Monday Insight : Family Emancipation

Family Emancipation

I’ve been avoiding the shift that my family is moving apart.

One day I am going to stand in front of them and say that they are just people and really that’s all they are. The blood that runs through my veins, they are legally Family and in my heart they are family, but what does family even mean?

I could leave them behind if I had to and I realized I have been doing so for years bit by bit. They are only Family because I say so, and I am loyal to the word. I am not always loyal to them, and I no longer need to be. Once you realize that family is a concept ingrained in us from birth, you have to face that it means nothing and everything. You can step into the truth of the power in the word, and in doing so through the process of metaphorical death, you can stop living in the shadows of generation obligation. You begin understand how stepping away from the unit also means stepping forward and being your own person outside that unit. You may even be the catalyst for other members to do the same.

The word itself, keeps me in constant worry and self judgment, it connects with that voice inside me that says that I am not loving, or caring and that Family means 24/7. It means that I drop everything and get immersed in the battles as well as the triumphs even when it does not directly have anything to do with me.

This I have learned over time, and been conditioned to believe. The hardest thing for me was to accept that I don’t need to be the mother, the mediator or even step into what does not serve me, and hasn’t for a long time.

There is no longer an obligation of should; obligations that are not authentic at heart and harbor resentment, disempowerment and dependency.

When you do this, you give yourself permission then to release attachments and to be open now to new experiences, and love. Your relationships become stronger, and you can relate on an adult to adult level in a way that living with the past does not allow. You see your parents as separate people, no longer the guiders and gate keepers of your life, your siblings as either allies, rather than points of reference of a life that is now over and can be released, and profoundly, a deep understanding of the beauty it all was made to be. If it means something different, let that be what it is. This needs to die. The connection. Unplugged.

The toxicity that we imagine we cannot have escaped needs to be acknowledged, realised for what it truly is and brought into the light so we can see its glorious shadows and dance in unity.

“I AM CARING, LOVING AND WORTHY OF MY AUTONOMY”