Letting Them

Sam rubbed the back of his neck, the familiar tension a knot between his shoulder blades, as he set his phone on the end table with a clatter that was louder than he intended. The glow from the screen, now face down, seemed to emanate a residual heat of frustration.

“It’s just so unnecessary,” he said, the words heavy with exasperation. “My mom’s endless guilt trips. Dad’s sermonizing crap about forgiveness, as if it’s a switch we can flip. Their behavior hasn’t changed, not an iota, nor have they offered a single genuine apology. It’s just more fear-mongering, more manipulation.”

I shook my head, my own jaw tight. The conversation we’d just overheard, the one Sam had been trying to mediate between his parents and Tate, echoed in my mind.

“They just sealed their fate,” I stated, a grim finality in my voice. “There’s absolutely no way they’ll be invited to Tate and Rachel’s wedding after this.”

Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. “They want control, desperately, but they absolutely refuse to take accountability for anything. It’s always someone else’s fault, always a misunderstanding on our part.” He paused, the memory of the recent confrontation etched on his face. “My parents chose not to have lunch with Tate and Rachel when they were in the same town, and then dared to guilt him for it. Tate said he wanted to punch a hole in the wall; he was so furious.”

“That’s your parents’ routine, isn’t it?” I mused, the pattern depressingly clear. “They treat you like you don’t matter, like your feelings and your very self are irrelevant, and then they shame you for keeping your distance, for protecting yourself from their toxicity.”

“I told him he didn’t owe them a visit,” Sam said firmly, his voice gaining a resolute edge. “He was there for Rachel’s family, honoring their time and their plans. My parents didn’t show him an ounce of respect, so why should he go out of his way for them, especially after how they’ve treated him?”

I sat on the couch beside Sam, the plush cushions offering little comfort against the emotional weight of the moment. I ran a hand over my temple, trying to smooth out the invisible creases of worry and exasperation. “What did I hear you say about forgiveness?”

He grimaced, the memory clearly unpleasant. “My dad texted Tate,” he said, picking up his phone again, the screen illuminating his weary face. He scrolled to the message and read it aloud, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “‘We just came from church. I wish you could have heard the sermon. It was on forgiveness.’”

I rolled my eyes so hard I felt a slight strain. I thought about Mel Robbins’s book The Let Them Theory, which I had just finished, its wisdom echoing in my mind. “Tate’s the one who needs to forgive? No, your dad wants Tate to forget. He wants him to wipe the slate clean once again, yet they act genuinely surprised when we maintain our distance and set boundaries. How many times over the years have we already ‘forgiven’ them, only to be hurt again, to have the same patterns repeat?” I said, the rhetorical questions hanging in the air.

Sam exhaled sharply, a sound of pure frustration. “Oh, there’s more. My mom texted him, too.” He scrolled to the offending message, his fingers hovering over the screen, and again read aloud, his voice dripping with incredulity:

“‘You aren’t even a mile from us, and you can’t stop in to see your ‘check-bearing grandparents’?’ Sam read aloud, making sarcastic air quotes with his fingers, a gesture that highlighted the insult.

I sat up straighter, a cold knot forming in my stomach. “She said that? She actually said that?”

“It’s unreal. Like your family’s money is supposed to have bought our love, bought their access to our lives, to our children. It’s transactional, always has been.”

When Sam finally spoke again, his voice was softer; a weary understanding had replaced the anger. “I told Tate—it’s hard, I know it is, but he can’t let them get to him. Arguing with them goes in circles, like we are speaking a foreign language they refuse to learn. It’s not worth the emotional toll, the wasted energy.”

I looked into his eyes, searching for a sign, a flicker of the man I knew before this emotional warfare had taken its toll. “I’m glad you validated his actions, Sam. Truly. It’s helping us break the generational curse. It’s freeing all of us from their expectations and their destructive patterns.”

Sam nodded slowly, a slight, almost imperceptible shift in his posture, a subtle unclenching of his shoulders.

I recalled an Instagram post I’d seen that morning, its simple wisdom resonating deeply. “A good relationship,” it had read, “is one where we avoid our unhealed selves, handle them, and heal them. A great relationship is one where we heal together.”

As sad as it was, a quiet, almost peaceful acceptance settled over me. I knew, with an undeniable certainty, that we would never have a great relationship with Sam’s family—there was no togetherness with them, no sense of anyone besides themselves. After all the lengths we had gone to, all the emotional labor we had expended, all we could do now was continue to heal ourselves, individually and as a couple. If we wanted to establish a true sense of self and family outside the Wicked Witch’s suffocating control, we had to fundamentally change how we thought, how we believed, what we hoped for, and how we moved through their distorted world. Otherwise—I knew, and Sam knew—there would be no end to their subtle, insidious abuse.

It had taken us thirty-five long years to get here, to this point of clarity and resolve. But we were still standing. And this time, we were standing on our own two feet, together.

When Sam looked at me again, something was different. The exhaustion was still there, a faint shadow beneath his eyes, but his gaze held a strength, a quiet determination I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the look of someone who had finally found their footing after years of stumbling.

I smiled just a little, a gentle, understanding smile.

My lion—beside me on this long, winding Yellow Brick Road—had finally found his courage.

Outside, the rhythmic crashing of waves against the ever-shifting shoreline drifted in through the open window—the constant, soothing cadence of a world that never stopped moving, even as its fundamental elements remained the same. The sounds outside our lives today, the sound of the water, the gentle whisper of the breeze, were the sounds of our newfound freedom.

I turned to the window, drawn by something just beyond the glass. Perched on a bleached, gnarled branch that jutted out towards the water, a large bird sat silent, still, watching and waiting for its moment. Its feathers were ruffled by the wind, but its eyes were sharp, focused.

I motioned for Sam, and he joined me, draping a comforting arm around my shoulder. We watched together, our gazes fixed on the magnificent creature, grounded and alert, like hawks observing their domain. Yet, even as the bird held its vigil, a gust of wind tore a single feather from its wing, sending it spinning into the tumultuous waves below. We exchanged a glance, a silent acknowledgment of the fragility of even the strongest wings, and the ever-present, unpredictable currents that could pull anything, or anyone, back out to our inland sea.