Dirty Money

This is a particularly raw post for me to write. This topic, my family, is often one I stay away from. My family is not a safe space for me. After living with an overwhelming amount of deep rooted toxicity that was making me physically sick (I’ve had ulcerative colitis since I’m 11), I decided to mostly disengage from my family. It took ten years of therapy on this one topic, to feel that I wasn’t the biggest piece of garbage for doing so. The guilt was all consuming. I endured tons of insults, shame, and blame for being selfish. My departure was seen as massive rejection. To get me to stay was control. Wanting to protect myself from hurt, cruelty, and betrayal was viewed as the gravest offense someone in my family could commit. It was a large, mean, controlling clan that was infected with severe emotional dysfunction. Emotional abuse was administered like a test to prove one’s loyalty. One of my gastroenterologists first sent me to therapy. My third child was a year old, and my flare was so bad that I could barely hold him. I hadn’t been consistently healthy since before my diagnosis. I suffered two rounds of extreme hair loss and psoriasis, as side effects from the colitis. Colitis, like all forms of IBD, is a humiliating and merciless condition. I was a slave to it. Even a five minute car ride was petrifying, in case I had to use a bathroom. I have had accidents in front of my children. I once used one of my baby’s diapers while driving my girls to day camp, which was a 7 minute ride from my house. One of the messed up things in my family was that they loved illness. Suffering contained a warped sense of pride via suffering (a common drip down effect in Holocaust surviving families). So my physical illness, along with the rest of me, was extremely mishandled. Keeping a safe distance over the years has been essential to my overall health and well being. It was a painful yet necessary decision, for many reasons. I don’t believe that anyone should be made to feel like shit by family, just because there is a biological connection. Anyone who tells you otherwise is perpetuating a lie. The people in our lives are a big deal. They should provide us with joy, comfort, safety, trust, and support. Life is too short and too precious to be spent with people who mistreat you. Your body always knows the truth. It is a neutral messenger.  A lack of family boundaries sets the stage for massive boundary violations in other areas, especially within ourselves. How we treat ourselves on the deepest level, is a direct mirroring of what we were first taught through our earliest relationships. It has taken me years to understand this, to unlearn and relearn. I write about boundaries so much because I’m still kind of fascinated by them. They are still new. Each time I set one, I heal. Each healing leads me down the path to a life that is my very own, a life I am proud of and deserve.

There is a series currently on Netflix called Dirty Money, in which there is an episode about my public family. I don’t watch much TV. In March, one of my closest friends made me aware of this. She didn’t want me to hear about it in the wrong way, from the wrong source, or even worse, accidentally trip and fall over it while perusing Netflix. I was grateful she told me. My family is a source of shame for me, and I have no interest in revisiting these shameful, unpleasant topics that are resurrected in the media every so often. There are photos of me in this episode; a fact that I’m intensely uncomfortable with. I want no part of the disgusting stories the episode centers on, and I will do anything to protect myself and my children from being associated with this. Releasing myself from the shame of this inadvertent involvement is something I’m working on. I have no cause to feel ashamed of something I didn’t do, and it’s a heavy load I’d like to unpack at this point in time. I’m writing this because last night I had a conversation with a friend who had just watched it. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t tempted to watch it myself. I really and truly never considered watching it; that is the crux of this post. I explained that watching it would be a form of masochism. It wouldn’t serve me, it would be bad for my mental and emotional health, and it would lower my energetic vibration. I work so hard at taking good care of myself. I eat well, treat my body well, surround myself with good people, and engage in activities that feed my soul. Music, writing, nature, cooking, and service to others are some of the ways I’m good to myself. Eliminating harmful people, and exposure to certain things, are very much included in self care. I’m selective with what I read, what I watch, which social media I follow, and what music I listen to. For instance, I watched two episodes of the Jeffrey Epstein series. I felt sick and so I stopped. It was simply information I do not need. It made me nauseous because it was indeed mental pollution. We have the right and the ability to filter and adjust everything. I’d never drink contaminated water, so why would I watch a contaminated show? I understand the human curiosity to watch a show about one’s own family, but it would be a terrible betrayal of myself if I did. If I wanted to, fine, but I don’t. I love myself too much to be the cause of my own emotional nosedive. Learning to not follow every human impulse is a big part of self care too. Just because a thought or idea is there, it doesn’t mean we have to follow it. Setting this boundary was something only I could do, and it was an act of self love and self respect. It felt like the right decision. We always know when we are either honoring or dishonoring ourselves. No one gets it right all the time, and self care is a skill that takes practice. We can only learn what feels good after knowing what feels bad. As always, I remain grateful to whatever has taught me what feels good, however painful those lessons have been.
Protect yourself. It’s not only your right, it’s your job. If you can’t trust yourself then you’re connection to You suffers greatly. Be there for yourself in whatever way you need to be. Sending love to all beings struggling with this.