being villainized by toxic family members 💔

how to transcend expectations and reclaim your narrative.

Before you show yourself to the world, you live in a bubble of someone else’s creation. Two people decided (or not) to get together and you became a product of a moment in time. You begin to move through the world through someone else’s eyes and belief systems because you don’t know any different. You trust your village because you have nothing beside your own intuition guiding you, and it’s that same village that makes you question your inner compass.

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Toxic family members come with their own bag of canvases and paint a picture of who they want you to be before you’re born—whether it’s your gender, name, profession, or personality. They see you how they want to see you instead of giving you enough space to figure it out yourself. Some parents do everything in their power to protect you from turning out like someone that hurt them..and karmically you become just that. You find yourself becoming a mistake or a lesson, instead of a human being that has an innate desire to explore the world.

being a mirror to shame 🪞

If you come from a big family that celebrated holidays together, you had to deal with even more projections. It seemed like you were always being picked apart because adults saw you for who you were likely to turn out to be, not for who you are in that moment. As a result, you constantly are pushing up against expectations that aren’t yours to bear. This is a breeding ground for self-doubt, shame spirals, and guilt trips.

Growing up is not just about finding yourself, but locating yourself within the world. So what do you do when the place you’re supposed to call home, shuns you for being yourself? You feel misunderstood, lost, and isolated.

You have to recognize that their behavior toward you is their own shame rising to the surface in the form of snakes, to not attack you, but show them the skin they need to shed to be fully actualized. Unfortunately, most don’t recognize them. They look at you and instead see what they could be, or are too afraid to be. You are their reflection and they hate to look in the mirror.

Lady Bird (2017)