Notes from the Becoming: The Loneliness No One Talks About When You Set Boundaries with Family

On breaking generational patterns and choosing yourself anyway.

I woke up the other day feeling just a little off. Being perimenopausal will do that to you, but this felt different. My heart hurt. Not in the physical, I need to seek medical attention way, but in the emotional way. The soul way.

The heart is the largest bundle of nerves in our body, which means we can feel a lot, and that includes heartbreak. You’ve heard the saying, that’s heartbreaking.

I am missing someone in my life. An important someone, and while that sounds vague, the who is not relevant to what I’m sharing with you today, but the why is.

I grew up hearing stories of generations past. I craved them, and when I was old enough to be thoughtful, I would ask for them. I wanted to know from whom I was carved. Mostly, I was interested in stories of everyday life, adversity, fun, or adventure. Where did I fit into the lot?

As I’ve aged and retrospective wisdom has found its way to me, I have often wondered how much generational trauma I have been given. I realize, now, that I’ve been mining through the answers about my ancestors to find out.

This may sound strange to you, and something I’ve never admitted out loud, but I’ve known from a young age that I was meant to be different. For a long time, I didn’t know what that meant. It was just a knowing. In my young mind, I thought it might be a famous person or someone who looked different in some way. I now know what it really means: I’m a generational pattern shifter.

If you’re asking yourself what I’m talking about, do a little internet search on healing generational trauma, and you’ll soon see what I mean. I’m choosing to go against the flow…of my family. That’s about as challenging as it sounds.

What does that look like? A good question, and one I’m still figuring out, but it means stepping into my own wild and making my own rules. Undoing all the patterns of behavior and trauma that my grandparents, parents, and I have endured and choosing something different. While that might not sound so bad, fun, maybe, think of it this way: I am choosing to show up and behave in a way that is good for me, but many in my family don’t like. Boundaries. It’s about setting boundaries, and there is a lot of resistance.

What happens when you set boundaries and stick with them?

They will push back. Hard. They will tell you that you’ve been poisoned. Shame you for not visiting more often. Make fun of the person you are becoming. Why? Because you forging ahead is holding up a mirror, and they don’t like what they see. And it’s easier to blame you for the discomfort than to actually look hard in the mirror and do the real work.

No one tells you that when you choose to break free from generational trauma, it can be lonely. The people you love flail around, try to enforce control, and then eventually cut you loose, explaining to others that it’s your fault for the distance. You’ve hurt them. You’ve done something wrong. But you keep going because the wild version of yourself you are choosing to live feels so much better than the hurt version you’re stuffing yourself into. It’s why you wake up some days feeling heartbroken.

No one tells you it’s lonely.

But that really isn’t the end. I look around my beautiful life and realize what I’ve been doing with my time. While the family work is lonely as I choose to separate from my first herd, I am not, in fact, alone. I’ve simply built a new herd. My partner, my children, and the friends who are so close to me that they are considered family. I’ve been building a community of connection that lifts me up. Sees me for who I am, sits with me when my heart hurts, and then gently tells me to keep going. Keep shining my light.

Maybe those distanced will see the light and circle back, and maybe they won’t. But that isn’t within my control. All I know is that energy matches energy, and I want the people surrounding me to match the light of my wild self. Why be held back by anyone? That doesn’t seem to be the point of our existence, and certainly not what I want to model for the humans I am raising.

If you find yourself in a place contemplating the same thing, please know I support you. I’m here for you. And you’ve got this.

May your days be forever wild.

Abby