Last week, during an extended savasana in yoga, I had an auditory memory:
“Don’t cha just love family?”
Once upon a time, a well-known comic who had been dating my now deceased younger brother shot out this shameless blurt during a family gathering. Our mother and sister-in-law had been having words, like they always did, and in a state of unmitigated resentment and frustration, our sister-in-law threw a tray across the room at our mother.
“Don’t cha just love family?” The timing was perfection and the crack snapped me out of my habitually repentant ownership of family members whose acting out behaviors were beyond my control. Instead, I was doubled over, laughing hysterically— at the ministers’ wives tray-throwing fiasco. Paraphrasing Christ: They simply didn’t know any better.
I never heard (and I never asked) if this altercation ever became churchly content for either of their husbands’ Sunday addresses— because thankfully none of that information belonged to me, either.
The thing is, knowing better is a choice and a challenge. Because knowing better is evidenced by behavior. We can choose something different, rather than continuing to stay caught up in old patterns that no longer serve. We can choose to let the old story (rooted in ego and fear) go. We can also choose to practice non-interference, and let others continue “not knowing any better,” as that also is a choice and a path with lessons of its own.
In The Language of Letting Go (1990), Melodie Beattie encourages boundaries so that we might stay in alignment with our true desire for a healthy and happy life, and what that requires physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
She writes: “We can draw a healthy line, a healthy boundary, between ourselves and our nuclear family. We can separate ourselves from their issues.
Some of us may have family members who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs and who are not in recovery from their addiction.
Some of us may have family members who have unresolved codependency issues. Family members may be addicted to misery, pain, suffering, martyrdom, and victimization.
We may have family members who have unresolved abuse issues or unresolved family of origin issues.
We may have family members who are addicted to work, eating, gambling, sex, caretaking, gaming*, or the internet* and social media*.
Our family may be completely enmeshed or we may have a disconnected family in which the members have little contact.
We may be like our family. We may love our family. But we are separate human beings with individual rights and issues. One of our primary rights is to begin feeling better and recovering, whether or not others in the family choose to do the same.
We do not have to feel guilty about finding happiness and a life that works. We do not have to take on our family’s issues as our own to be loyal and to show them we love them.
Often when we begin taking care of ourselves, family members will reverberate with overt and covert attempts to pull us back into the old system and roles. We do not have to go. Their attempt to pull us back are their issues. Taking care of ourselves and becoming healthy and happy does not mean we do not love them. It means we are addressing our issues.
We do not have to judge them because they have issues; nor do we have to allow them to do anything they would like to us just because they are family.
We are free now to take care of ourselves with family members. Our freedom starts when we stop denying their issues, and politely, but assertively, hand their stuff back to them – – where it belongs – – and deal with our own issues.”
~ Melody Beattie 1990
What steps will I take to prioritize my recovery and self -care practices?
What do I need physically, emotionally and spiritually to stay right-sized and grounded?
What self-honoring boundaries will I set with family and friends?
A private, closed group supporting the MA/NH Recovery Community. A place to ask questions and share without worrying about anonymity. This group is not affiliated with any specific 12-step program.