Episode 39: How to Cope as The Black Sheep of Your Family

If you’ve been labeled the black sheep of your family – the weird one, the strange one, the one that no one seems to understand – and you’re feeling hurt, frustrated, or are finding it difficult to cope with the judgment, then this episode is for you.

As spiritually gifted people, we tend to be labeled various things that have negative connotations, and many times our own family members are our worst critics.

Some of them will succumb to superstition and negative social conditioning about your giftedness, but it’s up to you to have the courage to not allow their judgments to stop you from shining your light and being true to who you are.

On this episode, I share my own personal experience with being the black sheep in my family, how I deal with that in a healthy way, and how you can do the same.

Episode Highlights:

• A deeper look at why you have been labeled the black sheep
• Societal programming on humanity
• Don’t take it personal
• Why you should embrace being the black sheep
• Shifting the negative connotation
• The choice you made before being born into this world
• Christ Consciousness and moving your lineage forward
• Knowing your worth and the value of your giftedness
• Be proud of who you are
• Your perception about you is the only thing that matters
• Approaching the situation with wisdom and skill
• Don’t get stuck on the emotional roller coaster
• The struggle of not being accepted by your family
• Blessing your family with love no matter how they treat you
• Athena’s emotional ups and downs with her own family
• How to handle being accused of doing witchcraft, voodoo, or obeah
• The irony of it all

Transcription: (Click Here to Download a PDF Copy of This Transcription)

I harmonize in order to survive, modeling instinct. I seal the store of life force with the galactic tone of integrity. I am guided by the power of universal water.

Welcome to episode 39 of the Cosmic Celebrity Podcast here at athenalucene.com. On this episode, and every episode, you will receive intuitive divine downloads that will naturally realign you to your natural, unique, energetic pattern, your signature pattern, your soul essence.

And the more you awakened to that alignment and divine essence within you, the more you are embodying and embracing a cosmic celebrity, or I say your cosmic celebrity – living your authentic truth, standing in the truth of your purpose, honoring yourself, honoring your soul, and absolutely never betraying your soul. That becomes an absolute non-negotiable for you.

On this episode specifically, I’m going to be talking to you about why you’ve been labeled the black sheep of your family and what to do about it.

The “Black Sheep” Label Explained

So, many times when I’m talking to persons who are spiritually gifted, I hear the same story. It’s amazing how when persons are spiritually gifted, how so many spiritually gifted persons, while they feel alone, there’s so many of them that have so many similar experiences because of their giftedness when it comes to nurturing those gifts and understanding them and embracing them and truly integrating them in their day-to-day life in a really psychological and emotionally balanced way.

I always hear the peripheral, “I am a black sheep in my family,” or, “I’ve been labeled as a black sheep in my family.” And the first thing I want to address is what exactly is the black sheep of the family label? So what I mean by that … And by all means, your experience is unique to you and personal to you, so fill in the blanks. And either what I say or how I label or how I explain or experience what exactly that is, that’s true for me. So you can add to it or take away from it.

But when I say black sheep of the family, it’s first and foremost based on my experience, my own personal experience. And then it’s also based on what other persons have shared with me in sacred space, whether it’s through their sessions, whether it’s through personal conversations I’ve had with friends of mine who are also spiritually gifted. But essentially, the black sheep label is when you are so unique in your family, you are the one that stands out, you are the one that is known for being different, right? You are known as the one that may be perceived as, or maybe have been directly outright called weird, the weird one, the different one, the one that nobody gets, the one that no one understands or the one that is gossiped about, or the one that is taken advantage of the most.

So conversely, it’s all these so-called negative labels, but then on the same token, there’s so many positive qualities about you that make you the black sheep of the family, like you’re the one that’s always there for people, that is always pouring in deep love to the other person or a family member. Supporting them, being there for them in a deep and genuine capacity that they don’t seem – other family members – don’t seem, to be able to reciprocate to you.

The difference is though, with the black sheep label, that tends to be a negative, a very negative connotation. It tends to be a negative label because oftentimes the same family members, they focus on the negative aspects of this label, right? They don’t focus on your uniqueness, your unique ability to really show deep love and concern and empathy.

Instead, it’s this negative label of being the black sheep, the one that’s so different, so weird, right? Because truthfully, it’s the capacity of your family members to not be able to understand you. They don’t have the capacity to understand you, because they don’t have the spiritual, deep spiritual insights that you do.

They have not had the experiences to facilitate accelerated growth, spiritual expansion, conscious expansion, where they can understand deeper insights, where they can understand deep capacities of loving and empathy. And because they don’t understand you, they label you.

Isn’t that human nature? And isn’t that how society has programmed humanity to operate, through judgments and labels and so forth?

And so, your family will still love you. A lot of you, the dynamics of families are so different, but the message that I have for you is that let’s first understand what this whole black sheep of the family is, or the label that’s projected on you simply because it’s not easy to understand someone of your deep, spiritual giftedness and spiritual connection and the insights that you receive, right?

Why You Shouldn’t Take It Personal

So if you’re receiving insights, deep insights, and you’re constantly around other persons – including family members who are not as awakened as you, not as spiritually connected as you, not as deeply insightful – of course, you’re going to stand out. Of course, you’re going to do things differently. Of course, you’re going to speak differently. Of course, you’re going to have different mannerisms and demeanor, right?

So, for instance, if a family member is lying to you … Like, for me personally, I remember me being able to know when a family member was being disingenuous with me or disingenuine with me and was not being truthful with me, just not really caring about what I was sharing with them, but they were trying to pretend as if they were, but I was able to just sense that they were not present with me.

And because of that, my whole demeanor changed. And at the time, I didn’t know how to manage things and how to manage my emotions when I knew someone was being deceptful to me, or when I knew that someone was being disingenuine to me.

And there’s nothing that used to be my personal pet peeve more than when someone was not genuine with me, because I am a very genuine person. And I didn’t understand at the time that no one owes me genuinity just because I’m genuine to them. We can talk about that more in another episode.

But the main point that I want to make is I used to react a lot of times emotionally. I used to definitely react based on the things that I was picking up, the misalignments that I was picking up with persons. And so, it just brought me to a place of sadness and it brought me to a place of, you know, this back and forth in my mind, “Well, can I trust this person? Can I not trust this person?”

It was so confusing for me, because before I understood the language for this, before I understood what was going on, on a human nature level and on a spiritual level, it was very confusing for me. I thought that this person, these family members, were genuinely aware of what they were doing, were deliberately playing mind games.

Well, I’m here to tell you the first thing is that they don’t have the deep insight. Please don’t take it personal if you’ve been labeled as a black sheep of your family, or if you have been laughed at, or if you’ve been gossiped about in your family, because the bottom line is, they don’t understand you.

Please don’t take it personal. They don’t even understand. They’re not connected, spiritually connected, with themselves and self-aware enough to even understand that they’re being phony or they’re being incongruent with the things they say and the things they do in their own personal life.

How can someone truly be excited about you if they’re not excited about themselves or their own lives?

So the bottom line is, do not take it personal if you’ve been labeled as a black sheep in your family. And many of you are still continue to have that label, and it’s not just when you were a child, it’s continued into your adulthood. But I’m here to tell you, you need to embrace. That’s what you do. You embrace being the black sheep of your family.

And you get to understand – through knowledge, through various avenues, such as this podcast, you get to understand, right? You get to understand exactly what that is.

Shifting The Perspective

The black sheep of your family label is a negative connotation. And we’re going to shift the perspective of that because a black sheep of your family simply means that you are a spiritual genius. It means that you are mature, highly empathetic, highly insightful, a spiritual genius.

You are phenomenal. You are a trailblazer in your family. You are the sage. You are, metaphysically speaking, the chosen one, the Christ one, the crystalline DNA, the one that’s going to bring the family lineage forward through your alignment, through your spiritual awareness, once you understand what to do, once you understand how to bless everybody with love, once you understand not to be reactive to people. And that’s your role.

And by the way, you chose this on a soul level to be that Christ one, that crystalline DNA, the crystalline or Christ Consciousness. Metaphysically speaking, you chose to be that for your family. You chose to bring your lineage forward. You chose to be the one to be so aware, so spiritually connected, that through your authenticity, your connection with yourself and your soul, you chose to be the leader of your family who is going to pioneer the spiritual awakeness for your family, because you are not going to react to your family anymore.

You are going to hold a vibration that’s so high about your own self and your own giftedness that they have no choice but to assimilate and to basically honor and respect the vibration that you’re putting through.

So all these talks about generational curses and all these things … I personally don’t believe in curses, at the level of consciousness that I live at, from my state of mind, from my spiritual insights. I no longer believe in curses. I’ll do a whole different podcast on that.

But what I do believe in is that there are misalignments and family dysfunction and pathologies, that energies and patterns that need to be dissolved. And I believe, and I know, that as the “black sheep of the family,” you are that different vibration, that different frequency in your family. You are the savior, your savior and the savior and your family and the savior wherever you go, because you hold that higher frequency.

But you don’t know your worth. You don’t know the value of your giftedness because you haven’t embraced it. You haven’t had the language. You don’t understand the subtleties. And so here I am starting to show you and teach you exactly how to embrace your gifts.

First of all, stop seeing yourself as this black sheep of the family. As if nobody gets you, nobody appreciates you. What’s wrong with you?

There’s nothing wrong with you. You’ve been labeled because other persons do not understand you. They don’t have the capacity to understand you. They don’t have the consciousness to understand you, because they don’t see what you see. They don’t sense what you sense. They don’t have the sense of awareness that you have. They don’t have the capacity to be as thoughtful as you are, because they don’t have the mind and heart balance. Okay?

So now it’s time for you to reshape that, to give it a new perspective for yourself so that you can fully embrace that you are gifted. You are gifted, and yeah, you’re the different one. You are very different. You’re highly spiritually intelligent.

Embrace that and shine. You’re meant to embrace that and shine. You’re meant to dissolve the dysfunction in the families.

Do you know how special it is to be able to walk in a room or just have the premonitions about things before it happens? Do you know how gifted, how highly gifted you are? Be proud of who you are.

Damn what anybody else has to say about you. How do you feel about you?

When you feel good about you, and when you accept and see your gifts as beautiful divine and sacred gifts, can’t nobody break you. Nobody can come to you with a negative perception about you or a label and then you take that on, because you get to understand that your perception is the only thing that matters. That’s it.

You don’t want to entertain anything negative, no negative label about anything coming your way. Right? Because you hold that power. What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about yourself?

My Personal Experience Dealing With Family

And when you take yourself away from that dysfunction, when you establish healthy boundaries, when you skillfully and with wisdom approach the situation with your family members, you know … I remember personally when my family … I was always known as a black sheep. I was always misunderstood, to this day.

To this day, I’m misunderstood. And you know what? I just say that it’s okay. I don’t need to be understood. I don’t need to be validated by anybody else understanding me. And that includes my family.

But you know what I do? Because I used to get in these, like, really … I used to be so emotionally afflicted over my family because I never understood why they didn’t get me. I never understood any of that. And I never understood …

I remember when birthdays and holiday times would come around and I’d be so happy to see my family, and I would try to stay connected with them throughout the year. And it’s strange because it was like almost as if I was … like some of my family members were actually suspicious of my kindness.

Because I mailed birthday gifts. I have just really extended a lot of kindness and genuinity and happiness, true joy when I would see my family. Because I didn’t live in the same state as them, so when I had the opportunity to see them during a holiday or something like that – during the holidays for Christmas dinner or any of those things – I would be so excited and genuinely happy to see them, and they would just look at me confused. Like, “Why are you so happy to see me? Do you really like me?” “Um, yeah. I love you. You’re my family. You know what I mean? I love you and I see the best in you.”

I don’t look to see the bad in people. And so that used to really hurt my feelings because I’m like … and then I would get in my head and then I would replay the interaction over in my head over and over again. Like, “Does this person not want a relationship with me? Do they want a relationship with me? What do they want?” Or I sent a Christmas card or I sent a holiday card and I didn’t get one back. Or I’ve even had family members outright not even respond.

So, it was just incredibly confusing for me, not to mention the emotional up and down, because there’s nothing I wanted more than connection with my family and for us to just be this happy, joyous, happy family.

In my family, some of my family members are very superstitious, so they didn’t understand me. And I now know that they were able … Some people can feel my energy then, and they didn’t know what it was. And some people, honestly, when some people feel my energy, they get nervous because they don’t know what that is.

They get nervous. And I’ve dealt with family members and people in general, who’s been superstitious, who are superstitious, and because they could feel my energy and they could feel a different vibration, and because they don’t have the language for that, they would literally be scared, like, “Oh my God, are you doing witchcraft?”

You know, I’m from a West Indian culture. So in our West Indian culture, we call it voodoo or Obeah. So, I’ve been accused of doing voodoo and witchcraft and Obeah, because there’s something very different about my essence. And when people don’t understand … And that used to be so hurtful for me, because I know who I am and I know my heart and I know my genuinity and I know my passion and I know my truth and I know how I feel about people and how I love people. I just really see the good in people, and I’ve always been that way.

And so, it used to hurt my feelings so bad when persons would label me or when my family members would be afraid of me or be suspicious of me. Or one second, they would be really nice to me, and then the next second I would feel like they don’t really embrace me the way that I wish they would.

And I went for years on this back and forth emotional roller coaster ride just trying to understand, what have I done or how do I behave that makes you behave this way to me?

And listen to this. This is key. This is the golden key. So ask and you shall receive, right? So because I’m such a deep thinker, always been a deep thinker. It’s why I’m a spiritual thought leader today. I don’t know what else to be because it’s a big part of my essence.

I realized, through thinking and through my spirituality and asking the universe the bigger questions and really powerfully aligning with my soul essence, I realized that, you know what? These persons not being present with me or not engaging with me in the way that I wanted them to or was longing for them to, it had nothing to do with me.

The labels they gave me, the superstitions they had, the… just the… confusing interaction that they displayed to me, had nothing to do with me. And I’m here to tell you, it has nothing to do with you either.

Discovering Who You Are

Now shift your focus away from that and start shifting your focus to you. Start getting into you. Who are you? Start discovering who you are. Start discovering your giftedness. Start discovering and allow yourself to be an environment that’s truly cultivating and healthy and happy where you can flourish, where you can be yourself, where persons who you’re interacting with are uplifting to you, genuine caring, loving.

And let me tell you something. Some family members of mine may be offended by this, but there are strangers who’s been kinder to me. There’s strangers who’s been more loving to me.

And this is not to knock my family members, and I’m not encouraging you all to knock your family members. I’m just simply saying to you that I don’t believe that all of my family members operate on a level of awareness and spiritual maturity and spiritual insight, and it’s not their fault.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think they premeditated it or was conscious of how they were behaving, because if you are not deeply reflective of your life and retrospective of the experiences that you’ve been engaged in, there’s no way that you are going to have the insights that a person who’s spiritually gifted tends to have. Because that’s one of the main things or uniqueness or spiritual intelligence of a spiritual gifted persons, that we’re deeply reflective and retrospective. We think about things. We explore how we feel about things. We’re very in touch with our feelings and our emotions, many of us, and the more we develop and grow spiritually and mature, the more this is just effortless for us. We just do this so effortlessly without even realizing that we’re actually doing this.

And so I’m saying, love your family. Love on them. Think about a person that doesn’t have the capacity to really embrace a higher frame of reference or a capacity to love as deeply as you. And it’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because they don’t know how. They haven’t awakened to that level of awareness yet. So bless them with love, but do it in a way that’s healthy for you.

If you go to holiday dinners and they make you feel uncomfortable, or if it’s a situation where persons are unkind or disrespectful to you, leave it alone. Bless them with love. Bless yourself with love and leave it alone. And enjoy your own company until you can find persons in your life that are truly going to uplift and support you and not put negative labels on you.

My true intention is that this podcast is really for persons who are really struggling with this, who have been labeled as the black sheep of the family, who feel so misunderstood, who feels so judged, who feels so alone, who feel that they just cannot get it right and they just cannot be embraced and fit in with their families the way they really want to.

I’m here to tell you that family is anyone you can create with. Okay?

I’m going to say that again…

Family is anyone you can create with – blood family or not. Anyone that you can create with, that is your family. Gravitate towards those persons, even if they’re not blood family.

Bless your blood family with love and be respectful to them, be cordial to them, but understand that there is a whole other aspect of you that they don’t have the capacity of understanding.In other words, do not allow their negative perceptions and misunderstandings about you frame your perspective about you.

So, embrace being different. Take time for yourself. Think clearly, and be clear about whether or not you’re going to go to that family dinner or that holiday dinner where everybody is being absolute hypocrites with each other.

And I’m sorry to say … Because listen, there are some people who have the most loving family and they cannot imagine what I’m saying. They just can’t imagine it. They can’t fathom it because their families just have a much healthier dynamic. But the reality is there are spiritually gifted persons who’s been labeled as the black sheep of the family, and because of that, they’re treated a certain type of way, you know. And while there’s unique experiences and similarities, there tends to be … Everyone has their own unique experience.

You all know your personal story. You all know the ordeal that you’ve been through with your family. But the bottom line is love your family. Just love them. Bless them with love. Have healthy boundaries. Respect yourself. Love yourself. Be mindful about what aspects of yourself you share with them, and just really have a healthy psychological approach towards them, just the way you would anybody else, a coworker or anybody else.

Like I said, if someone is not excited about you, the way you are excited about them, then they’re not interested in a relationship with you and that’s okay. That’s okay. When you see them, “hello, how are you?” you know. Don’t start sharing all your personal things about your life and things going on with your life. If they don’t like you …

Newsflash, by the way, just because somebody’s a family member doesn’t mean they like you. There are family members that do not like you. Okay? So you have to deal with them. They’re human beings. Deal with them the way … in a psychologically healthy way, the same way you would with persons that you’re not blood family with, right?

Having a Healthy Self-Image

If someone doesn’t show that they take an interest with you, or if you don’t have a lot of similarities with them, a lot of common ground, a lot of things to really facilitate a friendship and cultivate a friendship, just be cordial. Just be cordial when you see them at dinners. Smile. “Hi, how are you?” And just sit in the observer seat.

Just sit in the observer seat and smile to yourself and just be respectful and loving and kind, because that’s what you’ve been called to do. That’s what you’ve been called to do as the person in that family that has, metaphysically speaking, the Christ consciousness, the more expanded Christ Consciousness. It’s been called so many things, you know, the crystalline DNA, the more activated DNA within you, the more activated pineal gland or spiritual giftedness.

So just embrace the label and smile to yourself. And this is why you must know who you are and how you feel about yourself. Because when you have a healthy self-image and self-esteem about yourself, first and foremost, it doesn’t matter what negative label any person tries to put on you or any negative thing that someone has to say about you. You just smile to yourself in your head, and then you put them in the category that they fall in, whether it’s your inner circle or your outer circle, and you live and you engage with them accordingly. It’s that simple. Seriously.

We make things so difficult and we make things so challenging and we get stuck on these emotional roller coaster rides, but not really realizing that we could get off the roller coaster. Get off the roller coaster. Be around people who celebrate you, who thinks highly of you, who respects you. And it’s okay if that circle is small. It’s absolutely okay.

I think… I don’t remember. I think it’s in psychology. I think they say that if you have one or two persons in your inner circle who you can be your absolute raw, authentic self with, share all aspects of you, and this person still loves you, still cares about you, you are so lucky and so blessed. Because society and human nature as a whole, people are phony. And that includes us. At some point or another, we’ve been phony because we’ve been programmed to be phony, unless we’ve deliberately brought our awareness to that, to align with a more genuine energy, right?

So it’s just a matter of embracing who you are, knowing who you are and being okay with your own energy and your own company. I’m such a hermit, personally. And I love going out to various events and socializing, but it has to be with people that I truly feel a resonancy with. It has to be persons that get me and that I get them.

I don’t go out with people just to go out with people or have lunch or dinner, or do any of those social events with people just out of obligation. I’d rather be home and in my own energy, podcasting or writing content or whatever it is, whatever soul nourishing activities I enjoy doing. So, I’m here to just inspire you to do the same.

Just start being all right with you. That’s the bottom line. Just start being all right with you and recognize and pay attention when you’re interacting with persons. If they’re not being respectful to you, if they’re not excited about you, if they’re not lit up about you and truly appreciate you for who you are, and that includes the differences between you and them, differences of opinions, differences about lifestyle, things that you enjoy, that they’re like … If they don’t celebrate that or appreciate those differences and are respectful about that, what do you really want them in your life in a really close capacity for?

It’s okay to just be cordial with them because they’re your family. You have to deal with them at family functions and so forth, but you don’t have to be friends with your family. You don’t even have to like your family, and they don’t even have to like you.

And for whoever this is coming across negative to, if you’re perceiving what I’m saying to be negative, at the end of the day, it’s just not for you. Spirit is saying to me to just say, “I don’t care about what you think if you think that it’s negative,” because my intention is just to really … My heart and my intention is just to speak to the persons who are really struggling with this, who are really trying to fit in with their family, who’s really trying to be people-pleasing with their family and try to have their family’s approval, not realizing that you may never have it.

So you have to be okay with not having it. You have to love yourself so profoundly and so firmly with yourself that even if you don’t have your family’s validation … It’s the first set of persons or groups as humans that we want to feel connection and validation and acceptance from. And I know what that struggle feels like.

And by the way, just to let you know, for me personally, with my family, there’s some family members that don’t even speak to me. I haven’t even been in touch with in years. And the way I see it is I now see it, like, I bless you with love. I bless me with love. You are free. And I am free to create whatever meaningful experiences that … to each of us.

And I bless my family with love. I do, do an exercise where I bless my family with love. Every time they come to mind, I bless them with love, and things of that nature, because at the end of the day, I’ve made a clear decision that I’m going to be me. I’m going to be true to me.

And if you don’t like me, and if you think negatively of me and my giftedness and who I am as a person and my divinity and my essence and how I express that, then that’s your problem – that has nothing to do with me.

But I will respect if you are at a place where you choose not to be a part of my life because you have a negative story or label about what my giftedness means or a superstitious script, you know, that comes from a place of superstition.

So I totally understand, and I don’t take it personal and I’m encouraging you to not take it personal either. Really spend time with yourself. Work on yourself. Improve your life. Do the things that are beneficial for your life.

The Ironic Part

And the funny thing about it is … Let me tell you the irony of all this. This whole podcast, I’ve been talking about family members that don’t get you, don’t accept you, that put negative labels on you. Let me tell you the irony of this…

Once you start living your life and being happy anyway, once you start living your life and start living for you, and start getting into things that you enjoy and create your own happiness and cultivate a life with friendships and other persons who aren’t necessarily blood family, and really resonate with other persons on the same frequency and form friendships and bonds and things of that nature, and just be happy and live your life, oh my gosh, then they’ll start coming around.

Then your family, your blood family of all people, your blood family will start coming around – calling you, checking on you, because they just start getting curious about your life because you’re not there trying to, like, call them constantly, you know, do this and do that to try to be a part of their circle or whatever it is.

Because it’s unfortunate, but even families have cliques, right? So it’s interesting. The irony is that when you move on, when you’re like, “You know what? I bless everybody with love. If it’s meant to be, it’s going to be, and we’re going to have the connection that’s organic and that’s going to be meant to be.” Right?

And the minute you just stop focusing on trying so hard to be accepted and to be validated by them and move on with your life, that’s when they’re going to come around and start wanting to talk to you and see what … like why… Because it’s human nature. But let me tell you this, when they come around, do not take your focus away from your own life.

So share this podcast in the spirit of love with anyone that you think that can truly be supported and soul nourished by it. Again, this is something that is near and dear to my heart. All my podcasts are, but this topic is definitely one of the topics that truly resonates with me and was a true challenge for me earlier on in my understanding of my giftedness and in the nurturance of my giftedness.

So please again, share it. Comment. I look forward to receiving your comments. Share your experiences, and I will absolutely be happy to personally respond to your comment.

All the comments on my podcasts are personally responded to, read and responded to by me. So feel free to share these comments. They’re of great value, and I’m absolutely looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

I’m Athena Lucene, and I came to this earth planetary construct as a galactic beacon of expanded love and light consciousness, here to help you assist and support you along your way, your spiritual growth, back to the universal oneness and collective consciousness.

And again, it’s my absolute joy to support you. And that’s it for now.

I am Athena Lucene, abundant blessings and blissful moments.