My sister just texted me to let me know that she got her first Pfizer shot today. I felt the same sense of joy and relief as a couple weeks ago when my mother told me that she & my father had just got their first Moderna vaccine.
My nuclear family of origin lives in Europe and I haven’t seen them in five and a half years, since my move to California.
We don’t communicate very often; I hardly ever feel the urge to see them or even talk to them much. We’re just so different, maybe too different. Or maybe there’s still too much residual scarring for me from the years of interacting with them without feeling accepted, recognized, seen, loved for who I really was.
But I do love them. I love them dearly and care about their well-being. I just love them from afar. There’s no anger or resentment or even pain left on my part: but (for now) I need this distance to be able to love them serenely.
Loving from afar.
The Little Prince and the Fox 