Toxic Tribunal

TOXIC TRIBE

“The years tell us much that the days never know”

-        Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nobody knows enough to be a pessimist, yet negativity and mental illness can be ingrained in the human brain at a very young age; perhaps even before birth. I know this to be true because this happened to me. Mental illness is a genetic factor in my family, and toxic genes causing viruses of the mind started with my maternal great grandmother.

 Mental health issues in my venomous clan mutated over the course of 150 years, and I certainly passed the destructiveness of a negative mind onto my own children. The skin into which we are born is a virtual petri dish; an environment that allows mutations of germs, bacteria, and viruses to enter our bodies. Through our bodies and within our DNA, the toxicities of mind viruses can be transmitted from generation to generation. And I am not talking about the virus known as Corona, which caused so much pain and death as it became a pandemic.

Viruses of the mind allow us to become victims of our own heredity, and that fact became abundantly clear to me in the spring of 2020. A global pandemic on the horizon, my youngest daughter decided to break communication with me on May 10, 2020, citing my mental illness. My adult daughter, who for years had told the world I was her best friend, decided on that day to tell me I was out of her life.

My daughter didn’t reject me to my face. She opted instead to announce my mental illness on the world wide web, posting to every social media outlet in which she had joined. I suppose she gained more followers on social media when she told the world she was cutting me out of her life because I am too toxic for her to continue with me in it.

Two years later, on Mother’s Day 2022, the estrangement continued. My record for not speaking to my own mother with mental illness was 4 years. Ironically, I was the exact same age as my daughter when I shut my mother out for her toxic behaviors toward me. As I previously confided, my tribe - in which I am a member - is toxic. If the pattern I established with my own mother hold’s true, I have a couple more years of silence.

Growing up, of my favorite games on the television was Name That Tune, and I can name our toxic tribunal trait in one word: Ego. Many scholars, including Dr. Brene’ Brown and the late Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote many books about the subject of ego and vulnerability due to behavioral health instabilities. I have read every book written by Wayne Dyer, starting in 1976 with Your Erroneous Zones. In fact, as a newly married bride, I bought the book thinking it would help a virgin couple discover the joys of sex. It didn’t take long to realize, the title was erroneous, not erogenous.

In his writing, Dr. Wayne Dyer discloses he was abandoned as a youngster by an immature father, and of the struggles he had in of forgiving his biological father’s erroneous ways. I identified with Wayne Dyer’s first book in 1976 as I do today. My own biological father died without me ever knowing him. He walked out of my life when I was 4 years old, and I was sexually molested by my mom’s new boyfriend shortly thereafter.

Pardon the digression, but after reading Your Erroneous Zones again in 2020, just as the global pandemic was rolling across the world, I found new meaning in my own flawed ways. The pandemic catapulted me into a universal self-discovery, self-revelation, self-care, and complete exploration of egotistical tendencies. Through research and personal soul-searching these past two years, I found that ego is not only a behavioral health issue, but also a toxicity. I suppose most humans are egocentric in some manner, and many of us suffer from mental and behavioral health issues. And sad to say, my daughter who disowned me had a good teacher in me.

Ego causes humans to step over one another to achieve glory, and looking back, I can recall where my own ego caused irrational thought patterns. Sometimes an inflated ego can cost us dearly. I know this as fact because I allowed my misplaced ego to lead me to commit adultery in my otherwise strong and loving 30-year marriage. I was selfish, egotistic, and perhaps even a bit of a narcissist when I fell from Grace in the eyes of my husband and adult children a decade ago.

Perhaps I was doomed to fail because toxic genes are in my blood, my heritage, my tribe. But it was my ego and behavioral health matters that caused the real catastrophe. Over the course of 150 years, women in my toxic tribe had many marriages and divorces. My marriage lasted almost 3 decades before my ego took over and cost me my family. But mine was the longest marriage in the history of my tribe.

Neither my mother nor my entire maternal tribe had the luxury of being able to read self-help books, nor were they prescribed psychotic medications. Resources such as Psychology Now and the growing list of mental health medications didn’t exist among my tribe until recently. Of course, the jury is still out whether pharmaceuticals cause toxicities worse than mental illness. But that is a story for another day.

Elevating above mental illness means empowering yourself to research every resource available, and that’s what I did to overcome. My ancestors rarely were educated past middle school, and nobody had ever read some of the most influential writers and thinkers to ever walk the face of Mother Earth. Transcendentalist such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lao Tzu, Jesus Christ, or even 21^st century psychologist Dr. Wayne Dyer help many overcome mental illness; me included.

I often wish my mother could have taken nature walks with me before she died. I think her life filled with mental illness could have ended more peacefully.

Although I faced Mother’s Day 2022 with continued estranged relationships with my adult children due to my past mental illness, I realized this, too, shall pass. I have learned to firmly believe the Universe will align and bring us all back together someday. It is written that part of solving the problem is recognizing the problem, and I have conquered my demons. Mind viruses made me become more mindful.

May the peace and the love of our Universal Source heal my toxic tribunal. The best way to address mental illness is to acknowledge that it exists within. Once I opened the door to my soul, I am now on the outside looking in. There is no place I would rather be.