A young woman shared her story of dealing with family members who don't deserve to be called family. They all come from her dad's side of the family, and they enforce a weird hierarchy on everybody. Some members of the family are at the "top," and others are at the "bottom." They've used that for years to treat each other badly, speak behind each other's backs, and meddle in issues that are none of their business. They've treated her father like a scapegoat his entire life and used his personal issues with his daughter against them. His daughter had had enough at one point and sent them a message that said everything she thought about them. Suffice it to say that the tone was as mean and disrespectful as theirs had been her entire life. They called her parents to complain instead of taking it out with her, so she grabbed the phone and started arguing with her aunt and then her cousin. Their arguments were ridiculous and made no sense, so she ended the conversation afterwards. She told her dad that if he wanted to have a relationship with them, it was his right, but she didn't want to see them anymore.
Not because someone is family does it mean that we have to let them treat us poorly or let them walk all over us. Respect goes both ways; it's something that is earned and kept through being a decent and fair human being. Hierarchies don't exist inside a family, and if they think that they should be revered for being older, we're sorry, but they were born in the wrong century. Things work differently now. They don't get to make their relatives feel like trash and expect them to bow their heads and abide by anything they say. They need a good lesson in humility and what family actually means. This girl is brave, and probably she'll be the reason why her father finally frees himself from his sibling's toxic attitude. Everybody deserves to feel at home with their family, not like they're in a never-ending war.