So, I just had a conversation with a close family member, and it dawned on me today that one of those generational cycles that a lot of families are stuck in, my family is in. It seems that no no knows how to fix it! Let’s talk about it.
So, the old saying of, “That’s just how granddaddy is.” “You know how your mama is.” “You know that’s your cousin, that’s your blood, you gotta love them regardless.” No, we don’t know. No, we don’t. See, because this is what I believe. I understand that that’s just how granddaddy is, and that’s fair. Granddaddy is 74 years old, he can do whatever you want to do, but that does not mean I have to accept whatever granddaddy does.
There are some people out there that have been talked crazy to, mistreated and abused by family members. “Well, you know that’s how your mama is.” Your mama has been verbally abusing you all your life, completely tearing apart your self-esteem and your confidence. And just because that is your mother, your family would encourage you to keep… “That’s your mama, just keep her around,” keep her around for what? We don’t get to pick our family. We get to pick our friends, we get to pick our business partners, we get to pick our romantic relationships, but we don’t get to pick our family.
Why is it that they are allowed to have free passes to treat us any kind of way? Because, “You know how they are” No, I don’t know how they are. And I don’t want to understand how they are. And I don’t want it to make sense of why they do the things that they do, because it hurts me. I am a firm believer that anything that hurts me has to be removed. Does not matter to me who is doing it. My kids ain’t safe. My mama, my daddy ain’t safe, my aunt’s, my uncle’s, my cousins, ain’t nobody’s safe. We need to become comfortable with excommunicating anyone because, at the end of the day, we do not treat anybody less than how we would want to be treated.
So if somebody is in your life saying something, doing something that negatively affects you, you may have to evaluate your relationship and the value of that relationship, and you may have to move accordingly. But that generational cycle of, “You know how granddaddy is,” no, granddaddy is going to be in that house by himself because he don’t know how to treat nobody. And I don’t have to accept that treatment. And nobody else should either.