remembering

Marc Chagall, "The Blue House"

my dad died in 2000. i have thought for years that he died at age 53, but this morning i realized that dying in 2000 would have meant he was actually 55, as he was born in 1945. i'm not sure why i've thought he was 53 all these years.

i hadn't thought much about him consciously lately. but for the past few weeks i've had a few random thoughts of him here and there flash through my mind. a saying he used to use. a particular dinnertime memory. nothing bad or upsetting.

then yesterday morning, i craved doughnuts all of a sudden and remembered that sometimes he would make them in our kitchen, so i set about trying to do that. they didn't turn out. i didn't know what i was doing and they were raw on the inside. but it was fun to try.

then i wondered why i was having these moments. and i thought to look at the calendar and realized that tomorrow, that is today, would have been his birthday.

times like these, "anniversaries" i think some people call them, annual markers of significant or potentially triggering events, i try to use these to reflect on where i am today and how much progress i've made.

i'm glad to be able to say that this year, this day is passing without very difficult emotions. the only negative emotion i do have going on lately is some remorse for having shared the dark history of my family over the years. i've had pangs of shame, feelings that i should have kept more to myself.

but i do believe that this is a common symptom in a dysfunctional family. the pressure to keep the family secrets, or keep up appearances that all was well. to me, this is a destructive impulse that is part of the system. i believe shame and secrecy in dysfunctional families serve to maintain the status quo. if no one admits that anything is wrong, no one gets help and nothing changes. year after year. generation after generation.

when i was a child and people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, all i ever could think i wanted out of life was to be "happy." that's all i ever said i wanted. i had no aspirations for any career. or any material gains. just to be happy.

and that is what i've worked towards.

so whenever i feel any sense of guilt about how much i've "spilled the beans" about my family's problems in my past, i try to tell myself that i'm just feeling an old symptom, and i can let this symptom go. i can honor the needs of the younger me. i can respect that i felt the need to tell things in order to heal. i can respect what i felt i needed to do. even though it isn't the same as what i feel the need to do today.

and seriously, it's not as if i published a memoir and went on talk shows. i told a few trusted friends, and therapists. wrote things in papers at school. there's probably only a handful of people who know the details of my childhood, what i see as "the truth" about my family. and probably only a fraction of those i told even remember the things i shared.

it was for me that i did the telling. i felt a profound and deep need to NOT keep things secret. to defy that lesson i felt i'd been taught, to pretend everything was ok even when it wasn't. i needed to know that i had every right to be upset. that my feelings were valid. that i was ok. that i could heal and grow and move on and not be defined by my past. and part of learning to let go, for me, was to tell it. to tell my truth. so that i could see it for what it was and feel everything i needed to let out, that i'd kept in. so i could finally feel free of it.

and it worked. years of processing and remembering and feeling. of sorting and digging and understanding why i behaved and felt and thought the way i did in my present life. fears i had. difficulties i had relating with others. in learning to trust. in learning to set boundaries.

i'm certainly not finished :) i don't think we ever are. i think part of the meaning of life is to continue to learn from our experiences, and learn how to live in the moment. at least that's part of the meaning i've found for myself.

i'm relieved to see that today, i live in a better place. i don't feel haunted. i don't feel compelled to revist, or to tell all about what i've lived through. i feel more than ever that my life as a child is in the perspective i need it to be in order to function in my current life. it is enough in my memory and consciousness that i can learn from it and do my best to not repeat any harmful patterns. and yet it is resolved enough that it no longer interferes with my life the way it used to.


about "the truth"



what i've learned about "the truth" is that my experience of my childhood is my own. for years i thought i needed the rest of my family to see things the way i did. and for years i spent time and energy confronting them, or avoiding them, trying to get them to see and admit that things were worse than they would admit.

but what i finally learned is that i didn't need their perspective to match my own for me to feel validated. i understand that each person in a family sees things the way they do, and feels things the way they do, from their own unique perspective. and what feels severe to one person, might truly feel "not that bad" to another. we all have our own limits for pain and suffering. and differing perspectives doesn't mean that i'm wrong or that they are. it is just that we are different people.

what can get confusing for survivors of abuse is when they need their abuser to admit what they did wrong. and when you take the risk to actually confront your abuser, and they say, "that's absurd. i never did that to you." that can be one of the most painful and confusing things for a survivor. you might wonder, did i dream it? did it really happen?

i'm happy and very fortunate, that no one was in that much denial in my home. people could admit the problems, but in my case, it was more like "yeah, but why are you so upset about this?"

the experience i have had with a perpetrator denying abuse, has made me think that it might be that sometimes perpetrators may truly not remember what they did. it makes sense that their ego defenses would have acted to suppress that they harmed someone they loved. especially if they were drunk or psychotic at the time they hurt you. people's minds often serve to protect them from pain. and this can include the pain of knowing and admitting how you have hurt others.

so that has brought me solace and peace. knowing that i don't need an abuser to admit what they have done, or apologize, in order for me to know what was true. i don't need their permission, in order to heal. i can see them where they are. and know what was true for me. i can heal and move on without needing anything from them to make that possible. i do not need to depend on them for healing. i am responsible for and capable of my own healing.


about "grief"

leah piken kolidas, "fishing"

what i've learned from the death of my father, about grief, is that just because someone has died, doesn't mean you can't still heal and grow and transform the way you felt about that person. grieving is a process. it's work you can continue even long after the person is gone.

i still think my father was damaged and did harm to his loved ones. but today, i no longer feel the pain i used to when i think of him. i know that his life was the way it was because he never got the healing he needed. for all the ways he was hurt as a child, and as a human being. all the lessons he didn't learn, didn't resolve. he wasn't evil. i see him as a victim who never learned how to be a survivor. who never learned how not to take out his sorrows and pain and disappointment on those he loved and was responsible for. who never learned how to get through life sober, while facing your feelings.

what i learned from him most of all is the importance of never running from pain, never trying to escape or bury it. that we are never as helpless as we may think or feel we are. that life is never just what we are given or where we find ourselves. it's what we can manage to do with what we have, what we can manage to make with where we find ourselves, and what we can learn from where we are and where we've been. to move forward.

i usually apply this quote to my parenting of my own child. but now i realize that why i came to love this quote in the first place is from learning how to liberate myself from my own family of origin.


"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
~Kahlil Gibran