PSA : self-care *ISN’T* selfish! 💅 here’s a lil remind to all my fellow workaholics, overworked babes, and straight up just tired humans!!!! don’t forget to enjoy this long weekend, make sure to spend some time to care for your mind + body + souuuul! xx insta
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.
People don’t talk to their children about what sexual abuse is because they worry it’s too much for them.
You know what’s worse? That child experiencing that abuse and having NO idea that it’s wrong or what’s happening.
I’d rather have that conversation with my child and this is why awareness is so important.
What I went through, I had no idea what was happening. It felt wrong and he made me feel it was my fault and I would lose my parent’s love if I told them.
I wish I’d known.
You know. I baby sat this kid. He was four. He was undressing for his pajamas and needed help with the buttons on his shirt.
He told me to close my eyes.
Because his mother had told him that it wasn’t okay for people to see him with his clothes off.
And honestly. It made me so happy? I was just helping a kid, but the fact that his mom had that talk and made sure he understood was so great.
