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Silent Nights
Navigating the holidays after narcissistic abuse
The holiday season creeps in once again, bringing with it as it always does a complex jumble of emotions. For too many of us, the word “family” is not a simple, warm concept, but an emotional landmine riddled with trauma, memories that haunt us and unresolved pain.
For those of us who have navigated extricating ourselves out of dysfunctional family systems, the holiday season can be less a time of celebration and more just another thing we have to survive.
There’s a particular devastation in being erased by those who are supposed to love you unconditionally. It takes a special kind of warped individual to completely disown your child, discard them for dead, and then pose for smiling selfies with your remaining children…as if your oldest child (who just so happens to be gay) never even existed. This is psychological violence.
As the years have gone by, perspective has become both a shield and a scalpel. It was so liberating when the lightbulb moment finally dawned on me that none of what transpired was actually about me. My being LGBT was just the truth serum that revealed my ex-family’s…
