I came from a big family - three siblings, lots of cousins. But I have virtually no one outside of the family I have created here in Ohio.
Deep rifts tore apart my paternal family years ago. Determined that "the cycle ends with me," I cut them off to raise my daughter in an emotionally healthy life. That left me with my elderly grandfather. My dear grandmother died two days before John, breaking my heart and leaving me in a deep pool of grief.
My maternal family is there, but for various reasons I see them only a few times a year.
That means that so many of my childhood realities are lost to my children. No family dinners on actual holidays. No birthday parties with a special bakery cake at the supper table at the farmhouse. No catching fireflies with their cousins at twilight. No sleeping under a quilt at grandma's house. No family vacations at the beach.
The decision to leave behind your family - everything you loved about them and your life and your past - even when they've hurt you, even when you know the will hurt you again, even when you're sure they will hurt your children - is honestly the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I have never had to harden my heart and turn my back on anything so completely before. The act of emotionally "walking away" was so devastating to me.
How excited I was to get married and join up with a new brood! Invested grandparents for my children, a mother-in-law turned best friend for me. Barbecue's at our house. Family vacations. Sunday dinners. But that wasn't the reality. It couldn't be. It won't be. I've gone to therapy to try to figure out how to make some of these things work, how to swim through the emotional waters and save us all from each other.
It didn't work.
But somewhere in the middle of trying to fix broken bridges with my husband's family, something unexpected happened - my heart came back to my family, in the smallest of ways.
Every single time I go back to Pennsylvania, my grandfather asks if we can have a family dinner. I always say no. But my heart is conflicted now because the very last time I saw my grandmother, she asked for a family dinner and (being the travel agent for guilt trips) convinced me to sit through the most awkward meal of my life with them.
But I know how much that meal - all of us sitting together in the same room in silence, ignoring each other - meant to her at the very end of her life, and I don't regret it.
So the last time my Pap asked about a dinner, I said yes. We went to the farm in January and opened presents with my brother and his family, my pap and my dad, and we all had dinner together. Not the easiest meal, admittedly, but we made it work. I had a short but easy conversation with my sister-in-law. It was good.
A week later, I received a Facebook message from her. Could we come for her baby's first birthday party? I was stunned. This was very generous of her to do for us. For me.
So with some hope I look forward to having a family again. Maybe not the family I always dreamed I would have, but people. People you call when you have happy news, sad news, or when you need help. People to love my children as much as I do.
I know that I am entering my hard time of year - February through March - a time when my tears are automatic. When I have to watch what I read and what I say and how much I sleep and eat. This time - these six weeks - are fraught with all the unhealthy things my heart and my mind can do to my body and soul. The easy thing to do is to fall into it, stop eating, start sleeping all the time and disconnect from everything around me. But every time I disconnect, it's hard to re-establish.
I'm hopeful this year will be a turning point for me in so many ways.
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