Crowned in Purpose

Part 3: It Stops With Me… What I Refuse to Pass Down

At the end of Part 2, I finally had to face a truth I didn’t necessarily want to accept:

Maybe I was trying to heal something that was never mine to fix.

For a long time, I think part of me believed that if I loved hard enough, cared enough, forgave enough, or tried enough, somehow everything could be repaired.

Maybe if I reached out one more time.

Maybe if I didn’t take things personally.

Maybe if I kept loving everybody regardless of how distant we became.

Maybe one day we’d all find our way back to each other.

But healing doesn’t work that way.

One person cannot reconcile an entire family.

Love requires participation.

Relationships require effort from both sides.

And reconciliation can’t happen if only one person is reaching for it.

That realization hurt.

But it also freed me.

Because maybe my responsibility was never to fix everything that happened before me.

Maybe my responsibility is to make sure the brokenness doesn’t continue through me.

I Can’t Control Them, But I Can Control What I Pass Down

I can’t control whether every cousin speaks to me.

I can’t control whether I’m invited.

I can’t control how people feel about me.

I can’t force our children to have the childhood relationships I wish they had.

And I can’t undo years of family hurt that started long before some of us were old enough to even understand it.

But there’s one thing I can control:

What I pass down to my sons.

I can teach my boys that somebody else’s disagreement doesn’t automatically have to become theirs.

I can teach them that just because someone they love doesn’t like somebody, that doesn’t mean they’re required to dislike that person too.

I can teach them to form their own relationships.

Ask their own questions.

Have their own experiences.

And make their own decisions about people.

I can teach them that family doesn’t mean tolerating disrespect.

But I can also teach them that boundaries don’t always require hatred.

You can love somebody from a distance.

You can forgive without pretending something never happened.

You can protect your peace without teaching your children to inherit your anger.

And you can decide that a family cycle has gone far enough.

It Stops Here

My sons don’t need to carry battles they never fought.

They don’t need to inherit grudges they don’t understand.

They don’t need to grow up hearing:

“We don’t talk to them because…”

and then carry that same story into adulthood without ever having their own experience with that person.

Because children shouldn’t have to carry adult grudges.

Cousins shouldn’t have to become strangers because their parents couldn’t get along.

And generations shouldn’t continue paying for wounds nobody was willing to heal.

At some point, somebody has to say:

ENOUGH.

Somebody has to decide:

It stops here.

And maybe I’m that somebody.

I can’t change everything behind me.

But I can be intentional about what comes after me.

Maybe Healing Looks Different Than I Thought

I used to think healing my family meant getting everybody back together.

Everybody speaking.

Everybody laughing.

Everybody’s children knowing one another.

One big happy family again.

But I’m starting to understand that healing doesn’t always look like restoration.

Sometimes healing is acceptance.

Sometimes healing is grieving what you wish could have been.

Sometimes healing is loving people without chasing them.

Sometimes healing is remembering the good without allowing the bad to consume you.

And sometimes healing is simply deciding:

The pain may have reached me, but it doesn’t get to keep traveling through me.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped hoping.

A part of me will probably always hope.

I’ll probably always imagine what it would feel like for all of us to sit together again.

I’ll probably always want to hear our children laughing together while we reminisce about how ridiculous we were as kids.

I’ll probably always wish Grandma’s house could somehow feel the way it did back then.

But I’ve learned that I can wish for something…

without allowing the absence of it to destroy me.

To My Cousins…

If any of you ever read this, there’s something I need you to understand.

This series was never written to attack you.

It wasn’t written to embarrass anybody.

It wasn’t written to point fingers or decide who’s right and who’s wrong.

It was written because I miss us.

That’s it.

I miss us.

And sometimes writing is the only way I know how to make sense of feelings I’ve carried for years.

So if you take anything from these words, I hope it’s this:

I remember us.

I remember the sleepovers.

I remember Grandma’s house.

I remember the Barbies.

I remember getting chased by dogs.

I remember our ridiculous ideas.

I remember getting in trouble.

I remember laughing until our stomachs hurt.

I remember looking up to some of you.

I remember growing up beside you.

And most importantly…

I remember loving you.

I still do.

And I ALWAYS will, despite the distance.

Maybe we’ll never be the little girls we were before.

Maybe we’ll never have exactly what we had back then.

Maybe some relationships will eventually heal.

Maybe others won’t.

I don’t know what the future holds for us.

But nothing happening today can erase what those relationships meant to that little girl who grew up without sisters.

Because before adulthood…

Before the drama…

Before the grudges…

Before everybody had children, responsibilities, separate lives, and old family wounds to carry…

I had you.

And you probably never realized just how much that meant to me.

Don’t Let Someone Else’s War Become Your Inheritance

Growing up has taught me something I wish more families understood:

Blood can make you related, but relationships still have to be nurtured.

Love can exist even when closeness doesn’t.

And healing doesn’t always mean getting everyone back into the same room.

Sometimes healing means refusing to carry yesterday’s hurt into tomorrow’s relationships.

So if there’s one thing I hope my family, and anybody reading this, takes from my story, it’s this:

Don’t let someone else’s war become your inheritance.

You don’t have to carry every family grudge.

You don’t have to choose every side.

You don’t have to dislike someone because somebody else does.

And please…

Don’t teach your children to dislike people they’ve never been given a reason to dislike.

Give the next generation a chance to write a different story.

Because eventually…

the kids grow up.

Grandma’s house gets quieter.

The sleepovers stop.

The Barbies get packed away.

Everybody gets busy.

Everybody builds their own lives.

And one day, you realize those ordinary moments you thought would last forever…

Were actually the memories you’d spend the rest of your life wishing you could experience one more time.

If You Miss Them, Say It

So love while you can.

Make the call when it’s healthy to do so.

Say “I miss you” when you mean it.

Say “I love you” while there’s still time for somebody to hear it.

Let go of pride when pride is the only thing standing between you and someone you genuinely love.

Apologize when you’re wrong.

Listen when somebody tells you they’re hurt.

And when reconciliation isn’t possible, don’t allow bitterness to become the inheritance you leave behind.

Let your healing become the beginning of something different for the generation after you.

Because breaking a generational cycle doesn’t always look dramatic.

Sometimes it simply looks like saying:

“What happened before me will not determine what happens after me.”

And As for Me…

I’ll always wish some things could have been different.

I’ll always wish my sons knew their cousins the way I knew mine.

I’ll probably always miss those little girls running around without a clue about how complicated adulthood would eventually become.

And somewhere inside this grown woman will always be that little only child who thought her cousins would be beside her forever.

But instead of being angry that forever didn’t look the way I imagined…

I’m choosing to be grateful that I had it at all.

Because there was a time when we weren’t strangers.

There was a time when nobody cared who was mad at whom.

There was a time before sides had to be chosen.

There was a time when family was simply…

family.

And during that time, an only child got to know what having sisters felt like.

That mattered.

They mattered.

They still do.

So maybe our story didn’t turn out exactly the way little Shy would’ve written it.

Maybe we’ve taken different roads.

Maybe there’s distance where there used to be closeness.

But the distance doesn’t get to rewrite the memories.

The hurt doesn’t get to erase the love.

And adulthood doesn’t get to convince me that what we had wasn’t real.

Because it was.

We laughed together.

We cried together.

We got in trouble together.

We grew up together.

And even if life eventually taught us how to live without one another…

I’ll always remember the time when we couldn’t imagine doing life without each other.

Because I may have grown up as an only child…

But my cousins gave me sisters.

And no amount of distance can ever take that away from me.

We may have grown apart…

but I’ll never forget when we grew up together. ❤️