When “Being Right” Replaces Being Human
On Saturdays, I meet with a small group of politically engaged people, holding signs aimed at sparking awareness.
My sign reads: “Dignity for All.” On the other side: “Condemn Violence.”
I think—who wouldn’t want that?
And yet, week after week, people slow their cars to lock eyes with me, middle fingers raised.
It’s startling—rage, hatred, ill will—aimed at something simple and human.
I’m noticing how this climate mirrors my experience with my family of origin.
There’s a crusader energy to it—a kind of moral conquest that treats disagreement as betrayal.
Difference read as defiance, calling for colonization. Persecution. Punishment.
In my family system, my sensitivity and limits were read the same way—not as difference, but as defiance.
That logic breeds persecution. Cruelty becomes justified when a person’s innate differences are judged as willful disobedience.
When rage is sanctified, violating others is seen as righteous. Cruelty becomes not only permissible, but earned.
I can’t accept that disappointing or disagreeing with someone should unleash war.
When I see faces twist in hate over “dignity for all,” I feel the echo of that pattern from home.
Banishing me became the right thing to do. My absence became a victory.
I struggle to understand how that serves anything resembling love.
Families have complex loyalties; I might almost accept the division from my mother.
But to extend that division to my children—who could have been spared— to model for them that banishment is virtue— feels devastating.
Gathering and communicating in ways that quietly and consistently diminished me to my boys.
People can deny what they’ve done or not done, said or not said, and even their motives. But the impact on my mind and body is undeniable. The impact on my teen boys—immeasurable.
I begged for repair, for shared reckoning, for the simple act of staying in relationship through difficulty.
When I finally stepped away to protect myself, the story became that I had opted out.
That lie became their shield— their justification, their victory narrative.
Children should not be divided from their parents. I shouldn’t have been divided. My children shouldn’t have been divided.
This is the family pattern— the cycle refusing to be broken.
Some might point to me as the common denominator, the cause.
I was groomed for environments that kept me afraid. Conditioned to take my rightful lesser place among those who felt disrespected by my limits.
I’m trying to stay curious.
What happens inside people when connection is hinged to reverence?
What are we protecting when we turn on one another in the name of being right?
How does moral certainty slide into crusade— into colonization, persecution, and conquest?
The price my sons pay is high. For this victory. For the preservation of power.
And a cautionary tale to anyone else who might dare to deviate.
