Mind – When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate – NYTimes.com.

I wholeheartedly agree. I also think it’s important to protect your children from toxic familial relationships so they learn to model healthy relationships filled with love. I have been estranged from both my parents and my only brother for several years now and it’s not a decision that I regret. I only regret its necessity and harbor some feelings of anger, resentment, and sadness about not having healthy relationships with people who should be in my life but for their inability to respect my right to my own.

My brother thinks my willingness to disconnect from the hive is a reflection of an innate coldness or mental malfunction. I am ungrateful and punitive in his eyes because family is more important than anything, blood is thicker than water. My feeling is that blood may be thicker than a lot of things but it’s not more potent than poison. When a relationship is slowly poisoned, like a well, and you continue to expose yourself to that toxin, you should expect to get sick. The only way you will get better is to stop subjecting yourself to the poisoning and to seek help to get well. That is what I have done.

When it was just me, I could keep trying because I had ways to control situations and protect myself. I had antidote to counteract low levels of poison. But I cannot ask my husband and children to subject themselves to slow poisoning or intermittent acute attacks of toxic shock. It’s not healthy nor is it fair. The last time I saw my father, my husband and I left our visit considering applying for a physical restraining order against him. No part of my decision has been casual, it’s an issue of survival and of protecting my family.

Sometimes you have to do for yourself and others have to make do. So be it.