Thank you for waking me up this morning and allowing me to see another beautiful day. I ask that you guide me with your firm hand, and protect me with your armor. I ask that you fill me with your lyght and drive out the darkness within me. Allow me to lead the way for those who seek truth. I ask that you give me the experience to gain understanding. Allow me the ability to create the life I desire. Shower me with your love... Wash away my sins, my pains, my doubts, my insecurities and impurities.Fill me with your wisdom.
I will exercise my faith, hold my head high and maintain my focus. I will keep my heart open to receive all that you pour into me. I will exercise discipline to assure that I am well balanced.
Life is abundant. LOVE is the LAW. Lyght travelz! [A-M-N]!
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.