The hardest thing about opening myself up to love again is not allowing my mind to slip into those dark places. For a while I found myself scoping out as many red flags as I could find. Anything that he said or did that came remotely close to my ex was inspected with a fine tooth comb. I refused to get my heart broken again so I became a deep cover investigator.

The first time I learned the lesson of setting boundaries for my own personal health and wellbeing I was somewhere in my thirties. This was a doozy of a lesson because it was with a family member and an older family member at that. I’m black and if you’re black and was raised in a black household then you know the struggle of what I just stated.

The in-between is where I must slow down, as hard as that is. This slower pace has revealed something to me that I think is revolutionary. I must let go of the old to make space for the new. And the new is bigger and better than what I’m holding on to. I’ve learned that letting go cannot be forced, and believe me I tried to force it. Letting go is slow and deliberate. It’s intentional, it’s compassionate. Letting go is grieving.

There’s so much talk about breaking generational curses but we may not know or understand the curses to begin with.

I think what I am grieving is not just the idealized self that I created but also this “picture perfect” family life. Somewhere along the lines of my life I had made it up in my mind that I wanted to have children, have a partner (when I was younger I didn’t want to get married, go figure), have the nice house and be a doting mother and romantic partner.

Though I was raised in a free and loving home I focused on the voices that wanted to box me into respectability. Being seen as good was the most important thing to me when I was a kid. And as I got older that desire to be “good” manifested into deep people pleasing and perfectionism. It wasn’t until recently that I began to ask myself the questions, What IS good? How do I determine what good is? Where did this concept come from?

Perfectionism and people pleasing are the two skills that I learned early on. I pretty much lived my life off of theses two pillars. And duality works well under these skills because if I only see life as “this or that” then I will work hard at sticking to one side of the spectrum and making sure I get that aspect “right”. Meanwhile the other side of the spectrum is also valid but I ignore it and as a result my life is imbalanced.

Well, this was the relationship that revealed to me that not only was I deserving and worthy of receiving love but I was also worthy and deserving of giving it too. When he died I internalized his death as confirmation that I was not worthy. God was punishing me for being bad.