FAMILY DOES NOT MEAN LOVE:

BREAKING THE SILENCE

By Anthony T. Eaton

As a child, I learned how to make myself small—how to disappear into the background, unnoticed and unheard. While others in my family could express their emotions freely, especially anger, mine felt like a privilege I hadn’t earned. I grew up in a world of narcissists, gas lighters, and abusers, where survival meant keeping the peace, appeasing instead of expressing, enduring instead of confronting.

I became an expert at reading the room, anticipating moods, and adjusting myself accordingly, always hoping—foolishly, desperately—that if I could just say the right thing, do the right thing, I could change the chaos around me.

I will not call them out personally because most have passed, but I will not act as if my childhood did not happen the way it did. To break the cycle, I must break the silence because breaking my silence allows others to do the same.

Most of my familial relationships were steeped in dysfunction and co-dependence, a constant cycle of unpredictability, emotional turmoil, and instability. Alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, emotional manipulation, mental illness—this was the foundation I was raised on. And yet, I kept trying to build something real on top of it.

Even well into adulthood, I clung to the idea that I could create the family I had always wanted. But I was trying to build something whole from pieces that had never fit together. I kept returning to the same people, hoping they would finally be who I needed them to be. It wasn’t until I experienced the ultimate betrayal—from the very family members I had once believed would never intentionally hurt me that something inside me finally broke. After more than fifty years I was done.

That was the moment I drew my line in the sand. I would no longer allow anyone, especially my own family, to treat me with less respect than a stranger on the street. Love is not supposed to hurt. But in my family, the word family itself had become a weapon—a tool of control, manipulation, and guilt.

Thankfully, a few family relationships have not only survived but grown stronger. In the end, I admit I have not completely overcome my childhood, but I made peace with it long ago, I don’t live there. I am grateful I have been able to build a different life from my childhood. I no longer make myself small and encourage others to do the same because family does not mean love.