Text image of Winston Churchill quote: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last,” representing appeasement, coercive control, trauma bonding, and survival in toxic family systems and emotionally abusive relationships.

Healing From Narcissistic Family Systems

I’ve been reflecting on how, in my family—and unironically, in the family of the man I had children with—belonging was not rooted in mutual care, nuance, or individuality. It was rooted in alignment with the people who had decided, and been supported in believing, that they mattered more. Agreement equaled safety. Divergence tracked as threat.

There was no space for statements like, “I see it differently,” or “I’m hurt,” or “I need something else,” or even the simple, honest, “This doesn’t work for me.” For everyone but the person who positioned themselves at the center, those weren’t treated as communication but as defection.

And once a thing was regarded as defection, the goal was not understanding but eradicating the instability. Restoring an illusion of unity. That meant conforming, suppressing, or being cast as the problem itself.

There was no option to simply and safely be—without signaling allegiance. You were either reinforcing the prescribed doctrine or destabilizing it. In systems built on reverence for the ones who’ve assumed the right to define reality and whose comfort functions as law, there is no middle ground. You’re either with me or against me.

That system did not simply banish me. It smeared me, discarded me, and snatches at my children, insisting I “forfeited” them by being different crazy — which, in that arrangement, meant nothing more than refusing to agree to matter less. I cannot abide. I won’t.

James Baldwin quote about facing truth overlaid on a minimalist image symbolizing emotional clarity, reflection, and the cost of acknowledgment.

The Limits of One-Sided Repair

Letting Go

Each day, I live with the ache that I may not see my children again. We may not have another real conversation or moment of closeness.

That may be the outcome when children grow in a system that teaches them to diminish me, and when they have no outside support to question that story.

I can see how neatly the story lands if I’m “too much,” or if I “opted out.” But I didn’t opt out of love. I opted out of interactions that diminished me, and out of being judged for the pain I carried in response to that.

When my older son stopped by this week to pick up some belongings, he said, “OK then, I guess I’ll just keep working on myself.” The tone was pure “seeyuh.” Calm. Clean. Detached. His dad would be impressed.

It wasn’t confrontation. It wasn’t repair. It was distance dressed up as resolution.

It created a sense of closure without anything actually being closed. His lack of genuine interest made it clear that the decision had already been made somewhere else.

When I imagine the worst‑case scenarios — illness, death, finality — I feel no guilt for what I’ve said or done. My choices have always reflected prioritizing them. I feel no shame.

I cannot bridge a gap that was created by design, by people frustrated with my lack of reverence and submission. And bridging that gap requires mutual engagement. The cycle begs to repeat.

I don’t feel I have amends to make. I continue working on myself because I am here to grow, heal, and love.

I know I have been truthful, kind, loyal, and wholesome as a mother. Not perfect, but great in the years before the triangulation that crushed me.

My greatest regret is how much exposure they had to my pain, and how my reactions shaped their experience of me. It robbed them of access to parts of me that existed outside suffering. But I didn’t choose the pain. I did the best I could while living inside it.

I am neither proud nor ashamed. I accept what was. I accept what is.

And I accept that we may not find our way back to each other in this lifetime.

As I once said to my family of origin: My first choice is to heal with you. My second is to just heal.

I never stopped trying. And- I no longer accept the old belief that I should be grateful for whatever version of connection I’m handed. I’m choosing peace that doesn’t require self‑erasure. No more entanglement with anyone of the mindset that their peace and comfort matter more than others.

Goat standing alone on a cliff symbolizing family scapegoating and avoidance of responsibility

The War They Wanted: A Story of Estrangement

My sons learned, by design, to have zero tolerance for their mother. Ordinary acts of parenting—direction, correction, consequences, even simple questions—were rejected and reframed as manipulation or control. I once read a message from their father telling them, “Disregard your mother.” And they did. Their dismissal was not only permitted but modeled, reinforced, and quietly supported by people who positioned themselves as adversaries.

During months of medical crisis—unmanaged pain, heavy medication, complications, emotional collapse—I was met with silence. I lost forty pounds. I couldn’t sit, stand, or lie down without pain. Without sleep, I struggled to function. My children showed little response, a kind of learned distance. My medical devastation wasn’t received as a call for care, but seemed to reinforce the narrative they had been taught to hold.

Soon after that year of collapse came two heart attacks—more data, more interpretation, more judgment. I can hold compassion for how my children were shaped without accepting mercilessness as something I choose to live near. My healing has required restraint, even when injustice invites engagement. Over time, my options narrowed to two: escalate or collapse. In that narrowing, the structure became clear. Conflict was the point. They wanted a war—because war produces a winner and a loser, and in war, restraint is a liability.

There is no framework of love or care in which it is acceptable to erase a parent. Participating in any activity that knowingly divides children from a parent is emotional violence.

I continue to learn about the generational dynamics of scapegoating and parental alienation. I recognize myself in the stories of others whose former partners aligned with extended families in campaigns framed as concern—please pray for her, we’re worried—while undermining, diminishing, and dividing.

Sponge bob to do list to include overthinking and missing someone he never had. Depression. Estrangement. Alienation. Black sheep. Scapegoat.

Minimalist graphic displaying the Set Aside Prayer about letting go of assumptions to allow openness, healing, and alignment

The Logic of Familiarity

Looking back, I notice how often I gravitated toward people who couldn’t tolerate my pain but expected the world to organize itself around their pleasure. When they were uncomfortable, everyone rushed to soothe them.

What’s especially painful is this: humanity was withdrawn from me when I was small and needed it most. There was a kind of protected harm at work. Each time I struggled, my sister’s standing rose, and my mother’s case against me grew. Anyone could see how that drove beliefs about worth and entitlement—how my suffering had been useful to my sister. She was not only pitied and comforted when I suffered, but rewarded for not being me.

It has been like this since my first breath. And I repeated this dynamic in which I consent to mattering less, in almost every relationship I chose.

There were exceptions. Sweet Greg. The love bomber, obviously. And the sweetheart I’m seeing now—kind, present, generous, not looking for a reason to deny my comfort or my reality.

Still, nothing replaces a family that shelters you—parents, a big sister, your own children. I remember when we moved here and my mother and sister swooned over how sweet my boys were, what a good mother I was. Even that disrupted the familiar roles. Me forming a family of my own threatened a long-standing narrative: one child – the problem, another elevated in contrast, and a mother sustained by sympathy for having such a difficult child. Looking back, it’s devastating to see how carefully that arrangement was preserved.

The measures I go to in order to heal, recover, and live, seems diametrically opposed to those to whom I’m genetically linked. I read this the other day: “The way is the goal.” It captures it perfectly.

It reminds me of the Set Aside Prayer—and of one of my favorite tattoos: the word –align– inside of an arrow.