More mindful reads for anyone struggling with their family dynamics:

An Open Letter to Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families: We are F*cking Worthy.
12 Ways to Deal With A Toxic Family/Family Member.
Dear Daughter, I’m Sorry you’re so much Like Me.
~

Do you know what’s the saddest thing in the world?

To be born, to grow up, and to not know who you are. To not remember what excites you or what makes your heart full. To not understand how life happens. To not be able to see yourself as worthy nor deserving. To not be able to wake up every day with the gratitude for another amazing day to live.

We all wear in our DNA and in the skin of our fingertips the genes of the first people who were there with us as we started to have our first breath out in the world, far away from the isolated galaxy of the warm and safe womb.

We all carry our moms and dads with us as we grow up and move along and alone in our paths.

We carry the conditioning of our families and the society where we were growing up as kids deeply rooted in our psyche.

Sometimes it feels light and we find pride in certain qualities that we got from our parents, and other times, or most of the time, what we got from them becomes suffocating, isolating, and limiting to who we think we are and what we think we can achieve or be in this life.

We carry our parents in our way of eating, sometimes in the style of dressing up, in our beliefs about who we think we are, in our beliefs around sex, sexuality, and relationships.

Just observe yourself. You will get little hints and you will see traces of your mom or dad in your behavior, in your way of thinking and acting in the world.

Mom and dad will be, for most of us, the most important people in our lives. Because it does not matter what they did; they truly tried their best and all they knew at the time of rising us up.

If they did wrong or good, they did not know better. Period.

It took me three decades of my life to forgive my parents to truly feel compassion for them in my heart because they were people who suffered pain and all kinds of struggles and they taught me what they knew and what their parents taught them. They really tried to give us the best of life according to their level of awareness and perception.

But the sad thing is that most of our parents don’t know who we truly are. They put us in fixed boxes and expect us to act according to the compass found in that box. If that does not happen, they get dissatisfied or disappointed and family drama starts.

The thing is that we came from our parents, but none of us belongs to our parents. We are not their property. We don’t belong and don’t owe anything to anyone.

Most parents fail to accept this truth. The earlier they accept this, the better.

But when we face non-acceptance for whom we chose to be in the world, we can let our parents know that we are not them and we will never be, though we love them.

As an introspective person, I oftentimes find myself acting, thinking, or behaving in ways my parents did or in ways they taught me. When I catch myself in these moments, I stop and have a deep breath and remind myself, “You are not your parents, though you love them.”

My parents taught me the family life, the safe life, the poor life, and the simple life, and we had to struggle to have food or any material goods in our home.

I kept going in the same patterns on autopilot for the first three decades of my life.

But when I turned 31, I started to peel the layers. I am still in the middle of this process, because I’m realizing and understanding that the way I’m creating my life and the way that I find my life fulfilling at this point in time does not match with my parents’ desires and view of me.

But my deepest longing in my life has been to be me. Completely. Raw. Wild and free.

I can’t be my parents any longer. And I have a lot to undo on the past-conditioning level, but I’m creating little steps every day to focus on myself and discover who dwells within me, which turns out to be the opposite of what my parents hoped for me to be.

It would be my greatest regret in my last days of my life to follow my parents’ steps instead of my own steps, and hence, I’m committed to this journey of coming “home” to who I am at my core and to be that, no matter how difficult, how inappropriate, or how unacceptable it is for others.

I’m here to create a whole new reality with my being, so I can validate myself and claim myself as worthy and deserving of an amazing life—something my parents could never teach me, for they did not know how.

It is our responsibility as grown-up people to take the reins of our existence in our hands and create a different reality for ourselves, one that fits with who we are deep down.

So gather the courage and be the black sheep. You will enjoy life more that way.

Allow your parents to be whomever they chose to be and create you, for you. That’s the greatest investment in our lives—to become our whole, amazing, f*cking magical selves, sparkly in all our colors.