When? Well, for me, it could be when my son goofed around in a video doing a Bo Burnum bit with his t-shirt up on his head like a hood. My mother called me frantic that my son was being "radicalized" by my husband's family in Iran. To begin with, they speak Farsi and my son does not. He has never done more than stand next to his father and wave at them online. Second, just… WTAF!?

Then, there was the time bullies in school threatened my son that "Trump's gonna send you and your dad to the gas chambers." And, my kin said I was being too sensitive and to "just let it go."

Let us not forget the time, while I sat at the deathbed of one of my sisters in hospice, the other two sister and my mother bullied my son and FORCED him to delete an entire soundtrack of foreign language music from his phone because he was listening to "that terrorist music." First, it was a soundtrack in Japanese from the children's cat cartoon, Sagwa. Second, even if he had been listening to Middle Eastern music, it would have been the Persian music of his father – so their literal intent was to erase half my son's heritage. A visiting friend of my dying sister asked one of the sisters involved in this travesty why they were so hard on my son. He and my nephew were just around the corner and overheard that sister say, "He was listening to that “sand n-word terrorist music."

Or, it may have been when my family promoted and defended the idea of internment camps for Middle Easterners and Muslims – in front of my Iranian husband and our half-Persian son.

They taught my son to hate. They made my son hate them. Their hate and abuse made me physically ill, to the point of a major health crisis that saw me hospitalized close to death. Just exactly how long should I have kept taking my little family back for more of their toxicity… just because their kin?

I'm sorry. People are toxic when their behavoir – their choices – harm you. So yes, for the sake of self-care, and for the care of my husband and son, I cut them off. I walked away because they chose to make it untenable for me to stay. My kin had almost fifty years of setting aside my well being – of them being the primary source of pain and trauma all my life. They were NOT going to get any setting aside the well being of my husband and son.