conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2019-08-27 01:29 am

Friendships Are Family

Dear Annie: I'm often frustrated when people say that family always comes first. By "family," they mean the people you're related to by blood. My mother was a toxic presence in my life from age 11 to 22. I recently took a big step by asking her not to contact me anymore, instead letting me initiate conversation.

My life has only improved since making this change and since moving out of her home. No longer do I have to deal with her daily gaslighting -- telling me that my memory's incorrect, that her good intentions are more important than the pain she's caused me. No longer do I have to spend hours of the day denying my truth, living a lie.

She may be upset with me for choosing to severely limit our communication, but I have to take care of myself first. I have tried to make amends again and again and again. I have tried method after method. At some point, it became obvious I was talking to a wall. So, I wish more people understood that birth family isn't everything -- at least, not for everyone.

Please stop telling people things like, "But she's your mom!" or "But you're family!" We cannot choose the family we're born into. But we can choose the people we keep in our lives. People who love and respect us -- they come first. -- Better Off With My Chosen Family


Dear Chosen Family: I'm printing your letter to help people be more sensitive to someone in your position. Congratulations on finding friends who love and support you. While I'm not saying you have to interact with your mother on a daily basis, it might benefit you to seek individual counseling for better understanding of why she is like talking to a wall. Or why she does the things that she does. In that understanding, you might have more compassion for her limitations. Sorry, but after all, she is your mom.
cereta: Barbie as SuperSparkle (Barbie doubts your commitment to Sparkle)

[personal profile] cereta 2019-08-27 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, I have an additional request: can we please stop using "blood" and other biological terms as shorthand for "family of origin"? I have a Mom. She is my legal mother, and has been for all of my remembered life. She raised me from the time I was six weeks old. She is not related to me, or my daughter, by DNA, but she is distinctly different in my life from the "found family" honorary grandma daughter has where we live. Not better or worse, but different, and it really frustrates me in letters like this that I have to take like two sentences to explain who she is because my blood-related biological mother was someone else entirely.
minoanmiss: Minoan style drawing of the constellation Orion. (Orion)

[personal profile] minoanmiss 2019-08-27 02:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes indeed. I'm not certain if LW unknowingly furthered the exact attitude she's criticizing or if she means her opening lines as a criticism of this bad phrasing as well. But either way you are totally right.
cereta: Me as drawn by my FIL (Default)

[personal profile] cereta 2019-08-27 03:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I suspect the former, just because the whole trope of "by blood" is really, really ingrained in in a LOT of cultures. And I get it. Heck, there are still peerages in England that can't be passed to adopted children; the notion that a child not related by blood could ever be "yours" in the same way as a biological child is still one people argue about. But particularly in the context of someone arguing against that kind of thinking, it makes me cringe a little.
dragoness_e: (Echo Bazaar)

[personal profile] dragoness_e 2019-08-28 02:21 am (UTC)(link)
Someone should suggest to Parliament or the next monarch of England that they should fix that. Laws are changeable. By contrast, in ancient Babylon, an adopted child was the same, legally and for inheritance purposes, as a biological child. (Except that adoptions could be revoked if the adoptee violated the terms of their adoption--e.g, the case of a slave freed and adopted as heir on the condition that they care for the adoptive parent in his old age, which responsibility the adopted slave blew off. As did the old man's biological children. I wonder if the old man was one of those toxic parents...).
cereta: Holtlzmann from Ghostbusters (blond woman with wacky goggleson her head) looking pensive (Holtzmann)

[personal profile] cereta 2019-08-28 12:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I honestly have no idea how peerages work. I only noted this when reading about Christopher Guest, whose children with Jamie Lee Curtis cannot inherit his title because they're adopted (apparently, they can use courtesy titles). Then again, he only has the title because his older brother was born before his parents were married, so it's all kinds of dated.