sometimes broken is better

I recently had a visit with my father's sister, who is one of only two relatives with whom I'm in regular contact (there are a ton of aunts and uncles, and a very large extended family).  It seems to be the case that when I'm spending time with my few remaining family contacts, that the issue of my parents comes up at least once, and we really have to dig into that for an hour or so.

My aunt is a fairly conflict-avoidant person, and also doesn't like to give the impression that she's judging anybody or spreading gossip. This means that she says only vague things most of the time, although slowly slowly slowly she's relaxing more and being more open about the fact that my mother has always been awful to her, and that my father has been very passive in order to avoid rocking the boat. But mostly the sense I get is that she's super-uncomfortable with the family yuck (as siblings/extended family so often are) and naively optimistic about the possibility of everybody forgiving each other and holding hands and singing kumbaya.

So this time around, in addition to a heavy dose of "you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family" from my uncle, the main theme was "healing." My aunt is under the impression that my mother is getting really freaked out about the possibility of never seeing me again. My aunt thinks that this dawning realization is causing "a change" in my mother and she advised me to remain "open to healing." She encouraged me to attend a family wedding alone, presumably so that I will be 100% available to this "healing" with my mother.

What exactly do people think that healing will look like? This seems to be part of the "you just need to sit down and hash things out" overly simplistic advice file that people dip into so frequently. They seem to imagine that all that is really needed is for the two of us to each take turns sharing our sorrows while the other one patiently listens. Presumably, this would be followed by a good cry and I-love-yous and hugging and everybody would understand each other and live in peace and harmony forevermore.

I found myself feeling so defensive, because there are a bunch of assumptions that people carry with them into these "helpful" discussions. Perhaps I'll write about the bulk of those assumptions later. Right now, I want to focus on one in particular: the assumption that estrangement is always the worst outcome, and that the ultimate goal is reconciliation, AKA happily ever after.

In response to this, I want to quote myself: 

Family estrangement is considered such a sad thing in our society, but nobody considers how absolutely wonderful it can be from the point of view of the person escaping an oppressive, soul-sucking relationship.  It's the kind of wonderful that makes you want to spin in a full skirt in the middle of a breezy meadow.

I like not having my mother in my life.

No, I love not having my mother in my life.

I don't love not having a loving mother figure - that kindof stinks sometimes - but my mother is not ever going to be one. I'm working with what I have here, and I am pretty darn happy to have zero contact with the woman who gave birth to me.

It's erroneous to assume that a fractured family is a miserable one.

I told my aunt that if my mom is really changing, if she's really serious about "healing", then she'll take action. Words mean nothing to me. I'm not going to let her pour out hear heart to me at a family wedding and I'm not going to go to therapy just because somebody says she wants therapy. But I'm not going to extend any invitations, because I've done a lot of my own healing, and have no desire to have a relationship with my mother unless and until she heals herself. I told my aunt and uncle that honestly, the onus of reconciliation is on my mom, if she wants that, because I'm a happier, healthier person without her in my life.  I'm ok with never seeing her again. I don't see it as a crack that needs repair.

If real change happens, I will know it when I see it. I'm 100% open to that. Open, but not holding my breath.

I'm going on with my relieved, happy, skirt-twirly, motherless life.

Sometimes letting a cracked thing just be broken is better.

free to disagree

Dropping in to quickly share a thoughtful Facebook post from The Peaceful Parent Institute.

I love how free my children are to give me honest feedback about what they do and don't like. I love how clearly lacking in inner conflict they are when they express frustration that's resulted in some way from what I've done/said, not done/not said...the next time your child is giving you feedback that's a little bit hard to swallow, try to hold that you're giving them a HUGE gift of allowing, supporting and validating their feelings, their right to have "negative" feelings in close relationships and a right to explore, identify, put words to and express those feelings.

You can read the rest here.

individual

At coffee with a friend last spring, she looked across the couch at me and said something about how I was really, really restricted as a teen. I think her words were "not allowed to live." And you know, she was right. I was, in many ways, not allowed to live. I was expected to live my mother's life - or at least the life that she had wished she had had, colored by her warped child-of-narcissist adult point of view. She was never a normal child, so how could she conceive of what normal and healthy adolescence should be?

A few days later, my husband reviewed our collection of Monty Python DVDs and reported to me that while we owned The Meaning of Life, we do not own The Life of Brian or The Holy Grail. Thinking about this transported me directly back to my days as a high schooler involved in the theater group. There were some kids who were clearly theater kids, and there were some kids who were involved in theater routinely, but were somehow not really part of the theater group. I was one of those. I remember that during my senior year, I was finally allowed to join the end-of-run cast party, held at one thespian's home (I never saw his father, I still have no idea whether or not his father was even present). We watched various episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and it was completely, utterly, mind-blowingly new to me. It was a sense of humor that was completely different from anything I knew. And I loved it.

What I didn't know at that moment was that the reason this humor was so new to me was because it came from outside of my family paradigm. It was something that appealed to me, as an individual, as a member of a community that existed separately from my family. I was seventeen before I discovered this.

When do children normally start experiencing life independently from their family? I don't know, because my "normal" is different from the "normal" of my peers. All I know is that many of them seem to have been experimenting, exploring, testing the waters of individuality many years before I even started dipping my toes in. While they were figuring out who they are, what they like, how things worked for them, I was isolated. I was kept at home, allowed out for specific, strictly-supervised activities and nothing more. By the time I started exploring, they were all so far ahead of me that it made it nearly impossible to catch up.

My oldest son is not quite a "tween" yet, but I can already see him starting to stretch his individuality a bit. Even though I've been working on my initial, pre-programmed "nip it in the bud" reactions to my kids for almost ten years now, I'm still finding new things that make me balk and feel like digging in and saying "no" just because, I don't know, it seems like I should shut this stuff down? How stupid. And yet how conditioned I am (and most of us are!) to think that we should say no, no, no to most requests from kids. My son asks for small things and my immediate impulse is to deny his request, and I have to force myself to slow down, think about whether or not it really matters, and say yes. We're talking about little things like wearing daytime clothing to bed instead of pajamas. Meaningless stuff...except that it's not meaningless to him. It's his first steps toward figuring out how he likes to do things, what other things feel like. He's supposed to be doing this at this age. He needs "little things" to explore right now, and we have to support him in figuring out how to make decisions about what to explore now, before we get to bigger explorations like sex and drugs and driving and such. Thinking about my son and his non-pajama sleepwear reminds me of the time when I was a teen and I wondered what sleeping in the nude was like (I had heard that some people did it), so I tried it. My mother woke me up in the morning, noticed the lack of clothing on my shoulders (the rest of me was under the covers), chastised me for not wearing a nightshirt, and let me know in no uncertain terms that this would not happen again. Why? What did it cost her for me to choose how much clothing I wore while sleeping? How was a decision about my body hers to make at all?

I don't want to make all of the decisions for my children. I want them to be able to explore who they are in both little and bigger ways while they're still living in my home and have the safety net of mom and dad to fall back on. I hope I'm able to remember this as they get older and more separate from me.

human nature

While poking around for a video for Kiki's First (Re)Birthday Party, I rediscovered this 1995 Madonna gem. The sexuality might be a little in-your-face for some (it was pretty hot by '90s standards), but the dancing is incredible and I love the message. These lyrics resonate with me, how about you?

You wouldn't let me say the words I longed to say

You didn't want to see life through my eyes

(Express yourself, don't repress yourself)

You tried to shove me back inside your narrow room

And silence me with bitterness and lies

(Express yourself, don't repress yourself)

free as a bird

I've been cleaning up my files in anticipation of switching over to a new computer. Today's project included transferring data from one old external hard drive to a new, bigger one. In the process, I dug around in the old files, deleting stuff that I no longer want/need and rediscovering plenty of great old stuff.

One of the things I found was a copy of my initial STOP THIS SHIT letter that I sent to my mother. When I had initially stood up to her regarding my plans for my youngest son's birth and then took a month off from contact with her, I had imagined that her anger would be short-lived and that we would eventally go back to business as usual. In the past, when one of her children had defied her, she would punish us via devaluing and/or discarding us, but that eventually she would get bored of that, we would pass from being in the doghouse to being ignored, and eventually back to normality. In my family, there's generally one child who is the black sheep, one who is the golden child, and three who are ignored, wishing they could be the golden child, but happy that they're not the black sheep. I anticipated a short time in the black sheep role, ended by the arrival of the new baby, and then either going back to a brief golden-child stint or to the flying-under-the-radar position.

Except that's not what happened. Instead, she acted as if my newborn son didn't exist. She acted puzzled by my attempts to include her in his infancy. She ignored me when I attended a birthday dinner for her, and at the end of the dinner, she handed me a letter. I dreaded reading it for the whole hour-long drive home, then couldn't touch it. My husband volunteered to look over it. After he did, he opted to read it to me in her voice. The result was that I still felt hurt by her, but that I was able to laugh as he did his comic impression of her as an imperious, melodramatic Queen of Hearts. 

It was five pages long and full of accusations and lists of my character flaws. It was not the work of a woman who honestly wanted to heal the rift between myself and herself. It was the work of a domineering parent who was issuing a condemnation and order to her wayward child: "you are a worthless turd, and if you ever want to get back into my good graces, you will get back in line where you belong." 

I think my reaction was supposed to be "I'm sorry, Mommy! I love you so much! I'll never do that bad thing again!" Cue the crying and hugging. I had had that fight-and-makeup before. I wasn't doing it again. My initial reaction was to write FUCK YOU in big letters on a piece of 8.5" x 11" computer paper. Just that. Black marker. And mail it. No return address. 

I decided against that response, but it took me almost two months to come up with something. When I did, I had to draft it on the computer, because I simply couldn't get words to flow onto paper with a pen. After typing it, I realized that I didn't like sending things to her in my own handwriting. First, it seemed like too much of me on the paper. Second, she had often boasted of her perfect Palmer Method handwriting, and scorned my own (perfectly legible, perfectly serviceable, perfectly me) writing style. I decided to print the letter and mail it. She didn't deserve a handwritten response.

This is what I sent:

Mom –

I was not surprised to receive this letter from you, since I was aware that you have been feeling hurt and left out.  While you mention a recent estrangement, I would suggest instead that the recent state of our relationship is simply a more honest reflection of a dyad that has been emotionally unbalanced for years.  Your letter reflects a misperception of events and an eagerness to assign character faults and blame to others.  I am uncertain what you hope to accomplish by sending such a letter.  

I am no longer willing to tolerate the disrespect and abuse with which you treat your children.  I am neither the direct cause of your emotional distress, nor am I responsible for resolving it.  In fact, I believe that it would be unhealthy for me to assume that responsibility.  Enclosed is your letter; I am keeping a copy for myself but thought that you might find it useful in the future to re-read what you expressed to me.  You once suggested therapy to me; I encourage you to take your own advice, and would suggest that discussing the thoughts expressed in your letter would be an excellent starting point.

- Claire

I think it's the last time I called her "Mom". She later called my letter "nasty" and berated me for "speaking for your siblings." She cried to my aunts and my siblings, who tried to tell me that I needed to "just sit down and talk it out" or begged me to "bury the hatchet." The thing is, I had discovered my dignity, and I wasn't ever going back. I was free, and there was nothing the flying monkeys could do about it. 

i am so free from you

I'm up late, reading blog entries from people like Upsi and Kiki and Mulderfan, and this is what my soul sings:

"I am so free from you
I am so free from you
I am so free from you."

It's hardly poetry, but it's what resonates through me.

I remember being a preteen and teenager, and wanting more than anything to be free. Not free in the sense of being able to come and go as I please, or to live outside my parents home, as I imagine many teenagers feel, but free in the sense of free to be myself. Free from tyrrany. Free from censorship. Free from being told what a bad person I am.

I don't have to be near you.
I don't have to be at your beck and call.
I don't have to attend you on the days you deem important for no reason other than my biological relationship to you.
I don't have to pretend that we're "one big happy family".

Family estrangement is considered such a sad thing in our society, but nobody considers how absolutely wonderful it can be from the point of view of the person escaping an oppressive, soul-sucking relationship.  It's the kind of wonderful that makes you want to spin in a full skirt in the middle of a breezy meadow.

Divorcing my mother is the best thing I have ever done, bar none.

As for my father? I'm sorry he chose to tether himself to such a woman. He had potential, perhaps. It was wasted on her. He made his choice, and I made mine.

My choice is to be ME, and free.