I proposed for you to reconsider what family is. Whether you come from a loving family that encouraged you or one that does not conceptualize the family that you need. We are born into A family without choosing it. This lack of choice leaves us powerless until we choose to take back that power and create a family of our own. Maybe we can create that family by marriage and by giving birth but why be bound by that definition?
Learner’s dictionary (n.d.) defines family as, “a group of people who are related to each other. This sense of family can refer to a group that consists of parents and their children or it can refer to a bigger group of related people including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.” For those of us who don’t have that, it can be difficult to bind ourselves to those terms. This difficulty comes with the perception of what family is as defined by a dictionary.
Life is so short and I would like to propose a different definition of family that consists of a household filled with love among all the people in your home. It took a long time for me to say goodbye to the family I was born into, that did nothing but bully me and hurt me. It is a difficult choice to walk away from those who carry your DNA. Coupled with the freedom of choosing who you love and not expecting people to love you just because your family is a type of freedom for me. Those I love are my family now and this is a beautiful thing.
Going against social norms that say the family is everything and the roles within a culture that say that it is horrible that you want nothing to do with your family. I have the freedom of choosing my mothers and they are beautiful people. I have a family that is odd because we are not all connected by DNA but by the bonds of love that hold us together and the ease of communication among us.
My stepdaughter looks nothing like me but I am her mother and I love her. She too has experienced a mother that doesn’t know how to love but to bully and manipulate, causing hurt and pain. People who deliberately hurt you and cause you pain should not be given the sacred role of being a family member. My stepdaughter had a mother that left her as she cried and cried out for her to stay when she was that age of three. She abandoned her and she still suffers from feeling that people who care about her will leave her. Somehow we have found each other so that I can share my experience and tell her that I was better off without my mother and it is good and not shameful. I’m sure that sounds cruel but trust me when I say that a mother that tells a child as she grows up that she found her in the garbage and never shows her any love even when she needs it, is better off without her. It was a long journey to come to this horrifying conclusion and discovering this truth happened after I gave birth to my own child, my son. At that time, I realized there is no way my mother loved me because the love that I feel for him is truly unconditional. The freedom of choosing to create your own family or accepting the bullying experience of repeated negative words and actions of the one that gave me birth to me was a long painful process but a great one. I know it is horrible to type these words because I do appreciate the gift of life she gave me and now I can tell my stepdaughter and she can thank your mother for giving her life but there is no other obligation to her. We can also thank our mothers for enticing our minds to question social norms that are harmful to people and this is the greatest gift our mothers gave us.
Berry and Adams (2016) describe the bullying within a family resulting in health issues like depression or self-harm and in my case, being suicidal at a young age. Hoping and wondering if one day my mom could love me was painful. I am sure that if we conduct an autoethnography to critically study my family communication then research would agree that it was best to run and run as fast as I can because it really takes at least two people to work on a relationship. I rarely share with people that I am perfectly happy never speaking to my mother because people hold onto the social norms and judge me. You can see the look of horror on their faces. That said, I just say my mom is a wonderful person but she never wanted to be a mother. I don’t tell them that I was starved, beaten, and abused because that secret doesn’t define me anymore. Autoethnography research would agree my family secrecy is painful and best kept in private.
The bullying started with my mother and that behavior was modeled and shown to the children. I am fortunate to be free and I feel bad for my siblings who don’t agree with me wanting to be free of hatred towards everyone and fleeing from it. Instead, I choose to love and have laughter, not conforming and being controlled to such ugliness is a really good thing because now I have the ability to love those around me.
The family I chose does not bully but loves at all times and are truthful with each other, not having to hold family secrets that are painful and damaging. In my case forgiveness is not being hurt by the damage anymore but understanding that I rejected the norm, the obligation, and that blood is thicker than water because I would have drowned in that dysfunction.
References
Learner’s Dictionary. (n.d.). Definition of Family. Retrieved from http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/family
Berry, K & Adams T.E. (2016). Family Bullies. Journal of Family Communication, Volume 16, No. 1, pp. 51-63
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