The Power of the Family Black Sheep
What the most misunderstood members of our family trees teach us about belonging.
OUTSIDER WISDOM
Be The Blackest Black Sheep You Can Be
What the most misunderstood members of our family trees teach us about belonging.
POV of a Blacksheep — image by Blogginglen
The black sheep’s point of view
When I was about 8 years old I can remember my uncle. A true character, always on his own, my parents and their siblings whispering about him.
You see, for some reason my uncle seemed to be the outcast in the family, the one that's always in the shit for some reason.
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My mother told me he was the black sheep of the family.
I didn't fully understand what that meant at eight. All I knew was that whenever his name came up at the dinner table, voices dropped. Adults exchanged looks. Someone would shake their head. My uncle was discussed the way you discuss a problem nobody wants to own.
But here's what nobody said out loud.
He was the most alive person in the room. Every single time.
While the rest of the family traded bullshit opinions about the appropriate way to live, the appropriate job, the appropriate way to dress and vote and speak at funerals — my uncle just lived.
No performance.
No apology.
He showed up as himself with a consistency that, as a child, I found both confusing and magnetic.
It fascinated me how the family member just could not care what anyone thinks of him.
Later in life I got to know him, and to my surprise he was by far the most interesting man I had the pleasure of meeting.
He was a non conformist and believed in living life 100% the way he wanted.
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Think about what that actually takes.
Not 80%. Not the version you perform to make the holidays run smoother. A hundred percent.
Most people never get there. Not because they can't. Because they're terrified of what the family group chat will say.
While the rest of the family always had a gryp with my uncle, I just understood him.
Sometimes just being yourself is better — image by Blogginglen
I understood him because I recognised something in myself that matched what I saw in him.
A quiet refusal.
A stubborn internal voice that said the map everyone else was following wasn't mine.
I didn't have the language for it at eight. But I felt it.
The reason being that unwillingly it turned out that myself would be the one stepping in his shoes and taking on the role of the black sheep in our family.
The Honest POV as a Black Sheep
It's not glamorous.
Being the black sheep means sitting at Christmas dinner knowing the life you're actually living — the risks, the work, the becoming — can't be fully shared because it won't be understood.
It means being loved and completely misread at the same time. Often by the same people.
Here's the thing though.
Being misread is not the problem. It's the proof.
If everyone in your family understood every choice you made, you probably haven't made any interesting ones. The black sheep is illegible to the flock because they're operating on a different frequency. And that's not fucked up. That's just evolution happening in real time.
This is for those that want to be themselves, the outcasts and the true non conformists.
You are not broken. You are not the cautionary tale, regardless of how many times you've been framed as one.
Look how far you’ve come, how much you’ve fallen, how much you’ve risen.
Look how long you've lived, how much you've seen, how much you've learned.
Look how deep you've loved, how much you've felt, how much you've received.
It’s not over yet. My uncle never waited for the family to come around. He never needed the rehabilitation. Time eventually made what they called recklessness look like courage — but he didn't stick around waiting for that verdict. He kept moving.
That's the real lesson.
The black sheep doesn't wait for the flock. They keep building. Keep living at the frequency that makes sense to them, even when nobody around them can hear the music.
Remember that it's the silent ones that have the most interesting stories to share.
If you're carrying a life the people closest to you don't quite understand — good.
You're exactly where you need to be.
© BloggingLen
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