Generational Disruptors

Somehow, we turned around and our kids are now 16 and 20. Everyone's lives are beautifully full, often too much so like most Americans. So, family travel has started to feel more important than ever.

Winter break is now a non-negotiable block dedicated to exploring new places, concentrated time, connection and re-bonding. This last December though was more than a trip, it was a return. A return to a part of their identity that they have not known well and feel deeply connected to. A part of themselves they recognize in their blood and bones, even if it has not been a large part of their lived experience.

We visited Puerto Rico, homeland of their paternal grandfather, and almost immediately both of them found a sense of connection that felt familiar and grounding. The landscape, the culture, the language, the people, felt like coming home to a place they had never fully known in body but that is deeply alive in them both in spirit and heart.

My husband and I have only visited Puerto Rico together once and very briefly, but he spent summers there as a kid, deeply connected to family and community. That connection was a gift he received, and one we are only now catching up to giving our own children.

My husband grew up with some meaningful ties to his Puerto Rican family and too many relationships that never fully held, including a half-brother who has lived mostly at the edges of his story.

As we planned the trip, I wasn't even sure my husband would want to reach for his brother. Family history is rarely simple. But I was delighted to find that he did.

What a gift. My kids got to spend real time with their Tío Luis, a man they had never met and knew little of. What could have been a brief introduction became hours of conversation, laughter, stories, and connection. And of course DAMN good food.

We spent hours talking about the impact their father had on both of them. We shared hard and warm stories. We filled in missing pieces. We laughed, a lot.

As we unpacked so many decades of history and lived experience, something powerful occurred to me, both my husband and Luis have spent their lives, intentionally or not, disrupting inherited patterns and generational pain.

From Luis, we learned more about the racism of old Puerto Rico and the history of how it manifested in our family. We talked about the homophobia he experienced as a gay Latino man and the ways he had to hide himself. We explored the expectations, limitations, and messages they both received growing up. And the depth of impact for them both of their father's limited capacity for presence and parenting.

And we stepped back and looked at the lives they have built. The ways they have each chosen themselves first over all of that.

Luis' rich and beautiful life with his husband.

Jason, a rabbi of all things, leading a vibrant community of thousands and deeply present for our kids as Dad and role model.

Both living lives that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to imagine within some of the systems and expectations that shaped the generations before them.

Neither path was easy. Disruption rarely is.

But growth pretty much always asks for disruption.

Nature knows this. Forests require fire to regenerate. Seeds split apart before they grow. Check out serotiny if you don't know it! Caterpillars dissolve before they become butterflies. The systems that sustain life are not built around comfort. They are built around transformation.

Yet as humans, we spend so much energy trying to avoid disruption. We cling to familiar identities, inherited rules, and cultural expectations because they feel safe. Even when they are no longer serving us.

The people who thrive most are so often the ones willing to interrupt those patterns.

I see it in the individuals I coach. I see it in organizations. I see it in leaders who choose authenticity over approval, purpose over performance, and courage over conformity.

The bravest people I know are the ones willing to ask hard questions about the systems that raised them. The ones willing to disappoint expectations. The ones willing to say, "This may have been how it was done, but it is not how I will do it."

Not in rebellion for rebellion's sake, but in service of something better. More honest. More expansive. More human.

That is the work of a disruptor.

And while disruption can be wildly uncomfortable, even terrifying, it is almost always where thriving begins.

It is definitely where freedom lives.

It is where we stop merely carrying our history and begin consciously shaping what comes next. And it can happen in small and quiet moments, micro choices that say I am choosing humans over rules, curiosity over assumption and judgment, choosing to reach instead of withdraw.

So often, the future changes because someone is willing to interrupt the past.