I Forgot What?
A couple of weeks ago, my external life took a back seat to my internal life. Although my external life is pretty good these days, my internal life is pretty ugly. It is a series of traumatic experiences with emotions to match. When it is time to pay attention to the internal life, it means my childhood memories are coming back. And I had better pay attention. I had better be ready for some depression, some sadness, some anger that rivals a toddler’s tantrums, some anxiety and some intense exhaustion. Needless to say, the external life starts to slow down a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, the basic stuff still happens. The kids eat. They go to school. I go to work. But phone calls get missed. The emails pile up. And obviously, the writing just doesn’t happen. There are entire nights of staring at the wall. There are a lot of naps. There are many self-care visits to therapeutic practitioners. Over the years, I have learned what it takes to face the memories. These coping mechanisms are critical to my recovery. If I don’t do them, there will be one result. I will get sick. I will get so sick that there will be no external life. Everything will stop. And as a single mother, that is simply not an option. read more…
Let’s Make a Deal
I have always believed in God. I have been a Christian my entire life. Some conservative Christians might say that my beliefs are unconventional, but I call myself a Christian.
When I was a child, I imagined God as a projection of my parents. This is actually quite common among children. I assumed that if God was an authority figure, God must use that power like my parents used their power. Obviously, this did not bode well for my relationship with God. I saw God as the old testament God on steroids. My God was punitive. My God did not forgive. My God had rules that were inconsistent and hard to understand. My God was angry … even raging. My God was not happy with me. My God didn’t love me. read more…
Don’t Call Me Pretty
I am not a super model, but some say I’m pretty. I have been called all the words for a woman who meets the generally acceptable societal standards of attractiveness: pretty, beautiful, sexy. I have had male attention. I have dated. I have married.
I know that the way I look has been an advantage for me because women are judged by the way we look. I have probably been offered more help in stores. I have probably made more money in my career. I know I have been judged far less than others. I know there are advantages I cannot see because that is how privilege works. I get that.
Raising an Autonomous Generation: How to Set Boundaries with Your Children
Here is a link to my original article about boundaries on Everyday Feminism:
Raising an Autonomous Generation: How to Set Boundaries with Your Children
The Childhood I Never Had
I didn’t have a childhood. My childhood was stolen by emotionally, physically and sexually abusive parents. My nonexistent childhood has caused struggles in my adult life that seem insurmountable. I battle with the feeling that something is missing … something that I will never find in my adult life. Although my situation was particularly harsh, I have realized that most adults have unfinished childhoods. They may have lost someone close to them, experienced abuse (which is more common than we think), or just spent far too little time being a kid.
During the past seven years, I have been devoted to giving my children a safe and nurturing childhood. I have spent time trying to understand what a real childhood looks like. I cannot rely on my instinct. Parental instincts tend to come from our relationship with our parents. And I didn’t have parents. I had abusers. So I research. I read parenting blogs and articles. I ask questions … many questions. What do kids need from parents? How do they interpret our discipline approaches? What activities help them discover who they are meant to be? read more…
The Battle of the Wills: Can I Have a Do-over?
I am a willful person. I have always been willful. I was born that way. Some look at willfulness as a bad thing. Willful people have been described as “type A”, control freaks and hard to be around. Some very willful people have done serious damage to the world in our history. I am sure Adolf Hitler was willful. And in his case, it would be justified to call him a control freak (and many other things).
But there is another side to willfulness. Will may have almost destroyed the world, but it has also been responsible for saving the world. Will does not have to manifest as violent and controlling. Will can also mean willingness. It can manifest as a desire to do something important no matter what gets in the way. I am sure that Martin Luther King was willful … thank goodness. read more…
Finding Joy, Finding Freedom
As I sit here in this beachfront condo and watch the sunrise on the ocean, I can’t help but know that my life is good. So many people don’t know where their next meal is coming from. So many people cannot pay their rent. So many people are trapped in minimum wage jobs which require them to work 70 hours per week just to make ends meet. That is not my situation. I work hard for what I have, but I know plenty of people who work hard and still can’t make ends meet. I know that I could lose it all tomorrow, and it may or may not have anything to do with my efforts. I am lucky to be financially secure. I know that.
I also have two beautiful children. Other than soft teeth and one uncooperative eye, they are healthy. They are full of life. They love each day to the fullest and they love me. They are super fun (my son added this point). Most importantly, they are safe. So many people cannot have children. So many people have children with mental, emotional and physical challenges. So many people have lived longer than their children. So many people are unable to keep their children safe because of extreme poverty, homelessness or war. I have not experienced these challenges. I am so lucky to have them. I know that.
Have Trauma, Will Hover (Chapter 3)
‘Vacation’ is a funny word for a single mother of young children. Before having children, the term ‘vacation’ would invoke a feeling of relaxation, but it doesn’t mean what it used to mean. Now it means I will move my exhausted self and young children to a different place, so I can do the same activities with the same unrealistic schedule. Nonetheless, we go to the beach every year.
I pick the beach because it is the least painful of the options. I live within a few hours of numerous beaches so there are no long trips or plane tickets. I don’t have to drag them (and more importantly their stuff) all over a city while trying to keep their attention at tourist attractions that may or may not be appropriate for their age. And to be fair, they love the beach. They start to jump up and down the minute they see the ocean and the sand. read more…
Walking Away
I have spent the majority of my life in various states of anger. For the first thirty years, this anger was mainly turned inward. I didn’t have permission to express anger in my home. The retaliation might have killed me. In addition, society had taught me that it was inappropriate for girls to outwardly express anger. Instead, I just let my anger eat away at me from the inside. This anger manifested in physical diseases. I was sick most of my childhood and early adulthood. But it also caused me to hate myself. I had a deep self-hatred which triggered chronic anxiety. There was no way for me to relax and enjoy myself, or even better, create a life of joy and meaning. There was always an inner voice telling me I wasn’t good enough.
Once I started my recovery, the anger started flowing out in waves. It was so intense that it would be better described as rage. I was scared of it at first. I had seen rage in my childhood and it was usually directed at me. Plus, I had come to the conclusion that anger was bad … all the time. This is what I had been taught. But through my therapy, I learned to accept my anger, and even come to enjoy it a little too much. It seemed powerful to me at the time because I had been powerless for so long. I plotted my parents’ deaths. I visualized a killing spree of every abuser in my life. I fantasized about putting them in prison. I thought of all the statements I would say at their sentencing. I even contemplated their struggles in life after death, and I looked forward to it. I am not ashamed of this anger. It is a normal part of a recovery process.
Three Little Words
I have always been a talker. I am an extrovert by nature. In my family, that made me a problem child. They couldn’t get me to shut up. I was threatened with my life and physically assaulted many times because I was exposing the family secret. But there was good news for them. Nobody believed me. So as a child, I learned that nobody ever would.
My experience with unsupportive responses started with the women in my family. The most common response from my mother and grandmother was, “Don’t make things up because that’s not nice.” During one conversation with my grandmother, she explained that, “Men have urges and it is our job as women to meet those urges.” There are so many things wrong with that statement, but there is one point that stands out for me. I was not a woman. I was a child. read more…
