Toxic Family Doesn't Deserve You

In this social climate, most people likely have a toxic family member or two. Can family be too toxic to hold onto? Or should we just forgive and forget? Here's what I did.

There is no obligation to maintain relationships with toxic family members. None.

I have many family members who do not care to talk to me because of my politics, but it never made me distance myself from them (though they distanced from me) because I love them.

I do however have an aunt who went too far too many times with the amount of bizarre, eventually leading to downright demonic, behaviors that go against my moral values.

I always thought her relationship with her son and his friends was strange, but I didn’t spend much time around them all to really form a strong opinion about it. However, her kid turned out very odd, rude, and codependent.

When he graduated from high school, she wanted me to validate her decision to join he and his pals for grad night. I couldn’t do that. I told her it was weird and that the boys should be there being boys without her. She didn’t want to talk to me or my parents (who shared my opinion) for months.

The line was crossed when my aunt went on her Christian pastor cousin's FB page, on a Scripture quote post, and invited her friends to comment vitriolic claims and statements.

When I saw her comment in my feed, "I ate fetus sandwiches for lunch," I knew I needed to chop that branch off my family tree.

Her friends said even worse things as she laughed and encouraged the heckling. My cousin was incredible and didn’t say much aside from quoting Scripture, to their horror.

I haven’t talked to her since then, and I didn’t send her a message to let her know I was done with her—I just unfriended her.

The thing about these people, is that they’re narcissists. If you don’t notify them of your departure from their lives, they won’t notice or contact you because they don’t actively maintain relationships with people they cannot leech from.

There’s no need to make a scene—negative attention is still attention, and they will relish in it. Just wash your hands of them and keep on doing your thing.

You can forgive them without engaging in conversation or reconnecting. Forgiveness is in your heart.

Forgiveness, as defined in the dictionary, is when you “stop being angry with them [someone who has done something bad or wrong] and no longer want to punish them.”

I don’t consider it a punishment to be distancing myself from someone who only brings drama and negativity into my life and my family's lives. Technically, I am not even ignoring her because she has zero interest in reaching out to me.

You may or may not find it in your heart to forgive your toxic family member.

I do not hate her or wish any ill will upon my aunt, and though she disgusts me, I do love her deep down whether I want to or not. I have granted her forgiveness for many things, but there’s one unbelievable thing she did that I don’t feel comfortable discussing publicly, that I have an incredibly difficult time finding forgiveness for.

God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America.