No, you are not wrong—just because you are all related does not mean you are ‘family.’

If they are stuck in the years you were a child, that is them, and you have moved on, learned things, and grown…maybe you’ve outgrown them, huh? Why would you want folks who actively ignore you in your life? And now, when you’ve set a healthy boundary, your grandmother tries to make YOU feel guilty? You don’t owe her anything.

I too had relatives who considered me to be the red-headed step child. I was always told someone had died months, sometimes years afterward. They’d tell me like they’d done me a favor—‘we didn’t tell you because you might have tried to come and we knew you didn’t have the money.’ The made decisions for me. And I’ve made peace with it. It’s them, not me.

Take your love and energy and pour it into your daughter! Life a happy life. By not engaging in your relatives cutting behavior—you are giving yourself the message that YOU HAVE VALUE. You are choosing your healthy functioning over someone else’s dysfunction.

I wish you and your daughter the very best!