An Ode to The Girl Inside: You Can Choose Your Own Family

Your up-bringing doesn’t define you.

“It is a well known truth that a troubled Childhood can leave scars. Maybe you bottle them up through early adulthood, but eventually, the bruises have to rise to the surface”

Acceptance and denial:

When trauma coincides with your childhood, it can often cause damage well into your adult life. It’s taken me years, but I’ve almost reached a point of total acceptance. I’m not quite there, but at the very least it’s a step forward – a step up from denial.

Trauma is a delicate subject, and reopening a wound is never going to be easy. Its always going to yield emotional impact because at some point you would have lived it:

Abandoned when you were too young to understand. Too naive, too vulnerable. Hurt by the very people who were supposed to love you.

It feels like you’re expected to be ‘all grown up’, and to function as an adult when internally you’re still the embodiment of that wounded child. You become expectant for people to hurt you – assume that bad things will happen because it’s all you’ve ever known.

To taste what it’s like to be loved will only hurt even more when it ends

- your past is proof of that.

You live in fear that your relationships will reflect a painful similarity to the abandonment you endured at a more tender age. That feeling of ‘walking of eggshells’ that pertrudes with every step you take, even when you’re finally free and able to walk on solid ground.

A grown adult who could opt for a warm rug – lined with soft wool, but who instead ends up barefoot and alone, on a familiar pavement that leads to the high street of Trauma Town.

Your internalised pain makes it impossible to expect anything else. You’d rather live in fear of the inevitable than to experience ‘self-inflicted’ disappointment:

So you unwittingly seek out people who will hurt you – you simply don’t have the tools to resist the lure of painful familiarity. You repeat the cycle because it’s less scary than the unknown.

Trauma becomes your only voice of reason.

Why wouldn’t they leave? Assuming the worst feels like you’re protecting yourself from that crushing feeling of worthlessness — It knows no age or boundaries, and it will hurt with the intensity you felt back then. So you put your guard up – high.

…You’re your own caregiver now, you don’t have to give them the power to hurt you.

Past reflections:

In my experience denial persists for a long time prior to acceptance. I think anyone with an estranged family would agree that you don’t just wake up one day with the realisation that your family is fucked up. It can take years to cause this kind of damage.

Years of unmet needs and expectations- Of trying to earn their affection. Birthdays and Christmases that you wish were over before they’d begun – but still make their annual appearance and become highlights in your very own ‘trauma timeline’.

And then it happens – You stop trying. Not because you don’t care but because you do – It’s just not getting you anywhere. Your relatives may never truly love you because blood isn’t always thicker than water.

You can choose your own family:

Only by forming connections and fostering relationships outside of my biological family have I been able to preserve at least a fraction of my sanity. But over time you can find yourself again. The person you are at the core – without all the pain.

You owe it to yourself to seek out love. To devise your own family: Be that with a lover, a friendship, or even a family figure – find the ones who make you feel safe and secure. The ones with whom being yourself is totally enough.

You’ll know when you find it. Even when they are a million miles away or leading a completely different life, the connection is still there. You see something special in each other that draws you both in – You connect not out of principle, but genuine curiosity.

If nothing else that’s a recipe for love right there.

Have you ever met someone who you find compelling without being able to pinpoint why? Knowing instinctively that you want to get to know them – to discover what makes them tick.

…To know about their life experiences, even if their world feels completely diverse from your own.

There are billions of people on this planet. So much potential for love. For connection. For a family that finally feels like home.

Such connections are not any less valuable because they don’t happen to share the same genetics or belong to the same blood line. It’s a connection made without expectation. Its something you choose. You nurture a relationship because you want this person in your life, and they you.

“Tell them about that inner child who so desperately needed love. Let them see your strength – the person that you’ve become despite it all. Be proud of your resilience – that your hardships haven’t limited your kindness and ability to love others. Do this, and the right people will love you.”

Forming bonds:

There’s comfort in knowing that for some unknown reason a person who has entered your life from another family, can become a part of yours.

They let you in, not out of reluctancy or societal norms, but because of who you are.

And if your family of choice is unconventional it doesn’t make that love any less valid or real.

There’s much to be found in reaching out to others for the affection that you missed out on- it’s what you deserve. That genuine intrigue, that pull to connect:

What’s a blood bond in comparison to connections of the mind, body and soul?

I feel so lucky that I’ve found those people- luckier still that there are members of my ‘extended family’ that I’ve yet to meet. Those who witness the best and the worst of me – much worse, may I add, than my family has ever contended with – but they still love me nonetheless.

That’s when I realised that it wasn’t about me – it’s never been about me.

And if you’ve experienced this too,

It isn’t about you either.

Letting go:

Your past doesn’t define you and neither do the things that may have happened to you. If you’ve lost faith in love, know that it’s never absolute. You can and will be loved by those who choose to have you in their life.

You don’t have to settle for a role as a sister, or a daughter in a family that lacks substance.

The connections formed as part of your journey will be with those who strengthen, love, and support you in your future endeavours. And you will do the same for them – that’s the essence of a real family.

Your love doesn’t always have to be misplaced and the cause of pain.

And just in case you need to hear it – It’s perfectly okay to create your own family.

You are loved

You belong

And you’ll find yourself in those who love you even when they don’t have to.

Thank you for reading.