“It is okay to move on from people who are not good for me.”
I get emailed daily affirmations from Third Eye Thougths, and today’s is:
“I respect myself enough to walk away from situations that no longer bring me peace. I love myself enough to stand up for myself when it is needed. I deserve love, compassion, and respect. I happily walk away from situations that are not healthy for me. It is okay to move on from people who are not good for me.”
This resonates so deeply for me right now. I’ve recently realized that having an active relationship with my blood family is not healthy for me. In trying to come to terms with that, I’m seeing that it’s been unhealthy for a long time now. Our society, and my family, put so much pressure on ‘blood’ that we will maintain these unhealthy relationships to our own great detriment. And typically, it’s to the detriment of the other people in the relationship too. Unhealthy relationships are unhealthy all around, even if someone is benefiting from it.
Wow. I was writing that this morning while the power was out and I couldn’t work. I definitely didn’t finish my rambling and planned to pick it up later. Fast forward about 13 hours of work and out of town basketball, and I decide to scroll through my FB feed a bit. I hadn’t really done that in a while. My dad has posted. He rarely posts, but when he does, FB has the decency to show me. On December 30th he posted that my Uncle Rick died. This uncle lived with us for a solid amount of time when I was growing up. I’ve stayed in touch with him more than I have my dad. And I found out about his death via an 11 day old FB post. And then I see that my Mom reacted to it, and also hasn’t bothered to reach out to me. Damn. My dad not telling me is very typical and any outsider would expect that. We are estranged and the only communication we do is text each other on birthdays. My mom is totally different. Outsiders would think that we are hella close. She likes to pretend that she wants to be involved with me and will try to guilt me into visiting her every time we talk. A year ago, I would be so pissed off and hurt that she hasn’t bothered to let me about my Uncle dying or to check in on me. Me now, after having done a bunch of self exploration, facing uncomfortable truths, figuring out how to best take care of me… Me now isn’t even surprised. Because when I look at our relationship without the lense of me trying to force this relationship to work, I can see that it’s been unhealthy or both of us for a really long time. I think the thing that hurts me the most right now is that I’ve been over here fucking aching over coming terms with the fact that I am breaking up with almost all of my blood family. And it seems like she’s happily living in her Christian delusion and doesn’t even think about me.
I try to participate as I “should” and in return I expect that she will try to participate as she “should”. It’s like being set up to fail. On both ends. I can’t find a solution. I’ve tried all sorts of different boundaries in these relationships with blood and nothing is functional. I think at this point I have to acknowledge that I’ve done everything I can, so until there is a genuine to commitment to working together on the relationship, I’m out of it.
I’ve stayed in unhealthy relationships with my blood family out of societal expectations. We need to stop driving this blind obedience into our children. There’s so much wrong with what we teach kids about family. Stop telling kids to allow bad behavior because they’re family. Stop forcing kids to hug people just cuz they’re family. Stop telling people that blood is the one who’s gonna stick around. Cuz guess what - THAT’S NOT THE DEFINING FACTOR. And that’s proven time and time again! Blood doesn’t mean that they’re healthy people for me to be in a relationship with. And sure as hell doesn’t mean they’re gonna make space.
I very clearly have different values than the majority of my family. Values that are deal breakers for me. Now I want to get into my relationship with my family and our colonial past that lead to drama when I drew healthy boundaries at Christmas… but it’s getting too late for that. That’ll be a doozy.
For real, if you’re working on family boundaries too, please email me. I could definitely use some people to talk to about it. I’m sure Andrew’s sick of it by now.