I don’t like to let go of people and relationships. Faith and family are the purpose of my life.
I’m an optimist, a hopeful person by nature. I have forgiven things and reopened doors that other people would have ripped off the hinges and thrown on the burn pile. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt because I know how often I fail at being the person I see myself as.
Too often I’ve failed to recognize the futility in fighting for a relationship until I’ve exhausted my heart.
As I moved through my forties I began to understand that the most respectful I can be is to accept people for who they are and what they want in their relationship with me. It isn’t a statement about me if they want only platitudes or a purely social media connection. They are allowed to live out their life, their way. It isn’t even a statement about them.
It just is.
Sometimes what they really want is to be left alone to live on their terms. They don’t want healing or growth or to talk about anything any more. They don’t want to change or apologize or even consider that they could be wrong.
If you are the truth talker in your family especially about trauma or abuse you will understand being placed on the outside of the inner circle.
They will put you on the outside and huddle up.
Let them.
We fight to get back in as we get caught up in the past or the history. Longing for family bonds, the words ”blood is thicker than water” echoing in our ears when what we must accept is that truth is thicker than blood.
Trauma is thicker than blood.
We hang on tightly because we are desperate to remain connected even when every message is one of rejection.
As we stand on the outside of the inner circle party looking in, it’s natural to want to be included. To question why they so easily move on without us while we twist in the wind wondering why we don’t matter enough.
We hold on so tightly. Even when it’s bad for us. Agitating. Pushing and pulling in a dance of rage and grief for connection lost.
The more we learn about family dynamics and how all the pieces fit together the more we are able to loosen our grip. To see it all more clearly.
It can take years. Decades to open your hands and release all the people and pain back into the universe that created them.
When you do. When you finally relax your fingers, open your palms and stretch your arms to the sky you are free my friend.
Free to receive something new. Create and build something new. Experience the love and inclusion you deserve. You are open to building your own family. From the ground. Maybe created in blood or maybe a family that can’t be traced in DNA but one that is stitched together piece by piece in good people, until you have all you need.
From time to time for different reasons, I find myself grasping at the old threads of those relationships and I have to release them all over again. And again.
It’s natural. It’s okay. Each time it’s easier to release.
When my hands are free I can cling best to the thread of His garment. Only there do I know my true worth. I am who He says I am, not them.
I must release what is hurtful to receive what heals.