The last few years my birthday and the lead up has been really hard and its looking the same way again this year. Im currently estranged from my parents, by my choice, and to great benefit to my own mental health. but birthdays always remind me of what i have chosen to do, and the fact that my family is still there and still love me and they still reach out to me on my birthday. I use my new boundary skills to gently/strongly deflect their communication and not continue the interaction beyond the polite niceties.

Its just hard.

It reminds me what i have chosen to do. It reminds me how they feel about it, that they dont get it and cant understand why im not cheerfully back in their fold, making their family whole again, because thats what they want. Especially for a birthday. No matter about my own mental health, they want their 'perfect' family back. Birthdays reminds me of the gaping crater i have left in their lives. Birthdays mean members of my extended family reach out to me, believing everything is ok, or desperately wondering why it is not.

This year i am approaching the coming days knowing that i have survived these before. I have more skills and more solidity in my sense of self than ever before. I have a plan to reduce the impact of the flood of cheery birthday text messages, and a new mindset to try to build of what a birthday means to me now.

Birthdays are now an opportunity to celebrate life with people i want to live it with. Birthdays are now about simple. Birthdays are about sharing in joy, equally as humans together.

Please dont wish me happy birthday! Not this year. Maybe another year.

#MentalHealth #familyisnotalwayseverything
#individuation