapy and journaling was like donning a hazmat suit—carefully lifting the toxic material and placing it somewhere that I could cleanse it, slowly transforming the memories from a destructive force into a constructive one.

Though I don't have children of my own and don't consider my alchemized memories heroic, this Mother's Day season—like every Mother's Day—I think of those in my life who exemplify this alchemy in a heroic way with the next generation.

A personal example is my best friend and her kids. She is somebody whom I’ve connected with deeply because of our similar experiences with maternal abuse.

In this Mother's Day season, I'm thinking about her and all the mothers doing this daily alchemical work in their parenting.

I used to work for a company with a motto that all employees lived by: "Leave it better than you found it." In many cases, the alchemist inside of a hero leaves the world better than they found it through their work and parenting, no matter what they have endured.

So, Happy Mother's Day to my best friend and all mothers who leave the world for their children better than they found it.

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