Learning to love beyond fear

Of modern witches' trials and navigating toxic family dynamics: a little rant + asking for advice.

I’m surrounded by airers loaded with drying laundry. The kitchen nowadays is the warmest and driest room in the whole house, so the drying racks have been my loyal companions since the weather turned into what I believe must be the Tuscan version of Winter — cooler temperatures, a hint of dampness in the air, and a generous dose of unpredictable gales that slam any window blind left unbraced and send flying any loose objects in the garden, including the watering cans, much to my daughter’s delight. In the house it’s often colder than the outside, so now the racks basically live with us. Anyway, finally, for the first time in over a month, I am alone.

January has opened the new year with a shimmery mist hanging over the hills every morning and endless starry skies every night. I have already packed away the festive decorations, two weeks earlier than my usual reference date, January 6th. The holidays are officially over. Thankfully. Every year for the past two years I have set the intention to allow the holidays to flow easily. Yet, every year for the past two years, I feel like I have dragged myself out of the festive period on my elbows and knees — exhausted, disheartened, and secretly glad everyone was gone.

It was somewhat simpler when I lived in England, away from my family and leading a typical, predictable life — studying for my degrees first, then working a high-end job in the city after. When I would come back for the holidays, any second spent with my family was glazed in the sugary frosting of sweet sweet honeymoon phase — we had missed each other enough to deliberately glide over each other’s flaws and we would not spend enough time together to grow unnerved by them. Plus, I was far less a bizarre creature, albeit within the limits of what is considered my trademark undeniable innate weirdness.

Any question about my life at the time felt reasonably unobtrusive, any comment about it unremarkable. My own answers were plain, impersonal, and easily shared — “yes, that last assessment had been a challenge and I was glad I was over with it”, “no, the new head of department was rather nice, actually”. I think it’s because I was feeling detached from that life myself — I was simply following the beaten track: doing what everyone else expected of me, what everyone else was doing. Although even then, two weeks in and I would already start counting down the days until I’d be back in England, in the privacy of a safe, comfortable distance…

What has changed? First of all, proximity — over the Spring of 2021 I got pregnant, and Sam and I decided to move to Italy to craft our family life in the Italian countryside. Now we live shoulder to shoulder with my mother and, occasionally, my younger sister. Secondly, my life circumstances — not only I am now a mother of soon-to-be two daughters, but I have also begun treading my own path, working to craft a livelihood out of my creativity and aligned with my personal beliefs. What has not changed are the dynamics between me and my family, particularly my mother and sister.

Motherhood itself has been a deeply emotional journey of self-discovery which has led me to unearth and reclaim long-buried parts of me as well as to reject and deliberately shed others. A process that has brought me closer to myself, my daughter, and even to my fiancè, but that has also inevitably widened the gap between me and my original family. The projects I am (slowly) working on are also deeply personal — each of them is an expression of my soul. They are the sleeves my very own heart rests upon — bare, exposed, vulnerable.

So in both cases, now I am constantly visible and, to their eyes, I am even more unacceptably mysterious than ever. This, mixed with the shock of returning in such close contact with the dynamics I undeniably ran away from — and not without their resentment — when I was eighteen, has left me feeling uncomfortably vulnerable so I am keeping my guard higher than ever before. I was never an easy sharer, but now to them I must seem distastefully ermetic.

So, when the festive period began and my sister came to visit, shortly followed by other members of the family, I started feeling even more on edge than usual. And it shows, I know it does. I have become familiar with my trauma response — it’s a blend between freeze and fawn. My facial features automatically arrange themselves in a look of synthetic mildness and my gaze becomes void and complacent, meanwhile my nervous system sends the red-alert to pull the drawbridge in and my brain starts encrypting all traces of inner sparkle to avoid letting out any signs of life that could potentially give me away and become unwelcome bait for a conversation that I do not wish to enter. I quietly bake cakes and carefully avoid meeting eyes.

So this year, once again, the holiday weeks have felt like my personal version of the holy inquisition, where nearly every contact turned into a trial to make me admit that I am, in fact, a witch. To the questions, which I try to circumnavigate and leave only vaguely answered when unanswered is simply not an option, quickly followed the questioning — nothing like a raised wall to encourage throwing stuff at it and see what sticks. Because you may not be admitting that you are a witch, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t one. And witches should either be burnt alive — which is an option that is not physically contemplated by my family — or corrected…which, I find, is just the emotional version of burning at the stick.

And so there goes the unsolicited advice, the unkind feedback I never asked for but is generously given for my own good, the poking to see if I’ll stir, the comments, the interference, the “you’re so overly sensitive, no one can ever say anything to you”, the “you’re not a famous artist/writer, you can tell us what you’re doing”, the “if you died we would not know what to say about you”, the “if you keep doing/saying that she’ll grow up like you” or the “you need to start doing/saying that or she’ll grow up like you” and then my personal favorite “life must be so difficult being you”.

The other night, before falling asleep, Sam had a Cumæan sybil moment which left me struck and deeply saddened — “You don’t open up with them because you don’t feel safe. When you do it, you’re rejected. And even if they praised you, you no longer care about impressing them.” While he slept, I travelled ahead in time, thinking about the day my mother won’t be there anymore and I felt the burden of regrets weigh heavier on my heart than that of resentment.

Because I know that in her own way she loves me — even if it’s a way that, to me, has always felt driven by her merciful charitablness rather than by my own worthiness of love. And so does my sister. They love me in the only way they can, in the only way they know. They love me in that one standard mode they apply to each other, and which would work for me too “if I was like them”. Because I know that their aggressive and judgemental behaviors are the result of wounds left unexamined, of pain that never sublimated into forgiveness and acceptance. I know because, despite all the work I have done and I am still doing on myself, I still carry that same unalchemized pain inside. I know that they love me because they can’t help it. Because they have no other choice. They love me in the same inescapable way I love them. Despite it all.

And yet, together we are making strangers of each other. I could believe them and take all the blame on myself — I am the one estranging them. But I know Sam is right. I don’t feel safe to be my whole self with them. Only with them. Sure, I am not the most exuberant extrovert, not everyone I meet has access to my deepest depths and witnesses all my colors. I like to think that’s normal. Trust is built over time and each circle and situation has its appropriate level of depth and color. So the shame and blame can’t only be mine.

Still, I am the only one that can change this. It’s unrealistic and possibly unfair to expect them to change — if they haven’t in 57 and 28 years, it’s just wishful thinking. Maybe they will change, but maybe they won’t. For 29 years I have heard that I am the one who needs to change and for 29 years that has felt like an accusation. But one thing is clear, change needs to begin somewhere. And I can’t help but feel that somewhere, after all, is me. Because there is just too much at stake. I am unwilling to change who I am, now that I am finally learning to love, appreciate and embody myself. But, if not me, something still has to change.

So I ask myself, how can I bring love back into this relationship that is growing more and more distant and estranged with every passing year? How can I do it, if I still don’t feel safe around them? How can I do it without rejecting myself again for the sake of fitting in? How can loving beyond fear feel so difficult and yet so necessary?

I don’t have an answer. And that’s why I ask you. Not for your help because it’s not your responsibility to fix this for me. What I ask for is your story. I have begun to know many beautiful souls here who are paving their own path and creating a life that is truly and deeply authentic to who they are. I know that you are also being met with skepticism, doubt, rejection, and judgment by some of your loved ones. To you, brave and beautiful souls, I ask — how do you love beyond fear?

I know this is a bit of a different letter this week. Once again, it’s not what I had intended to write, but it’s what needed to be written. I hope that, while you may not be inspired by my words this week, you will find inspiration and a sense of sisterhood as you read each other’s stories in the comments section.

With deepest gratitude,

Julia

I would love to open the comments section in this letter as a space for you to open up and share whatever your heart calls to share. I will appreciate every word and I believe some other sensitive soul will find what you have to say precious and healing. From my heart, thank you.