The circumstances
that strains the love in childhood homes and family relationships
“We love each other but our circumstances made that hard.”
I read this line in the book, Mind Magic, by Jim Doty, when he talked about his strained relationship with his family.
And it hit me -
I feel the same way about my family.
Especially with my relationship with my brother.
We never got along and always fought.
I do think that we were generally very different people in personality and approach.
However, I don’t think we would have been at each other’s throats all the time -
If we had grown up in a more stable family situation.
I have recently read that you need to be taught to be safe in a family, to be vulnerable, to love.
We were not always taught that.
My mother tried, but my father’s volatile nature and outbursts from his alcoholism made that very difficult.
So, I gravitated toward my mother and spurned my father for years.
Whereas Jeremie gravitated toward him though he could not support him the way he needed.
I was speaking with my dear friend the other friend and she said -
I am mourning relationships that could have been.
And I completely relate.
Because though we have lost different figures in our lives and have strained family relationships in dissimilar ways -
I also look at my family and their lives, and our relationships, and wonder how we may have shifted if there had been mental health, healing, therapy, substance abuse rehabilitation, proper medication, trauma help and somatic work - all the things.
Of course with my father and brother, since we didn’t have the closest and most trusting relationships.
But, also with my mother -
Because though I loved her so -
I know that our relationship was not always entirely healthy - undeniably co-dependent. I felt responsible for her in ways at the end of her life - to save her from herself - largely because she had made me her whole world growing up.
I know that the work of cycle-breaking of intergenerational trauma is important and healing work. And I do believe that it heals ancestors.
And yet, also -
It is hard fucking work.
But it also is not entirely restorative.
I mean, it is, partly.
But it is nuanced -
Because there are deep-rooted elements of grief and mourning as well.
We mourn what could have been - for our loves ones, but also for our own relationships.
And it’s not that I am restored or healed entirely.
I also think of all that I have learned about healing since my mom passed away and I desperately wish I could have shared all of this with my mother.
I wish I had been a different person at the end of her life, and at Jeremie’s.
But I was traumatized and in pain and self-medicating with alcohol at points and not at my prime either, for sure.
There is grieving for what would have been.
But - the love and relationships I had with my family where largely shaped and defined by the circumstances.
-which is why I so heavily identified with Doty’s quote above.