Dear Nichole:

For some fortunate people I suppose a family is a lovely thing, an association that provides comfort and support, validation, where all treat each other with empathy, assertiveness and respect, no aggression. It is a place of safety. A safety that you can trust and never doubt, oh, how lovely that must be. I wouldn’t know, I had no such Family growing up.

For so many of us, a Family is a wish and a dream, an image we long for. We keep gravitating toward that image, keep wishing and hoping, but it is never there, it is never an actualized image.

We hold on to any moment when it feels right, a feeling of safety, trying to fix all the aggression, the invalidation, trying to explain, to please… working very hard to make that idea of a family into a reality. We invest and at the end of the day, we get a zero return on our investment.

You wrote: “In just 6 months I’ve lost so much and learned so much”- I suggest you lost so much in your very first year or years of your life, long ago. You lost so much before you had it. You are just awakening in the last six months to the loss of long ago, you are learning now.

If I was you, I would tell your younger brother: I love you too. Because you do love him. Leave it at that. Stop trying to fix it, to enlighten him with your belief that his girlfriend is trouble. Stop investing. Say I-love-you-too and avoid any deep conversations. Keep it superficial or not at all, that is up to you.

Focus on your life moving forward. Nothing is going to feel as good as how Family feels like, the idea of it, that is. That good, good feeling when imagining that which you never had, nothing can compare to that good feeling.

And so, unfortunately (because who doesn’t want to feel that good!), we have to be satisfied with a much lesser good feeling, here and there, as you heal, as you invest in what brings a greater return than  none. It feels better to live sensibly, to function better and better, to understand better, to no longer feel confused.

anita