ORIGIN

I was about twenty-nine when I asked my grandmother about her childhood. She couldn’t answer at first. Days later, she came back to me and said:

 

“My mother was a terrible person.”

 

I looked at her and saw not a grown woman, but a broken little child. That child never left her. She told me how, at just six years old, her mother locked her in a cellar — not the kind you know today, but a cold, dark place in 1940s Luxembourg. No heating, no light, no electricity. Bread, water, and a potty to survive punishment she did not deserve.

 

Her mother drank, partied, and left behind 13 estranged children with five different fathers. No warmth. No safety. No childhood.

 

That pain flowed into my mother, into me, and into the rest of my family.

 

 

The Cycle

My mother gave birth to me at 17. She didn’t raise me — and maybe that could be excused. But what came after was unforgivable. For years, for decades, she wore the mask of “mum” while draining me for whatever she could get. She never took responsibility. Not once. Not ever.

 

I don’t remember her hugging me. I don’t remember her holding my hand. I don’t remember her ever choosing me. What I do remember is the emptiness — the constant reminder that I was never safe.

 

Six years later she spat out my half-sister. Seventeen years after that, my half-brother. She was never meant to be a mother. Not to me. Not to them. Not to anyone.

 

My uncle’s son became addicted to heroin.

My cousin battled mental illness until he took his own life in 2017.

My sister continues the cycle of drugs and abuse with her own children.

 

Everywhere I looked, I saw the same broken pattern repeating.

 

What you don’t heal, you pass on.

 

 

The Turning Point

 

For years, I wished I had never been born. My life was nothing but fight-or-flight, survival, despair. But I never gave up. I fought. I worked on myself. I survived. I abused myself the way I was abused by her! 

 

I also realised something else: as a gay man or besides any other person wanting to adopt, they would have to pass tests, evaluations, and restrictions just to be considered a parent. Yet any fertile girl can give birth tomorrow without preparation, without guidance, and without ever looking at her own trauma.

 

That’s when my mission became clear.

 

 

The Mission

 

Would my unborn child choose me as their parent or would it choose my mother or father?

 

Every new parent must ask this question. The answer is not money, not stability, not dreams — the answer is YOU.

 

It is not okay to bring a child into this world if you are not willing to face yourself. It is not okay to hand down unresolved pain to another life. Parenting must stop being a selfish choice and become a conscious decision.

 

If it were up to me, every future parent would first pass through deep self-reflection — even mandatory parenting tests — before being entrusted with a child. Not to shame anyone, but to protect the innocent and to finally break the cycle.

 

 

The Vision

 

I imagine a world where:

 

 Children can be children, not healers of their parents.

 Parenting is a privilege earned through self-work, not an automatic right.

 Schools teach self-awareness, trauma, and family responsibility from age six, one hour a week, until adulthood.

 Adults stop reacting to life and start living it freely.

 

Because when we heal ourselves, we give the next generation the freedom to live.

 

 

Why Heal First: The Better Childhood Project Exists

 

This project was born from my family’s pain — and my refusal to let the cycle continue.

 

I empower people, parents, adult children, educators, and leaders to face themselves and make wiser decisions, so that fewer children grow up carrying their parents’ wounds, and furthermore create much happier, settle adults and with that a safer, productive society.

 

This is not just my story. It’s a call to all of us.

 

If you think you don’t know what I’m talking about — go look closer. Walk through the not-so-safe neighbourhoods, the train stations, the seedy red-light districts. You’ll see it: someone’s child, high out of their mind, selling their body because they don’t know any other way to survive.

 

Or don’t even go that far. Look at that one friend of yours who can’t hold a decent relationship — not with themselves, not with anyone else. That’s what inherited pain looks like. That’s what happens when cycles are never broken.

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To stop toxic inheritance.

To heal first.

To give every child the life they deserve.