We don't get to choose our family

we know this--yet we judge others by their family members...

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I tend to be very open about my story, my family’s tragedies. I do this because I want to help de-stigmatize mental illness. And I do this because I firmly believe that if I own my story that no one can use it against me.

And yet…

It’s not always easy.

I know that people judge me because of my family members’ choices.

Perhaps that is human nature, and still—though life is indeed unfair, this part feels incredibly unjust.

I know that others wonder if I’ll also choose to end my life because my brother and father did.

And I make myself vulnerable every time that I admit their causes of death to another.

I’ve been cautioned against this, by more private people, people I’ve dated and, quite frankly, I believe people who have more to hide.

But I am indeed an open book.

I do this online, but, frankly, it’s easier to do this in this space than interpersonally—with friends or in dating. Especially as an empath and someone highly intuitive.

But, one thing that I feel very strongly about is that we don’t get to choose our family members. We are ‘assigned’ them.

And sometimes we wonder why. I certainly have wondered this and do it often—why did I get this group? What could I have accomplished if given a more stable family?

And of course, our family heavily shapes us, for sure. I wish it weren’t the case, but that is a unavoidable.

But our gift in free will is that we can make different choices than our family members did.

If I made the same choices, I would still be in the little town where I grew up and would not have gone to college. I probably would have married young and worked some labor position or blue color job, had several babies, some of whom would be teenagers now. Maybe I’d even be a grandmother.

I don’t believe I got here on my own; my mother helped me to pave a different path for myself. As did key mentors along the way.

A former teacher of mine told me recently that my background primed me for the trauma that was to come.

Perhaps that is true.

Perhaps that is why I am still here when my family members are not.

What would my life have been if that wasn’t the case? If that didn’t have to be my story?

It’s perhaps fruitless to speculate, since I am here, in this space and life and from this family.

Still—-I hold a very special place in my heart for those who did not have a stable or functional family and yet made a firm decision to live their lives differently, to make incredibly different choices.

Because, that too, is my story. <3