Being a Mother | Toxic Family Members | African Bohème | Sustainable Family Travel Blog

In the Caribbean toxic family members are a rite of passage. Family functions are filled with innuendo and compliments hidden deep within disdain.Children are raised to believe this way of being was the norm, that their elders know best and that toxic family members have thier best interest at heart. This

My entire childhood was split between two houses three blocks apart. Every year around holiday time my mom would dress us up and we’d make the trek to the first house, nothing was in order nothing was planned but it was full of love. My mother filled her lungs with laughter and smiled till her cheeks hurt. She sang my praises and loved on her nieces and nephews, embraced her sister and she was loved.

Then every year without fail she called out for us to get our coats and walk over to the other house. In two blocks I watched a mountain of a woman pack her light behind so many walls braving herself for the battlefield before her. In house 2 everything had a rhythm and she always just missed the beat. She was berated for sound of her laughter and shamed for being studious and not a homemaker. In an attempt to deflect and fit in, I often became the butt of all her jokes. My mighty embarrassingly bashful mother became a shadow of her former self and struggled aimlessly to fit herself into a too small box.

Years later she’d get sick and fight with cancer, and move into the first house filled with love, characters from the second holiday house would drift in and out in the night. My saddness of watching my hero wither and recalling how she’d spent so much of her life craving the toxic love of her family created the perfect storm for my grief. I questioned everything, recounting past Christmas’ and demanding answers for why they’d been so determined to rob my mother of her joy. I begged for a break in the toxicity a coming to terms with the way past and a healing of generational wounds. I demanded better of my toxic family members.

One of the ways toxic family members mask thier toxicity is with the phrase like “in the end the only thing you’ve got is family” a constant reminder that despite their hurtful actions they will be there for you no matter what. The day before she passed, fifty years after my mother took her first breath, twenty one years after she became a mother the main characters from House Two, the ones that shared my blood told me that once she was gone they’d never speak to me again. The day my mother died my little sister and I became orphans in the truest sense of the word.

This year I unpacked a gift my mom never let herself truly enjoy, the gift of distinction. The distinction between “family” and “relative” .

I grew up watching my mother dance for the love of people that never got around to loving her. Even in sickness/death they never mustered the love. All the while she built a family in House One, she shared in all the joys and sadnesses of its inhabitants and they loved her as she was. A decade later and I’ve never heard a relative utter a joyful memory of the woman whose smile lit up dark places. My family on the other hand talk about her like she’s just in the next room.

Being a mother myself I’ve learned to thrive in a life free of toxic family members. Don’t waste your magic on your relatives, your kids are watching, and learning how to love. My story is not unique, stop shrinking yourself for relatives that will never love you (or your children) right. Family is what you make it. So find one that fills you full of love, so much so that your cup runs over and pours into your babies.

Children deserve to know they are loved for who they are. How will they learn that if we spend our whole lives living small for the love of relatives.