This post is all about family love meaning.
It’s terrifying to be the one who finally acknowledges the pain in your family. When you say the things everyone else is thinking out loud, people get defensive. They take it personally and start to think that you are criticizing the family instead of its patterns of behavior.
By breaking the cycle of generational trauma, you’re doing the best possible thing for your future self. Your present self is probably feeling a lot of pain and isolation, which is why this list is designed to help you redefine family love for a new generation.
This post is all about family love meaning.
FAMILY LOVE MEANING:
1. Healing and Support
Family can be both a source of pain and a source of healing. As you work on breaking the cycle of silence, pain, and trauma from older generations, you also can become distant from the people you love.
Luckily, you’ll inevitably find people who relate to you. Whether it’s your sibling, cousin, aunt, or other relative, you’ll find family who understands you. They will be your source of support and healing when other people can’t be.
Find the people who make you feel safe to be honest and share your emotions. These are the people who care more about your wellbeing than inserting their opinion. They won’t judge you for wanting to heal.
2. Creating Boundaries
Boundaries protect you and they help you to build a strong family. When you’re busy noticing hurtful patterns and working on breaking them, the other people in your family might get upset and they might not want to change.
That’s when you create boundaries. They start when you notice your triggers and when you being around your family hurts. Once you notice what causes the pain, you can figure out what changes you can make to keep from feeling that way again.
Then, you communicate that. You might tell your parents you will leave the conversation if they complain about each other. Maybe you explain to your sister that you can’t give her advice on her relationship with an abusive partner anymore.
It’ll hurt and people won’t always take it well, but you need to create boundaries for your wellbeing and to show your family a different meaning of love.
3. Breaking the Silence
No family is perfect, and it’s easy to forget that when begin noticing every way in which your family is not perfect. This is why it matters when you speak up.
Whether your family is close enough they might as well shower together or they are so distant from each other they might as well be in different countries, they’ll get defensive. The moment you try and create positive change between your parents or siblings, it will be painful.
Breaking the silence is the difficult step that it takes for other people to mourn the way they’ve gotten used to their family being. Families want to be stable at all costs, even if it hurts.
Keep in mind that you’re doing the right thing in showing your family you love them by breaking the silence. You’re creating your own family love meaning.
4. Empowerment and Resilience
Family love will empower you and keep you resilient. When you struggle, you should be able to count on the family in your life to support you. You don’t have to be strong on your own nor do you have to be strong all the time.
Lean on your family and let them get you out of your limiting beliefs. When you think a goal is out of reach, whether that’s healing or aspirational, let them tell you it’s not.
Believe your family when they support you and help you grow. Not all family will be what you need and they may treat you poorly. Remember that your family love meaning is keeping the loving, supportive, empowering people in your life and letting the rest go.
5. Building a Supportive Network
Family is whoever you want it to be. It’s never just blood relatives and it doesn’t have to include any blood relatives if they cause you too much pain to have in your life.
No matter what, you need to develop a support system. Find the people who care about you and support you because those are the people who will put you above any personal interests. They will learn to understand your journey of creating healthier habits and relationships.
Find the people who encourage you the live a happier, more fulfilling life.
6. Understanding Family History
Just like you have some baggage from childhood, so do your parents. Your siblings have different baggage no matter how close you are because you are two different people. While this can feel isolating and lonely, this is also a gift.
You get the chance to fully understand someone else. Then, you can better understand why they act the way they do, where it comes from, and how they get triggered.
Family history is never a reason to treat other people poorly. It is, however, a reason to give people grace as they learn and grow. Plus, it can help you move past some of the anger and pain you still have deep within you from when you were a child.
7. Seeking Professional Help
You don’t have to handle it all on your own. Maybe you’re struggling because your relationships with family members are getting more and more strained or you have a family member who is struggling with the ways the family is changing for the better.
Either way, you don’t have to go it alone. Look into your insurance to see if you can get a therapist without paying any money out of pocket.
Use resources (like this blog) to help you out while you work on getting a therapist. Look into group therapy in your area or support groups to attend. You’re not alone. Talk to someone and encourage your loved ones to reach out to professionals too.
8. Reframing Relationships
There’s no one right way to get healthier. When you’re breaking the cycles of generational trauma continued by your parents, it’s hard to know what to do.
You don’t get a roadmap when you’re the first one to do it. But, you can think about your approach to the relationships in your life. When figuring out the next step in your journey of getting healthier and healing generational trauma, you might get overwhelmed.
Family members don’t like to be told when they’re contributing to unhealthy patterns of behaviors in their relationships with you. That’s when cutting them off can be an option. However, if that doesn’t feel right, you can also think about reframing that relationship.
Instead of saying that someone won’t change and you don’t want them in your life, you could say that you won’t see them as often. If they upset you, you’ll leave the conversation and see them even less.
Ultimately, you need to figure out how you can move forward healthier and happier regardless of your family’s reactions. Keep in mind that reframing is a useful tool get to clarity when your emotions are involved.
9. Cultivating Self-Compassion
You’re doing a lot. Give yourself credit and forgive yourself when you mess up. You’re dealing with challenges that you inherited. Even if you contributed to them for a long time, you didn’t choose to get stuck with struggles like a lack of communication or bickering parents.
As difficult and rewarding as this journey is, you’ll likely feel alone. For the first time, you are being honest with your family and telling them the truth. In other words, you are taking away your family’s stability and that’s terrifying for everyone involved.
This when you want to not only have a support system in place but also remember that you need to be kind to yourself.
10. Being a Trailblazer
You’re creating your own path and you have no help. Yes, you have friends and loved ones who will support you through the process. But, your family is the only group of people who really understand how your family works.
So, you’re going to be creating a new system and destabilizing the current one. That’s not easy when no one has done it before you. You’re going to creating a new family love meaning and your family might time to get used to it.
Give yourself some grace and remind yourself that you’re doing something incredibly terrifying, rewarding, and brave all at the same time.
11. Embracing Growth and Change
When we’re talking about breaking patterns and creating lasting change in a family system, family love is all about embracing change.
Growth will come slowly, so slowly that you probably won’t notice you it. Still, it’s all part of the long process of stopping the generational trauma before it affects the next generation. You deserve to appreciate and be grateful for the change.
So, catch yourself when you’re feeling guilty and remember that, yes, you’re disrupting your family. But, you’re also doing what someone else should have done before you.
