I’ve been listening a lot lately to some of the works and essays of Carl Jung. Recently, I was listening to his thoughts on people who choose to cut off family for the betterment of their health, and because this is something that happened to me, I found it resonated well. For those of you who’ve read some of my earlier books on growing up with a narcissistic mother and emotional abuse, you may appreciate why this resonated with me.
If someone hasn’t worn the shoes of living stuck in a toxic environment and finally finding the courage to exit, they shouldn’t judge others. Jung says, “It is not weakness, but strength that helps us leave a toxic relationship.” Many choose to blame the person who exits a relationship without understanding the daily hell that person lives through being emotionally battered.
The fixer, the golden child, the blacksheep, whichever noun chosen, is a common target of the narcissistic mother. Family doesn’t always know us, we are who they need us to be, sometimes with no understanding of who we really are. Cutting out family is typically not impulsive, as Jung says, “It’s death by a thousand cuts.” After what can be a lifetime of hurt, after clarity strikes for the final time, I finally chose self and sanity. I love that Jung quotes this as, “Chosen bonds are stronger than biological accidents, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
Guilt operates on many levels – surface guilt, suffering in silence. And I can say that it stays quietly, despite the need for that separation. Staying in toxic situations doesn’t only hurt us, it carries down to next generation. Walking away is healing despite how it seems to outsiders. The world doesn’t understand self-preservation until our own is attacked. We are taught family comes first always. Society tell us to forgive and endure. But why should we stay in abuse when those who are supposed to protect us are our abusers?
Family estrangement is a choice to end a connection. It is pain that has reached the point of the last straw that fell, which finally invites the awakening. When you grow up mostly walking on eggshells, you learn young how to read a room, leaving us questionning why the people who are supposed to love us the most, hurt us most.
Some relationships will not move no matter what is done. After all the discussions, words of forgiveness, and many unfulfilled promises by the abuser, we learn we can’t change a sick person single handedly. We are not the fixers. It’s time to go. When the result is the same every time we try to make things better, the balance is off and the cycle repeats. But once we leave, the weight lifts, but don’t be fooled because the grief remains for what we no longer have – or sometimes, never had.
Judgments come. People who know nothing about emotional abuse preach how we only get one family, telling us we must go back. But what if you feel you aren’t part of or never felt like part of that family? Leaving is a painful choice, but less painful in the long run as we rebuild our lives and take care of ourselves.
Family isn’t always blood. Family are the people who stand by us through good times and bad. They offer their ears and compassion. But sometimes they don’t. Good relationships have love and care and concern. This goes for both – blood relationships and no blood relationship.Blacksheep often become happier and healthier when removing themselves from toxic environments and people. I know I surely did. There is no rule stating because we are blood we are condemned to taking abuse from someone for the rest of our life. The choice is ours, and ours alone. The heart and soul know when capacity has been reached from hurt. No other person can gauge that for us, and also has no right to judge.
Cutting contact isn’t necessarily about hating someone, it’s about self-preservation. Also, you can still love someone and not be in their presence. Sometimes we have to prune the family tree to either, stunt the growth of rot, or to give it a new life to grow stronger new branches.
It takes more strength to leave than stay. The estrangement road to healing can be a long road, but the healing price that overcomes us is worth the price of the journey. When you can look back on your life and see growth instead of continuing to minimize ourselves to fit in or appease, that’s peace.
The family curse ends when it’s cut off and when self-love begins, with the courage to walk away. I chose healing over pretense and hurt. Hurting people on purpose isn’t an accident, it’s a conscious decision. And blood or no blood, NOBODY should have to stick around it and endure – not a child, a spouse or even a stranger should have to put up with anybody’s verbal abuse – whether it’s from a parent or anyone else! So thank you Carl Jung for understanding this from the victim’s point of view instead of condemning.
Have you ever had to finally walk away from a toxic relationship or environment?
©DGKaye2026
DGKayewriter.com 
