<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The tender nouns are lined up on the table and... > The tender nouns are lined up on the table and each one has a transaction underneath it. Family is a coalition. A boundary is a territorial marking. Toxicity is a threat classification. Loyalty is the membership dues the coalition demands, and forgiveness is the coalition's demand to be readmitted at the old rank without paying. Reconciliation is repricing. Access to the grandchildren is the coalition's future members held as leverage, and the inheritance is the parent's last remaining currency, priced by both parties whether or not either says so. What the young call no contact and the old call abandonment, primatologists call expulsion, and expulsion in the primate record is rarely the act of a single animal leaving; it is a coalition closing around one member and moving it outside the circle where the group's protection ends. {{A boundary requires only distance. An expulsion requires an audience.}} That is the line that separates the two things the therapeutic vocabulary has collapsed into one word: the animal that leaves a territory where it was being hurt is in flight, and flight is ancient and honorable and needs no one's permission, but the animal that recruits its siblings, controls the holidays, withholds the grandchildren, and makes sure the story of the parent's toxicity reaches the rest of the troop is running coalitionary punishment, and punishment is a different transaction with a different beneficiary. {{Flight protects the one who leaves. Expulsion rewards the ones who stay, and it is the ones who stay who write the account.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The tender nouns are lined up on the table and each one has a transaction underneath it. Family is a coalition. A boundary is a territorial marking. Toxicity is a threat classification. Loyalty is the membership dues the coalition demands, and forgiveness is the coalition's demand to be readmitted at the old rank without paying. Reconciliation is repricing. Access to the grandchildren is the coalition's future members held as leverage, and the inheritance is the parent's last remaining currency, priced by both parties whether or not either says so. What the young call no contact and the old call abandonment, primatologists call expulsion, and expulsion in the primate record is rarely the act of a single animal leaving; it is a coalition closing around one member and moving it outside the circle where the group's protection ends. A boundary requires only distance. An expulsion requires an audience. That is the line that separates the two things the therapeutic vocabulary has collapsed into one word: the animal that leaves a territory where it was being hurt is in flight, and flight is ancient and honorable and needs no one's permission, but the animal that recruits its siblings, controls the holidays, withholds the grandchildren, and makes sure the story of the parent's toxicity reaches the rest of the troop is running coalitionary punishment, and punishment is a different transaction with a different beneficiary. Flight protects the one who leaves. Expulsion rewards the ones who stay, and it is the ones who stay who write the account.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-tender-nouns-lined-who-write-account ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->