When they walk away.
This is me letting go of my personal story and what I learnt from it when they decided to turn their back on me.
I have 4 sisters and a brother, and I am the eldest child of a rather complicated, diverse and mixed family. In the house I was raised full-time (my mom’s home), we were 3 girls and there is quite an age gap between myself and them. I am 8 years older than my middle sister and 12 1/2 years older than my little sister. Our mum was not made of the same cloth that society deems ‘normal’ nor was she anywhere near your typical run-of-the-mill kind of mother and I played the stereotype role of the eldest – taking on all the family responsibilities from the age of 9 – so as a child, teenager and young adult, I stepped up to the best of my ability at the time and had to help raise both of my sisters and, in fact, even my mom.
I wrote in a previous post how I love and forgive (click here to read it) but the short of it is this…I believed that forgiveness and love were totally one hundred percent a given when it came to family…meaning that my innermost circle could do anything and I would still love, forgive and accept them. And I expected vice versa! In fact, love, forgive and accept are still my life’s mantra to this day! Yes, we get angry and yes, we say things in the heat of the moment and yes, we lash out and do things that we maybe should not do…but we stay. We love. Forgive. We accept the other because they are family. My number ONE thing in my life was my family but, needless to say, life decided otherwise for me and gave me one hell of a slap-through-the-face-wake-up-call.
My little sister and I have always clashed. I see her as one of my children (she’s only about 5 years older than my firstborn) and she has always fought against that by wanting to be acknowledged as a sister. An equal. Maybe we are too much alike or maybe we are too different – I have officially given up trying to rationalise or understand it – but we have sat at odds at very many different points through our lives and during our tumultuous relationship. Dare I say that it just became the ‘norm’ for me? I just accepted it as a part of who and what we were…family…and there’s that aged old saying of how we can choose our friends but not our family, so I guess that can best explain how I saw my relationship with her. She was my family. My child that I loved and raised. Nothing could break us apart or tear my love and forgiveness away from her.
She lives overseas and early in 2018 had a baby so I packed up for 2 months, left my life; responsibilities; family; work; my studies and I went over to go and be with her. She asked for support and guidance and I had given it to my middle sister because our Mom was gone, so doing this for her was just normal for me. Unfortunately, I eventually found myself in an environment that did not best suit my highest purpose and I was terribly unhappy. Eckhart Tolle says ” If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have 3 options: remove yourself from the situation, change it or accept it totally” and after discussing the situation with my husband and trying the latter, we decided it would be better for me to leave and come back home 3 weeks early. This was a huge deal for me because for the longest of times I had struggled with implementing boundaries with my family! I had always allowed all of them to walk all over me and for them to always get their own way. I had a really tough bark…but to my detriment, I had very little bite. Obviously, this had consequences and big repercussions. I knew she was hurt and upset but I gave her the space she required to digest and come to terms with my decision. Also,I respected the time she needed and asked her to forgive me. To me, I did everything she asked. When I visited her country again, I went back and went to her home to make things right. I offered help, counselling, free coaching, assistance in any way she felt she may need. I gave her everything she said she needed, and she finally said that she forgave me and that we could move on. However, her actions did not match up with her words and 7 months later (almost to the exact day 1 year later of me leaving) after me probing, she confessed that she was not able to forgive me, forget about it, deal with it, move on and that she no longer wanted me in her life. I was accused of a bunch of stuff and then totally ghosted. She ignored me, did not answer messages, did not give me her new phone number, her new address and there was just nothingness after that. At the age of 33, my little sister turned her back on me, walked away and wrote me off.
This totally gutted me. It felt like one of my kids had died…and one of my grandkids because of her baby. I went through all the phases of mourning for a year. I went back to my dark place of self-blame by tearing myself apart (a terrible go-to I have that I’m really working on now) and indirectly punishing myself. Then, one day, I went to see an energy healer – because my motto in life is to learn and grow through every experience in this classroom we call life – and her words to me were “Why do you spend so much time obsessing over somebody who basically does not care about you, love you or even spends one iota of time even thinking about you? For all you know, you don’t even cross your sisters mind! She has made herself clear by her actions, so why are you not listening to her, Taz?” and BAM, an epiphany hit me hard!
I could spend time reliving my personal story, my ego’s story – of how she disrespected me, she disrespected my family, she’s selfish keeping her child from me, she’s ungrateful after everything I did for her, when my mother threw her out I took her in, I schooled her, I spoilt her, I forced my people to accept and love her, if anyone had an issue with her I wouldn’t tolerate it, I put her over my own children etc. etc. – OR I could learn, grow, love, forgive and accept just as my life’s motto says.
Malachy McCourt once said, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Grudges do no good whatsoever and they benefit no one. Even Buddha said, “To be angry is to let others’ mistakes punish yourself.” AND “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” I decided that I no longer wanted to hurt myself by holding onto any sort of resentment toward her. She can be angry, resentful, vindictive, punishing but that is none of my business and that is her choice, her life’s path and journey. I seriously learnt that we cannot force another to love us. Or to forgive us. To accept us and our quirks. To want to be in our lives. Another thing I learnt was that holding onto someone or something that no longer or never belonged only hurts me. Yet more that I learnt was that expectation is the cause of all unhappiness. You see, I expected my sister to forgive me, to accept my decision of what was best for me and to love me regardless. I expected my sister to love me no matter what because I was her family and that was how I loved her. I learnt – like I explained in my previous post – that we all have different meanings attached to words that are totally unique to our lives, paths and experiences. My version of love, forgive and accept is different to hers because we are different, we have walked different paths, we have had different experiences. I cannot expect her to feel like I do and she too can’t have that expectation of me because we are very different people who live different lives.
This was not the first time I have had someone turn their back and walk away and I have even done it to others, but this was the first time I experienced it within my inner core…my family. Another thing I found very ironic was that I observed how those who accuse us of __________ (fill in the blank) are in fact the ones who __________ (whatever the blank was) themselves, so finally the greatest gift I got from this whole experience was the realisation of how everything works out for our best benefit. With time, I can look back and see how much more peaceful and positive my life is without certain people in it anymore. Those that have left also took all their negativity with them and if we are just willing to release them with love; willing to let them go and not indulge in our personal story of how we were ‘wronged’; then life becomes serene, blissful and content. If they come back, so be it. If not, then also so be it. I am so ever grateful and thankful to those who had the courage to walk away from me because I did not have had the strength to do it due to my core belief systems even though those relationships were totally toxic. Thankfully those deeply ingrained beliefs have been amended to a much healthier one of boundaries now and I have learnt that I need to put myself first, to make me my number one and to no longer compromise myself and my happiness for anybody in order to cultivate more healthy and balanced relationships. I had spent so many years sacrificing so much for others but now I have learnt to just simply say NO and my existence is now one of peace. I no longer mourn or miss those who decided to leave, and I am totally comfortable and happy with my life without them in it. In fact, I consider my life blessed and I give thanks to those who turned their backs on me and walked away because I learnt that everyone’s journey and processing is different and who am I to judge that or them?
The message of this story is quite simply this: I had a decision to make. I could unpack all my ‘stuff’, camp out beside my misery and keep telling myself my personal story of ‘woah to me’ and stay the victim in this particular scenario of people I loved immensely turning their back on me and walking out of my life…OR…I could have an understanding that if I let go of my personal story, accept the situation for what is was (and not what I WANTED it to be), forgave myself, forgave them; then my life could move forward lovingly and I would no longer be stuck in a state of limbo. I made the choice of letting go of the story I told myself in my head that would become the filter (or lens) that I would see everything through! That being an understanding that they too have their own personal stories and I just decided not to let my own hurt and anger punish me any longer.
I hope that you found this post helpful and would love for you to sign up to our mailing list to get more like it mailed directly into your inbox!
Remember, everything is in our heads and we can change it simply by changing that personal story we have built up and keep telling ourselves.
Yours in kindness,
Taz
2 comments