HOW DO I FEEL?

In less than a week my debut novel will be released. When people find out that I am an author and that my book is coming out soon they are always really excited for me and of course ask if I am excited too.

I can honestly say that I am very excited.

But it wasn’t that long ago that excitement was not the word I would’ve used to describe my feelings toward the event.

I have felt many things on this journey towards publication.

It might surprise people to know that sadness is one of the emotions I had been feeling particularly leading up to publication day.

What a strange emotion to feel upon accomplishing such a monumental task. After all, so few people who want to be authors ever do actually finish a book let alone get it published.

So why the sadness?

I realized I would receive no congratulatory phone calls or messages from my family; that is the family I grew up with.

I, like so many in my generation it seems, am estranged from my family.

Unlike what you read about it in most editorials I did not choose to be estranged from my parents, aunts and uncles, and my brother.

The estrangement didn’t happen due to politics or ideological differences, although my family certainly has it’s fair share of that to go around.

My family didn’t choose to cut me out because I wasn’t conservative enough or because I wasn’t liberal enough.

It was because I drew boundaries.

The boundaries I set were ones I shouldn’t have had to articulate at all but instead should’ve been already understood and unspoken boundaries between loving and caring adults.

However, I was forced to draw them because my family refused to honor these reasonable boundaries.

So, what is it that I demanded that was deemed so unreasonable?

The following:

1.      Don’t lie to me about your financial or health situation in an attempt to manipulate me into making major life changes that affect my family’s financial well-being.

2.      Don’t neglect my children by not spending quality time with them when they have politely asked you to on numerous occasions. Additionally, don’t bail on my children when you’ve made plans to spend time with them so that you can instead spend time with other people who aren’t even family.

3.      Don’t yell at me or speak to me disrespectfully in my own home and especially not in front of my children.

4.      Don’t speak poorly about me or my husband to my children or attempt to manipulate them in any way.

It was those boundaries that my family found to be too stringent to follow, and my firm adherence to them resulted in their decision to cut off contact with me.

For going on three years my family has had the ability to reach out to me, try to make amends, hell…they even had the ability to notify me that my grandmother died last week.

They chose not to.

The truth is, even though I know I am better off to have these people not in our lives, it still hurts.

It is painful that I had to find out from a friend who saw a post on Facebook that my grandmother had passed away.

It is a further reminder of what a lonely life I have had from the time I was a child as I head into my book launch that no one from my family will care.

I often tell my husband after I hear about his crazy stories growing up that he was raised by wolves, and he doesn’t deny it. But he recently pointed out that while he was raised wild, I was raised in a cage…and he isn’t wrong.

In many ways I still feel the claustrophobic weight of that cage, like the past few weeks.

But I broke free from the cage.

I’m not ashamed of my occasional sadness at my estrangement from my family. It means I am human and that I deserved better.

The deafening silence I have from that part of my life has honestly always been there in a way, even when they were physically present in my small world. In many ways it has helped shape my writing and the worlds that I create, so perhaps it was always meant to be that way.

And while I won’t get a phone call or email from my family on publication day next week, I do have the following:

1.      My daughter has said almost every day this month, “It’s so cool that my mom wrote a book!”

2.      My husband will never falter in his love and support for me.

3.      I have a “found” family that will I have no doubt send me plenty of congratulations next week and are legitimately happy for me.

4.      Finally, the knowledge that I did the right thing three years ago as a mother, a wife, and an adult who deserves common decency.

And so, as I sit here less than a week out from the publication of my debut book, I can honestly say that yes, I am excited and I am not nearly as alone as I used to be.