Title: The Cycle Ends With Me
Subtitle: A Blueprint for Wholeness, Truth, and Radical Love
Author: Moana Leanne Kirikino
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
ISBN: 979-8765203569
Pages: 92
Genre: Self-Help / Memoir / Non-fiction
Reviewer: Liz Konkel

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A mix of memoir and self-help, The Cycle Ends with Me, is utilized by author Moana Leanne Kirikino to provide a resource for those dealing with generational trauma. Using her personal testimony as a basis for reflection, guidance, and healing, Kirikino creates a guide that aims to provide a steppingstone and understanding outlet for those seeking to break the cycle and begin a new pattern. Through honesty and gentle reflection, Kirikino’s experiences shape a blueprint that serves as a foundation, offering

soul-focused practices, insights, and journaling prompts to help you on a journey of looking inward. Facing the past can be difficult and contain uneasy revelations; however, this book provides a guide that will help you take a step forward by allowing you to put your healing at the forefront of your journey.

While the book doesn’t promise a quick fix, it does offer a pathway which allows you to look at yourself with reflection and compassion. The tone and structure aren’t calling for you to be perfect, but instead, Kirikino’s words greet you with a quiet understanding. The core of the topics featured is generational trauma, whether that’s emotional absence, favoritism, narcissism, violence, etc. The book is comprised of three components: reflective memoir, healing blueprint, and understanding mirror. Each of these works together to create something unique that helps you establish your own story and see for yourself what it means to ‘break the cycle.’ This is summed up in an easy mantra of “it ends with me,” which is a statement that will rejuvenate and leave you feeling empowered long after reading. While the book doesn’t magically solve your problems, it does, however, help put things into perspective while offering much-needed encouragement.

Each chapter features a reflection, advice, and offers encouragement by reminding readers that healing is always possible. Personal experience steers the direction of Kirikino’s insights, such as reminders you are not too much, conscious parenting, and how to manage what you’re feeling. The book features prompts and a blueprint that lets you return to it time and again when you need reminders, reassurance, and hope when days are rough. The personal reflections create a memoir element that shows you she means what she says and genuinely understands what you’re going through. You get to know who Kirikino is as a person and how she reminds herself to keep moving forward. Included is a 28-Day Cycle Breaking Blueprint that breaks down day-by-day practices and reflections, both for individual meditation and family activities. These are both family-friendly and personal, from journaling your week to actively listening to your child’s story.

The self-help elements of the book feature easy activities, such as writing your own truth prompts to addressing your own mistakes. Topics featured are healing what hasn’t healed, giving yourself love, and loving someone through painful moments. For those seeking ways to start a healing journey or looking to break a generational cycle, this book is highly recommended as Kirikino offers honest and thoughtful advice. The style that Kirikino uses is equal parts journaling and speaking directly to the reader, which creates a conversation-like structure which allows you to feel like you’re speaking with a friend.

The Cycle Ends with Me is an honest and understanding guide that blends memoir and self-help with insights and a blueprint that lends a supporting hand for those seeking ways to move forward on a path of healing. A story of courage that reminds us: change starts with you.