Toxicity In Families | My Story
“I reward Loyalty with Loyalty. I reward Disloyalty with Distance. ”
— Unknown Source
Have you ever heard : “Respect your elders…”
If the answer is yes; you may have also heard that respect goes both ways. Right ?
But why that same rule does not apply to certain Families? Good question !!! I may not be able to answer that question but I can let you know how I freed myself from this type of familial toxicity.
I come from a mix family. One side is Malian (West Africa) and the next from Cuba(Caribbean). My parents both raised me to respect anyone who is older than me and never talk back, which is good training, but has its downside. I feared saying no when someone older asked me to do something for them. I was overworking myself all the time, and caring conversations with people I didn’t care about', and neither did they care about me. For what? For them to tell my parents How great of a kid I was ?
It took me after college to finally deal with this toxicity. I started to voice my opinion when my parents will give my phone number to some uncles or aunts who wanted to reach out to me (mind you they had nothing to say but to send me irrelevant gifs and chains on WhatsApp). I told them to ask me first before involving me in their conversations. I also asked them to not expect me to reply to everyone and anyone that they sent my way. And I’m glad they understood and supported me.
My mother gave me one of the best advice that I still hold dearly: “Your family is your sisters”.
It took me a year to finally understand this simple phrase.
My family is my sisters… My energy should only be focused to my immediate family. I do not have any responsibility to anyone else but to my sisters who respect me and love me. She also made sure that I understand that if at any point they do not respect me, that I should speak up and not bottle up my feelings. But to be able to deal with that kind of issues, I would honestly say that you need to start working on yourself and on who you want to become. You need to learn to seek validation only to yourself and not someone else. But you also need to starting living your life for YOURSELF.
I could go on and on about this topic because it took me years to finally open up about this issue.
But at the end of the day, you can’t let ANYONE dim your light and force you to enter any type of depression because they do not like the way you spoke to them.
Stand-up for your health and your freedom.
“Stand-up for your health and your freedom.”
— Leslie Moukoro Lawrence