on family and detaching in love.
note: this piece was originally written for my email newsletter The RAD Recap in January 2019. at the time, I was taking space from my family and doing a lot of deep diving into my personal growth and healing. i’m grateful for all the growth that has happened both internally and relationally with my family in the year since I first wrote these words.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about family. I have more questions and unresolved thoughts than I have answers and advice, but I wanted to attempt to share some of my thinking here.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about family. About the families we are born into, and how they shape us. About the order we were born in, and how that influences our personalities. About the blood that courses through us, the traits we inherit, the similarities and differences that bind us inextricably to the people we share DNA with, regardless of how those relationships play out. About the families we build beyond our bloodlines, and the ways in which they shape us, too.
Here are some of the questions I’ve been considering:
What happens when roles in our families start to shift? Like when we grow older and become our own independent adult humans, who no longer need to be parented like we did when we were younger? What happens to our relationship with our parents then? Or what about when adult children need to become caregivers for aging parents? Or when we lose members of our families and everything changes?
What happens when our nuclear families no longer live under the same roof, when we no longer cohabitate, no longer cross paths as easily? How do we establish a sense of closeness and connection once the convenience is gone?
Can parents and children truly become friends? Is it healthy for that friendship to start when children are young? Or should it wait until they are older? When should that shift happen? And how can a foundation be built in that parent/child relationship from the start either way, if a friendship type of relationship is to be possible later on?
What does healthy communication look like in families? Should it mean sharing everything? Is it okay to withhold things from your family if you don’t feel comfortable sharing?
What do healthy boundaries look like in families? How do we establish them? And what happens if there comes a need for new boundaries that weren’t in place before, and not everyone is on the same page about the changes? Is it selfish to create boundaries anyway, if they’re healthy for one person?
How do we exist in our families well? How do we love our families well? How do we love ourselves well as people who are in families, who might have families of our own, who might long for families, who exist in these units in some capacity but also exist as individuals too?
I’ve had these thoughts all swirling around in my brain for weeks (months? years?) now, and have found that thinking so much about family means I start hearing, seeing, and reading things about family seemingly everywhere I turn. (Isn’t there some name for this phenomenon?) I picked up Melody Beattie’s daily meditation book the other morning, as I do every morning, and found that the day’s entry was all about family. Oof.
Here are a few quotes I highlighted and copied into my journal:
“One of our primary rights is to begin feeling better and recovering, whether or not others in our family choose to do the same. We do not have to feel guilty about finding happiness and a life that works.”
“Taking care of ourselves and becoming happy and healthy does not mean we do not love them. It means we are addressing our issues.”
And lastly…
“Today, I will separate myself from family members. I am a separate human being even though I belong to a unit called a family. I have a right to my own issues and growth; my family members have a right to their issues and a right to choose where and when they will deal with these issues. I can learn to detach in love from my family members and their issues. I am willing to work through all necessary feelings in order to accomplish this.”
THAT WILL PREACH.
Lord knows I have a LOT of issues to work through, to work on. And as I’ve been doing that work in counseling and on my own, I’ve realized that it causes changes and shifts to happen in how I relate to my family, how I exist in my family, and even what I desire and dream for when I think about creating a family of my own someday.
It’s been hard for me, honestly. I haven’t known quite how to share those changes with my family, how to grow as a person without demanding or expecting similar growth from them on a similar timeline, how to adjust to the ever-changing dynamics of our relationships.
It’s been difficult, disorienting, confusing.
I’ve made a mess of it, if I’m being honest. I’ve tried to be vulnerable and I’ve ended up being hurtful. I’ve tried to make suggestions, and I’ve made mistakes. I’ve tried to create healthy boundaries, and I’ve struggled to be consistent, leaving things more confusing than they were before.
Being in a family— any kind of family— is hard work. And I think it’s good work, too.
I’m more grateful for my family than I have words to express. And I’m more challenged by those relationships than I know how to handle well, too.
Here, again, I find myself in a place of tension. (I find these places of tension everywhere.) I’m an individual--an independent adult with her own home, her own bills, her own issues, her own relationships, her own life… yet I’m part of a family-- a unit consisting of other adults with all of their own lives and issues and things too.
I’m both. I’m my own person, but I’m also a daughter. I’m a sister. I’m a granddaughter, a niece, a cousin.
I confess I don’t live out all of those roles well. I’m stumbling through, attempting to love myself well and grow as an individual, while also attempting to love my family well and grow in those relationships. I’m having more struggles than successes, but I’d bet that feels true for most of us.
Families are messy.
Loving people up close is hard.
I agree with Beattie when she says that it is our right to work on and through our issues to become happy and healthy people. And I also admit that it’s hard to do, and it often feels like we aren’t loving our families well when we’re in the process of doing that work. But detaching in love for the sake of our own health and growth and healing? I think that’s a beautiful and necessary and good thing to do at times.
As far as what it looks like to detach in love? I’m still figuring that out.
How to live in the tension of being an individual and also being in a family? I’m still figuring that out, too.
How to love myself well, and how to love my family well? Working on that.
Like I said… more questions and unresolved thoughts than answers and advice.
The truth I keep coming back to is this: we were not made to do this life alone. God has placed us in families— given us mothers, fathers, mentors, loved ones, spouses, children, neighbors, siblings— and given us a command to love others well.
So, messy and difficult and hard as it might be, we press in and press onward, believing in God’s goodness and guidance, working to learn, love, and live together well with our families, however they look, and whoever they include.