I wouldn’t have chosen the things that harmed me, but I’m grateful and proud of how I’m allowing myself to be shaped by them. Recovery keeps teaching me about mercy, redemption, and reconciliation. I’m awake now, and this quote captures exactly where I am: “I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence.” — Adrienne Rich, Splittings.
In my family of origin, from my earliest days, I felt unwanted, unwelcome, invalid, shunned, and discarded. I learned self‑loathing from the people I depended on to teach me love. To love someone, as I understand it, means being unconditionally for them — not diminishing, harming, or acting as an enemy.
My pain and healing have been disruptive to those unwilling to acknowledge the harm that was. But I know questions will eventually come from younger generations in my family, and maybe even some older ones.
Because my healing matters more than proximity to blood relations, I had to choose. You can’t heal inside the environment that makes you unwell. For decades I begged to do the work together. I was told the issues were mine alone — fabricated, imagined.
I’ve said many times that I’m committed to breaking the cycles of pain so I don’t hand diseased thinking to my sons. Until today, I hadn’t considered that I’m also the beginning of a new cycle — one of healing, awake parenting, and living in ways that allow us to see, feel, speak, and work through the pain we cause and experience.
“I love you so long as you are pleasing me” — that was the cycle of chaos and dysfunction. The manipulating, forcing, pretending, denying, defending, and covering up. It stops here. I’m not claiming to be healed — only to be doing the work to become healed. I’m a work in progress.
Someone at today’s meeting shared something that put words to what I’ve struggled to articulate. I’m always amazed when that happens.
“The truth is I’m in need of repair every day, One Day at a Time and for the
rest of my life. I’m not going back to a fractured perspective, unclear boundaries, stifling
anxiety, crippling resentments, out of control “control”.”
