I can't mend this relationship!

They won't talk to me.

Here’s one reaction I got when I posted on social media about the idea of the mending fractured relationships: “The relationship with my family can’t be mended because they’ve rejected me because of who I am (trans).” Another person said that their family had had them excommunicated from the church the family belonged to for a similar reason.

They’re right. They can’t mend a relationships that doesn’t exist, that someone else had ended.

This reaction reminds me of a story about someone I knew whose son had come out as gay, and the family accepted the son. But then the church the family had belonged to for years, which was the center of their social life, ostracized the family for not rejecting the son. People who had been their close friends for many years and who they had had close relationships with stopped speaking to them. The mother (who was in seminary at the time in order to train to serve in that church) was distraught. This was in a small town where the church was a dominant institution, and they would run into these people all the time. They had to rebuild their lives to be not centered around that particular church.

In these cases, these families/churches extract a high price for belonging, conformity. That is at the core of belonging in some groups. We are social animals, we (as humans) have only survived as long as we have because cooperating in groups gave us a competitive advantage.) In my book, I talk about how belonging is an important part of well-being; those who don’t belong to groups tend to have more depression, anxiety, and addiction. That’s one way the 12-steps groups for alcoholism and addiction actually work: giving people a community to belong to substitutes for the misplaced need for the addictive substance.

But these examples illustrate the dark side of belonging, the pressure to conform. It asks us to abandon our individuality and is toxic.

Those who have been part of a group that has an intense pressure to conform need to heal from that. If they don’t heal, they’ll either reject belonging to a group or recreate the situation over and over again in their lives. A story that illustrates: One woman who left an evangelical church upbringing later found a new community in a New Age belief system that she thought was safe, but after a while, she realized that it also exerted a pressure to conform, just like her previous evangelical church—just different things to conform to.

As I’ve been on this path, I’ve found groups that support those who are healing from toxic relationships, whether it’s families or churches. The ones I know about are The Liturgists Community, which has a podcast and a community to support those who are deconstructing and reconstructing their belief system after having been raised in a fundamentalist church. There is a Facebook group (LitCom) that was formerly associated with the Liturgist Community that has a similar mission.

Also, Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families is a place that people in a similar position have found healing.

I’m sure there are many more. If you send me others, I’ll list them on the resources page on my website.)

I believe we need community desperately. In-person community, but a community that’s more inclusive. We need find a way to do it; we need to work at it. It’s hard to do, but it’s worthwhile. In my book, I lay out the characteristics of a community like that. I’ve been part of several and part of helping to create one; they’re never perfect, but they have changed my life.

And maybe then we can forgive.