Writing about what happens when family relationships are pulled apart by loyalty, influence, distance, silence, and competing narratives. The grief of loving people who are still alive, the confusion of being shut out, and the reality of trying to live inside a relationship you no longer get to participate in.
Thanks for letting me go. Nearly 5 decades chasing or running from you--was no way to live and no longer how I understand and do love. Recovery teaches us--- Love is kind, direct, courageous, enduring, transparent, nurturing, loyal, and unconditional. Wholesome Good Love is a commitment, rather than just a feeling. Finally, disentangled from my placeholders for love, I now experience and treasure loving connections in healthy relationships. When we know better, we do better. I am grateful for freedom from those who…
I was terrified and ashamed and I did not know what to do, for much of my life. With the only consistent direction: “Be somebody entirely different (think, feel, want, and hate, exactly as we do) or fuck off". My despair over not knowing how to do those things, manifested into behaviors that were bully like. Or maybe I was just mimicking what I experienced in my home life. Either way, I took that attitude and those behaviors out into the world,…
Sometimes the only closure you need is understanding you deserve better.
It really makes no difference why a person is consistently kind and honest or why they are not. It may be time to stop needing to know why. We all deserve kindness and honesty. Some people are more capable but no person is more OR less worthy than another. I have felt silenced by my personal declaration to no longer write/post/share about my experience with grief over actions which knowingly harm my little family. I realize --it is not that…
A little more than a month has passed and I have not cried for the absence of my mother. When she was alive, because of the fracture which seemed permanent, deliberate, and guaranteed by the collaboration of my ex and my sister, I could not stop myself from crying--deranged crying over my unacknowledged efforts to heal-- together. My sibling (the word sister will not do) and my ex worked decisively toward this exact ending. I found this picture today while…
