i couldn’t help but notice that whenever i am out shopping, especially in home decor stores, there are these little plaques everywhere talking about what family is or the importance of family.  here are a few quotes i have seen on said plaques (and all over pinterest):

 

“family – where life begins and love never ends no matter what”

“your family is the best team you could ever have.”

“family – a little bit of crazy, a little bit of loud, a whole lot of love.”

“family is a gift that lasts forever.”

“the family is god’s greatest masterpiece.”

 

these sayings plastered over plaques have always rubbed me the wrong way.  i could never quite pinpoint why.  i knew there was something that just didn’t seem authentic to me about these quotes.  i wondered who came up with these sayings and more importantly, what kind of picture perfect family had they come from for this to be their view of family.  then yesterday, anthony (one of my dear friends) posted this quote about family.  and instead of the focus being all about family through rose colored lenses, it was about all of the things family does not mean.

 

 

“family does not mean: keeping secrets, walking on eggshells, lying about who i am to keep the peace, pretending others are healthy when they are not, tip toeing around the truth, attending holidays that derail my healing process, defending poor choices, engaging in toxic behavior, remaining loyal to old patterns that no longer align with my growth, assuming care taking responsibilities that are not mine to carry.”

 

when i reposted this, the number of people that slid into my dms on instagram was in the double digits – partly because it hit home for so many of them but partly because this is the shit not enough people seem to address.

 

if i think about my own family, at one point or another, every single example of what family does not mean has been done.  the older i get and the more i work on myself, the more that those things become unbearable for me.  and when i say that, i don’t just mean in my relationships with them but in their relationships with me.

 

there were a few that really jumped out at me for my own family:

1. walking on eggshells – we all have that one family member that is a ticking time bomb and as a result, so many of us walk around on eggshells in an effort to not upset them or derail their day, even if that means ignoring our own feelings or emotions.  this is something i no longer do and the outcome has been interesting to say the least.
2. remaining loyal to old patterns that no longer align with my growth – just because something has always been done a certain way does not mean it is the right way to go about things.  a lot of family trauma is generational – maybe it was standard for your grandmother to call your father out of his name and now he thinks nothing of calling you and your siblings out of your name.  that is not okay.  what is okay is vocalizing that that shit no longer works for you.
3. assuming care taking responsibilities that are not mine to carry – i think this is common for  a lot of first born children but we end up being care takers and mediators for the family.  but here’s the thing – if i wanted to consistently take care of something or someone, i would adopt a dog or birth a child.  i have not done either because i am not in a space in my life where i want to do more than take care of me, especially when having a full time career that is centered around helping others.  i used to feel guilty about not wanting to carry other people’s responsibilities – it has been incredibly freeing to reframe said thinking.
4. pretending others are healthy when they are not – if you guys know me, you know i would literally take a bullet for my little big brother, pooh bear.  last spring, before he was leaving to return to college, he had a heart to heart with me about my weight.  i have always been a big girl – even when doing sports and dance at an outside studio in high school, i cannot recall ever shopping in a section not suited for plus sized girls.  now, my brother plays football at his college and knows it is literally his job to stay fit (as they are paying for his education).  while he knows i do not eat like trash (fast food is infrequent, i stopped drinking sugary coffee drinks daily and eat red meat only 1-2 times per week), he knew my lifestyle was sedentary and that i was drinking alcohol on more just than the weekends.  he told me that he wanted me to lose weight because he wanted us to grow old together and see each other have kids and grandkids.  i nearly cried when he left my apartment – not because he told me about myself but because he was coming from a place of both fear and love.  his fear was that i would die early and miss out on some amazing memories.  he loves me so much that he built up the courage to tell me.  in late june of last year, i started tracking everything i consumed, especially alcohol consumption in addition to tracking physical activity.  i am still a big girl but feel better and sleep more soundly now that 50+ pounds are gone.  i plan on sitting down this june at the year mark to review this past year and figure out what to modify to try and match the same amount lost during year one.  pooh bear holding me accountable is what family should be about.

 

did any of the pieces of what family does not mean strike a chord with you?  if so, what were they?

 

xoxo,

k. tap

 

 

 

 

 

may is not a month i typically enjoy.  in recent years, it also is not a month that i look forward to.  in fact, i now dread the month of may.

 

over the four years i was in grad school (2013-2017) and working in the car business, may was absolutely slammed.  tons of exams, papers, projects and work at the dealership was insane, especially with memorial day weekend being one of the highest volume weekends of the entire calendar year.  i knew before may arrived that it would be far from easy and would require an unreal amount of work.  sleep would be limited and iced coffees would be exponentially increased.  as if this time was not crazy enough, i received a call while at work at the dealership on may 27th of 2016 that would change the lives of many.

 

i was working in my office at honda when my phone rang.  i have very few unscheduled calls, this applied even more while i was in grad school.  it was a call to tell me that one of my closest friends, gracelyn, had lost her dad unexpectedly. i was in disbelief and simply wanted to figure out how i could show my support even if we were living on opposite ends of the state.  while it is not easy to lose a loved one (regardless of the circumstances), i think it is even more difficult if there were no warning signs.  gracelyn had no idea that when she saw her dad the previous weekend for her brother’s wedding that that would be the last time she would be able to see her dad in the flesh.  how does one prepare for something that hits you like a ton of bricks?

 

a little less than a year later, in early may, my grandmother, connie, or grammy as i called her, passed.  while she had cancer, just a couple of weeks before, there were talks of discharging her.  so even though when someone has cancer, the normal thing to do is to start to prepare, with talks of discharge, that is not the route i took.  flying home on may 7th of 2017 and getting to the hospital less than half an hour after her passing is the most devastating thing i have ever experienced.  i do not know that there are words for it.

 

just a couple of months ago, a dear friend of mine, tierra, lost her mother.  similarly to my grandmother, it was also to cancer.  just like with my grammy, tierra’s mom was one of her best friends – they had the luxury of truly experiencing one another as adults and getting to know and love all pieces of one another, flaws and all.  while it may be standard to have to bury a parent or a grandparent, the grief that is endured is not lessened.

 

while all three of us were supported by some friends and family, all three of us also encountered a great deal of people who tried to rush us through our grief process.  whether it was by telling us this was normal + the cycle of life, dismissing our feelings all together or telling us some generic one liner, we all endured more pain from people we thought would be supporting us.

 

when i came across this quote, i thought about how it was applicable to so many parts of life, and especially to grief:

 

 

“psa:  please don’t tell people to heal from something you’ve never been through.”

 

i do not know who said this but they deserve all the fucking recognition in the world.

 

there were so many people who had never lost a parent who were telling gracelyn how she should be grieving.  rather than letting that take over in the worst possible way, instead, she started two amazing projects – luna peak is a company founded with her aunt based around cancer survival and snapshots of life after loss is all about grief and loss over time whether it be one month or 10 years; it could be a friend, a spouse, a child or a sibling – all types of grief and loss are covered.  all types of grief are covered because all types of grief are significant.  that is something that is not said enough and needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

 

with the loss of grammy, it was clear that plenty of people in my orbit did not get it.  why was i taking the loss of a grandparent so hard?   grammy was not someone i saw just on holidays or had a surface level relationship with.  for six years of my childhood, i lived with her.  my grandmother was at every major event at my school.  my grandmother directed the gospel choir i sang in as a child.  my grandmother was the first person i called in a state of crisis.  my grandmother went from being my grandmother to one of my best friends as i entered adulthood.  no topic was off limits – work, school, family, friends, sex – you name it, she could speak on it.  i found it (and still find it) incredibly frustrating when people would try and tell me how to heal.  how could they when they were comparing it to surface level relationships with their own grandparents?  i had to resist yelling not to speak on shit they could not relate to.

 

most recently, watching tierra take a risk to be vulnerable about her grief process with her mom has been both sickening and beautiful.  it has been sickening to see people who are close to her try to dictate what grief around her mother should look like.  it has been beautiful to see other people let her be raw and even more beautiful to see her blossom and be unapologetic when expressing her grief.  some people trying to dictate what this should look like still have their mothers here.  i cannot even fathom what it will be like if/when i lose my mom but i imagine myself being a fucking wreck.  watching tierra still do day to day things, especially being a registered nurse (where her job is taking care of people every single day) is mind blowing.  i am constantly in awe of her strength.  similar to gracelyn, they are both still finding out ways to really honor their parents in their deaths.

 

something all three of us share is that we do not want to be told how to deal with our grief, especially by people who have never experienced loss to this degree.  while this might be an extreme case, i want you to ask yourself if you have ever asked someone to heal from something you have never been through?

 

or better yet, have you ever been asked to heal by a person who has not experienced the same thing?

 

i would love to hear about it below.

 

xoxo,

k.tap

 

 

if you have a single social media account, i am sure you have been inundated with messages about “self-care” – many of the people in my friend group, myself included, talk about this concept frequently.

 

when i looked up the definition of self-care, it was described as “any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health.  although it is a simple concept in theory, it is something we very often overlook.  good self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety.”  common forms of self-care include getting a good amount of sleep, exercising or spending time doing something relaxing – my favorite form of relaxation is taking a candlelit bath with a good playlist.  self-care is thought to be something that is healing, or at least that is how i frequently hear it pitched in mainstream media.  there seems to be a missing piece.

 

elizabeth (or biz, as i call her), an awesome mama bear of two who seems to constantly post things that speak to my soul shared this earlier this year.  i cannot count how many times i have reread it.

 

 

“be brave enough to heal yourself even when it hurts.” -bianca sparacino

 

i do not say this just as a therapist, i say it as a person who is constantly working on self-improvement:  self-care is not just about great rem cycles, yoga and bubble baths, self-care is also truly doing the work necessary in order to heal.  that is the shit i don’t see discussed enough.  when i think of the most significant self-care, it has been based around having difficult conversations with people i love, setting crucial boundaries and spending time working with a therapist, even when it took every ounce of strength i had in me.

 

something i tell each of my clients during our first session is this: before we go any further, i want you to know that before things get better, frequently, they have to get worse.  we are going to dig deep and that may unearth some things you thought were resolved.  i just want to be transparent about that before we move forward.  are you open to doing the work?  and then i let them decide.

 

i let them decide if they are brave enough to heal themselves, even when it hurts.

 

now, anyone that knows me will tell you that my dream home has an insane tub in the master bath because that is one of my favorite ways to decompress.  as much as i love bubble baths, they do not take the place of the devastatingly beautiful work i have done in order to truly heal.  while a bubble bath might transport me to a different place for the hour i spend in the tub, if i am not doing the work to truly address the problems that are present, they will be waiting there for me the second i step out of the tub.  if that is the case, am i really taking care of myself?

 

true healing often involves true discomfort.  it might even hurt.  but trust me, it hurts so good.

 

are you brave enough to heal yourself even when it hurts?  i would love to hear about it.

 

xoxo,

k. tap

2019 has been quite the whirlwind.  one of the themes has definitely been stepping outside of my comfort zone.  whether it is in the form of creative expression like i get to regularly do with this blog or in the form of a difficult conversation (followed by intense boundary setting) with a loved one, this year has been full of conflict.

 

while the bulk of my close friends and family members who knew i was going to start writing publicly were supportive of my blog, there were a couple people who just couldn’t seem to get on board.  it was almost as though their own lack of satisfaction with their lives was hindering them from being able to be happy or supportive of me.  while i hate to admit it, for a moment, i considered not starting to blog at the beginning of this year.  then, when i sat back and truly pondered why, i realized  it because i was trying to avoid a potential conflict with someone close to me.  i was avoiding conflict no matter the cost.

 

no family is perfect and mine is no exception.  i talked about an incident with a family member back on my birthday in my post about my moves being misunderstood by people not meant to be on my journey.  initially, it was rough cutting off someone who has been in my life for as long as i could remember but i also knew it was necessary.  i knew i could no longer be involved with someone for the sake of not creating conflict within my family.  i had done it for years and i had reached a breaking point.  the second half of february and march felt incredibly long.  sometimes, especially at the beginning, it was hard to even get moving in the morning.  but as time went on, it became obvious that those feelings were not my own – they were feelings i was carrying for others.  i decided to move on with my life because that was (and is) what i deserved.  at the end of march, that same family member and i sat down, had an intense discussion and really unearthed some baggage.  there was accountability taken for many hurtful actions and the realization that therapy might be necessary for the kind of work that needs to be done.  i have never felt more at peace leaving a difficult dialogue.

 

both scenarios made me think about this quote:

 

 

“if you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war within yourself.” -louise thompson

 

for years, i had avoided conflict in small or big ways.  but here’s the thing – the only person who was suffering was me.  i sometimes felt like i was going crazy.  that is just not something i am willing to do anymore.  my inner peace is invaluable.  yours is, too.

 

what conflicts have/are you avoiding to keep the peace?  has it been worth it?

 

xoxo,

k. tap

being that i have only ever attended religiously affiliated schools and now work at one (whether baptist, episcopalian, catholic or jesuit), the concept of morality is one that comes up often.

 

a question i have been getting frequently from many of my teens while in session is about by own view on religion and whether or not i would define myself as a religious.  while i do not consider myself to be religious, i often answer that i believe in the goodness of a person.  that is what truly matters to me.  more than what higher power someone believes in, i am interested in who they are at their core.

 

a few weeks ago, i was scrolling through the gram and stumbled across this quote:

 

 

goodness is about character – integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like.  more than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.  -dennis prager

 

while i had never articulated it this well myself, this definition about the goodness of character is exactly what i had been referring to.

 

after going through a graduate program for counseling psychology, something that was incredibly evident was the importance of protecting my mental and emotional health at all costs.  one of the ways i have done this is by surrounding myself with truly good people who embody qualities such as integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, etc.  in being around people with these qualities, it strengthens these qualities i already possess.

 

i want to be around people who treat other people with all of these things in mind.

 

i choose to be around people who prioritize these things.

 

with me kicking off my fifth coachella weekend, i realized that every single person i am traveling with embodies this goodness.  i am feeling incredibly grateful.

 

are you surrounding yourself with truly good people?

 

xoxo,

k. tap