The pain of being erased by your own family
I saw a picture of my niece Iona today.
It has been nine months since I last saw Iona, Ivet and Aran. I haven’t seen not even a picture. Nine months of silence. Nine months of missing their faces, their voices, their laughter. Today, suddenly, there they were in a photo — standing on the balcony of the apartment I once built with my own hands, the home that used to be mine.
The photo wasn’t meant to hurt me. My cousin sent it without knowing the truth. But for me, it felt like being torn open. Because my family has forbidden me from seeing the children. They’ve erased me from their lives as if my love doesn’t matter, as if my existence should be cut away like it never belonged.
This is the kind of cruelty that hides under silence. They never say the words directly — but they refuse contact, they never send even pictures. They act as though keeping me away is normal, as though it’s justified. But it isn’t.
It is punishment. It is control. It is erasure.
And it is unbearable.
I don’t want this for them. Not now, not when they’re grown, not ever. I don’t want Iona, Ivet, or Aran to learn that love can be withheld like a weapon. I don’t want them to grow up repeating this cycle — punishing, cutting off, controlling the people who love them most.
I want them to know a different way. That real love does not forbid. That connection is not something to be rationed or controlled. That family should be a place of safety, not a place where love is used as leverage.
Right now, I carry the pain that they cannot see. I live the silence that has been forced on me. But I will not let this silence define me. I am building something so they can one day see the truth — that what was done to me should never be done to them.
I love them. I always will. No matter how hard my family tries to cut me away.
—Anna