What’s left of my dad is in a decaf Trader Joe’s coffee canister, sealed inside of a plastic bag, sitting in a cardboard box under my bed.

I got it through a forced compromise: don’t argue with the woman who lied about my dad’s condition, who gave away all of his belongings and secretly withdrew money out of his account during the last days of his life…and I get to keep half his ashes. Plus some of his dirty clothes and a handful of photos for good measure. 

Thanks. 

There is a perverse kind of pain in reconnecting with your estranged father during the last two years of his terminal illness, only to have that connection completely severed in his final hours. Withholding of truth. Cryptic messages. Erratic and inappropriate conversations. No chance to say goodbye in person. No chance to keep his things. No funeral. No celebration of life. No shared grieving. Nothing. Just a quarter-full canister of ashes and a metaphorical “fuck you”. 

The weeks proceeding his death beget a lot of opportunities to witness how my co-dependency had been running the show. Namely, how I had been trying to protect the feelings of the people in my life that had harmed me the most. In an effort to understand (and not condemn them for) where their pain came from, I gave them a hall pass; permission to continue to treat me as the punching bag for their own unresolved anger, resentment, and hurt. My unwillingness to confront the cruelty of how their own trauma manifested, made it so that I kept perpetuating my own.

I was not holding them accountable because I didn’t want to reject them. I let my desire to feel like “the bigger person” eclipse my own need for healthy connection. I know that no amount of patience or understanding can heal the unattended wounds in someone else. But I tried anyway. I didn’t know another way.

I also didn’t realize how masterful I had become at camouflaging my own needs and disappointment; that, actually, I had been quietly heartbroken since I was a child and convinced that empathy and resilience were the only paths back to connection. I didn’t want to completely isolate myself and cut ties, so I did mental gymnastics to try and reason away their lack of capacity; anything to diminish the hurt that I felt. I routinely held up my pain in comparison to other peoples pain to try and alleviate it…as if the existence of a different or greater suffering would be the magic balm to ease my own.

I don’t want to tie a big pink bow around trauma and call it a gift, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge what I was able to mine from my own. Because the fucked up reality is that I would not have healed so much so quickly if it were not for the contentious relationships in my life.

I had to get to a place of intolerable tension and deep rejection, to an emotional bottom, to realize that I am ultimately in charge of my own sense of safety and well-being. I am in charge of making sure I feel loved and supported. I am in charge of honoring and vocalizing my needs…and of setting boundaries if they are repeatedly ignored. 

I voluntarily suffered in the years I waited for reciprocation that never came, by clinging to the hope it eventually would.

When I finally admitted that it may never come, my grief flattened me…and then brought clarity: the depth of my heartbreak was actually an affirmation both of my own needs, and my capacity to love. If I had not wanted authentic and vulnerable connection, if I had not allowed myself to care as deeply as I did, I would have been able to simply sidestep my deepest pain. I could have dodged responsibility and ownership. I could have victimized myself. I could have slammed the metaphorical doors in the faces of those that had hurt me, and walked away, head held high, vindicated by the misdeeds done to me. I could have avoided the work of feeling and healing, and instead rested in my disillusionment and solitude. 

But that’s not the kind of life I want to live. My goal has always been to feel at ease and comfortable in who I am. To be receptive of big love. To be able to give big love. To not walk around haunted by the past. To feel new, over and over. To face life with tenderness and courage. And to have relationships with people that are also open-hearted; a shared tenderness that is buoyed by mutual trust and safety. 

And this is where I have found my truest self…at the cusp of loss and love and at the crossroads of desire and disappointment.

It is a painful process to unlearn all the habits of self-protection, these childhood practices and belief systems that kept us safe. When we have prioritized connection at the cost of being true to ourselves, our healing lies in doing the opposite: to be so authentically ourselves that all of the relationships that don’t value us in our raw authenticity fall away. It is both a death and a re-birth. But what remains after the dust settles is a beautiful and rare beacon; feeling accepted and loved by people who have the capacity to hold you, in all of your complexity and need. 

Love may take many forms, but the path towards true connection ultimately remains the same.

To be seen, heard, validated, supported, encouraged, known…we have to trust in our own deservingness. We have to be willing to open our hearts, and potentially risk unrequited love, in order to find the love we deserve.

And if a relationship requires us to dampen, hide, or diminish parts of ourselves to make it work? Then we also must to be willing to let it go…and walk away.