Amala Ekpunobi

And these relationships are not being mended and not set on a better course because of these no contact situations.

In fact, it just becomes something that I feel like people are using as yet another guidepost to continue telling their stories of trauma, anxiety, depression, et cetera.

and here's the thing that maybe a lot of people don't want to hear family is family and you you do not get to pick them and outside of super abusive instances where things are truly truly truly to your detriment

You shouldn't pick them and you shouldn't probably go no contact with them.

And I think a lot of people choose to go no contact.

And then years later, they realize they do want mom.

They do want dad.

And maybe if they could have built mom or dad in a lab, they would have built a completely different person.

But you got the mom that you got and you got the dad that you got.

And that is what you're dealing with.

And I have to point out that a lot of these left-leaning, more liberal, more therapized spaces where we're having this discussion are often pushing this narrative of chosen family.

That you didn't choose your family, now you get to go out as an adult and you get to choose who your family is and that's friends and peers that you gather and you sort of put in the place of mom and dad or brother or sister or anybody who's disappointed you and set you on the wrong track, you believe.

There is an element of that in life.

Yeah, these are people that you get to go out as an adult and truly choose to be in the presence of and you truly choose to have in your life and to spend quality time with and to build deep connections with.

But that doesn't mean that they're a fit replacement for your actual family, even if your family's dysfunctional.

Now, regardless of what happened in her mother's relationship with her and all that back and forth, she found herself after years of having peace without her mother wanting to go back to her mother and she should ask herself why.

Because some piece of her knows her mother only as her mother has been and not for what her mother could be.

And she chose to go back to that mother.

She chose to reach out and she chose to email knowing very well that in the last few years, her mother could have not changed at all.

So why did that happen?