“No I am simply stopping myself from protecting all of you from your own terrible choices.”
Mother stood up so fast her chair almost fell over backwards onto the carpet. “I am the woman who gave birth to you.”
“And I am the daughter who spent fifteen exhausting years paying heavily for that exact privilege.”
“We are your actual family Harper!”
I took a long moment to deeply look at every single person in that room who had laughed when Dad publicly excluded me from their lives. They had fully expected me to stay home and raise their noisy children while they went off to celebrate on a beautiful sandy beach.
“Family is certainly not a word you get to use only when you desperately need free labor or money or absolute silence.”
Two incredibly stressful months later my parents were forced to sell their beloved anniversary house just to pay off their massive debts. Dad only managed to save his construction company after he officially resigned as the president and fully surrendered his entire ownership stake to the corporate board.
