The Blessing in Being the Black Sheep: Transforming Pain into Purpose

Through heartbreak comes the life you didn’t dare dream of.

Photo by Jonathan Mabey - Unsplash

The heartbreak and pain of being dismissed by your family of origin, of being rejected, betrayed or belittled holds the most unimaginable grief. Our family should be a place of safety, belonging and protection. But when they embody the opposite, our whole sense of reality gets flipped on its head. How to know what real love is?

And yet we hold in our hearts this knowing, this remembrance of what real love feels like. Of what it means to be safe, protected, supported and truly nourished by those around us. Our soul yearns for it and drives us there day by day, learning by learning.

Since I was a little girl I have been the ‘black sheep’ of my family. The one that everyone poked fun at, mocked, ridiculed and ostracised. I was also the one that came to this earth with an innate wisdom and empathy that far outstrips anything any of my immediate family members have to offer. I think subconsciously they knew that.

It made me an easy target.

I was ‘different’.

For years I wore that reality as a burden, I played the victim (I had been well and truly victimised after all!) I felt sorry for myself and I wanted everyone around me to feel sorry for me too.

Then I discovered inner child work and I finally met that little girl within who just wanted to be loved and accepted. I saw how pure and innocent she was and that all the labels she had been tarnished with were just projections of the wounds of the people around her.

She as a child, was pure, blameless, innocent and underserving of the burden she had been given to carry.

She felt deeply unloved, flawed - in fact unlovable in every aspect. That young girl loathed being centre of attention, she loathed being around groups of people, she preferred to disappear into the background.

She was told she was shy.

She was in fact, deeply traumatised.

People scared her.

People were not safe, she was on high alert for the next attack.

She learned to read people with a depth and consistency that makes her an excellent counsellor.

And that is the blessing that blooms were pain and suffering once lay. Once I confronted all of these misaligned and irrational beliefs, I came to realise that the pure, innocent child who loves and feels deeply is still within. She was lost for a while, but not forever.

Now she can see the patterns, and the pain that has come down through the family line for generations, and she can stop it.

She can use it to create a life of meaning, purpose and of true intimate connection.

And not with those who don’t know how to offer it in return.

It took being the black sheep to find myself.

To realise that I don’t need to wait to be included or loved, or accepted. I can do all of those things for myself.

Image Author’s Own

And with it comes a life lived from the heart, because I’m not scared of being hurt anymore, I don’t fear rejection or betrayal because I use that gift of reading people to choose who my safe people are to spend my time with.

My life now looks like a string of strange choices to those who don’t have the eyes to see. My father told me that ‘you like to make life difficult for yourself”. And with his limited perception he is right.

But I know different.

I no longer choose the 9–5pm just because it’s normal. I no longer choose to people-please to be liked and accepted. I no longer do ‘normal’ things just because. I do really strange, heart centred things that feel alive and wonderful. Like spend all the money I have on an amazing trip to the UK to take my children to see their family, rather than being ‘responsible’ and having money in the bank ‘just in case’.

There’s no aliveness in that, and I’m no longer accountable to anyone other than myself.

That my friends is the gift in the grief, I now have the courage to be truly and completely me, without any fear of judgement.

True freedom! No strings attached!

This article was first published by Hello, Love - a publication by the Good Men Project on Medium 22/12/25.

Inner child healing has transformed my life and I now use it in a professional capacity as a holistic counsellor to help others do the same. If you’d like to experience the gift in the grief take a look at my 8 week programme, Journey to Wholeness: https://www.thecreationspace.com.au/inner-child-healing. I’d love to have you onboard!