i've recently come to the conclusion that the family i was born into - in particular, the parents i was born to and the brother i grew up with - does not constitute a "family."
my brother, for obvious reasons. ("family" doesn't do that to family.)
my parents, for somewhat more covert reasons.
i share their genes, yes.
i appreciate that they fed me and clothed me and kept a roof over my head.
i appreciate, also, that they took out loans for about half of what was left to pay for my B.A. after grants and scholarships.
i understand that they love me in the way they know how to love. and i totally get that they truly believe that they know how to love in a loving way.
but they've never protected me.
i gave up on my mom being a mother a long time ago. i was ok with that, with seeking out maternal figures in increasingly healthy ways. there's still a small (and shrinking) part of me that still holds out hope for her, hopes that she'll change of her own volition, but i know i'd never accept her attempts at mothering me anymore. it's well past that.
i've found mothers outside of, beyond, better than her.
i didn't give up on my dad until this past monday. when i finally shattered the illusion of my dad as the Good Parent, the one who actually unconditionally loved and supported me, who actually knew how to parent in a truly loving way.
i thought he could do these things.
i know now that i was wrong. quite wrong.
so yes, i am, in some ways, now an orphan. i am parentless. at 22, i shouldn't need parents anymore, but when you've never really had them, you still long for it. maybe i'll always long for it. even parenting myself, or doing what i can do to parent myself...i still miss it.
and it still fucking hurts. i'm still grieving that loss, even though i lost something i never had in the first place. i still grieve.
maybe i always will.
where i want to go with this:
family does not mean blood. family does not mean genetic ties.
maybe this is totally radical, but i think maybe it would do us good to completely sever those two aspects. make "family" mean something else entirely, make "family" mean all of the things it already means/is supposed to mean, but not have it dependent on or default to the genetic link.
i know i haven't thought this through, and there'd be all kinds of complications, and it's totally not realistic.
but it's appealing, to think up a cultural meaning behind family that would support - not attack, not challenge, not simply tolerate - a cutting of ties with abusive biological families. a complete cutting of ties.
as things stand now, i see absolutely nothing wrong with a person, in an attempt to (finally) take care of herself and not neglect her own needs, cutting off the ties that hurt her. that have traumatized/still traumatize her.
i'm so fucking sick of hearing people talk about how it's selfish to do so, to take care of yourself when your "family" needs you (i.e. needs to be able to continue to abuse you). i'm fucking sick of hearing people talk about "rash decisions" of cutting out your biological family. i'm fucking sick of hearing people speak of that decision as if it were the most radical thing you could do.
(i'm sick of hearing the people i thought supported me buying into this bullshit about family being primarily biological and using that line to judge me.)
here's my dream: a world where making this decision did not ostracize you, did not make you vulnerable to attacks based on "selfishness." a world where this decision was fully supported by everyone around you, where your chosen family - the people who actually love and support you, unconditionally - holds a lot more prevalent position in your life than the people who birthed/raised you.
i dream about a world where it is understood that the definition of family is dependent not on biological connections, but on spiritual/heart-connections. on the giving and receiving of unconditional, no-strings-attached love and compassion and support.
that's family.
the people who share my genes and witnessed (or denied/ignored/neglected) my growing up? they absolutely do not count under that category.
-------------------
somewhat related, and really important reading:
Concerning Forgiveness: The Liberating Experience of Painful Truth, by Alice Miller.
Showing posts with label socialization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialization. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
generational legacy of wounded women
when i decided to write today*, i intended to write about this topic, one of my "to-come" posts:
i thought about it, thought about Gerry, the (much older hetero male) customer at the cafe who seems to think that i want him to be more than just another regular customer i'm friendly with. i thought about my huge, huge difficulty with saying no to him, with refusing his gifts (...he gave me pearls. and a half dozen roses on valentine's day. i know, i know.) i thought a little about what that meant, given my own personal history and my socialization as a "nice girl."
i was about to write a long, well thought out post about the implications of my woundedness on my present life, how my past wounds carry on and continue wounding me now...as exemplified by this situation with gerry.
and then...my mother left me a message on my voicemail.
and, unsurprisingly, the direction of this post shifted dramatically.
this seems like a trivial anecdote, but it epitomizes the codependent, dysfunctional woundedness of my relationship with my mother (or, more accurately, of her relationship with/to me).
i recently changed my voicemail message. it's now much calmer, more peaceful, more mellow. a couple friends - friends who are part of this healing community of mine - have commented approvingly on it. they like the calmness, adultness, maturity of the new greeting.
my mom called today and left a message on my voicemail.
it started with a halting, seemingly distracted, uncomfortable: "you changed your voicemail. it just..it's...it throws me off every time i hear it."
yes.
of course it does.
because when i recorded it, i felt at peace. i wasn't in excruciating, life-impeding pain. the person on the voicemail isn't the daughter that you've grown used to, that you've cultivated. the person on my voicemail isn't a slave to the pain that you have created / rely on.
when i heard her remark, i laughed out loud. shook my head.
at some point, i know, the grief will set in. i'll mourn for the woman my mother never was, for the mother i never had, for the peace she's never felt, for the healing she will probably never feel.
but for now, it's funny. sad-funny, definitely. that kind of funny where you laugh, but you think that maybe you should also be crying. but still, funny.
the point of this anecdote? it's a generational thing, this pain. the generational legacy of abuse, of trauma, of woundedness. my woundedness, even if it weren't directly caused by my mother's wounded actions (and a big ol' chunk of it was), would still have a lot to do with the legacy of my mother's woundedness. because when a woman as wounded as my mother tries to parent, she inevitably passes on that woundedness to her child.
so, yes, in a way, my wounds are hereditary. my depression is hereditary, my PTSD is hereditary, my addictions - to unhealthy relationships, to self-injury - are hereditary. but it's not the hereditary that's passed along in genes (or maybe it is). it's a different hereditary trait.
this all means that generations of women are still wounded, grow up wounded, because they were raised by wounded women. these girls, raised by wounded women, will also raise wounded women...unless they address their wounds. acknowledge them. try to heal them.
this woundedness, this generational woundedness...it's sad. it's sad to see women, just about everywhere, in so much pain. my heart goes out to the women i see with unhealed, unacknowledged wounds. but it also makes me angry. because this legacy of woundedness is another one of those things that supports the continued prominence of patriarchal structures. it's this woundedness that, on an individual level, enables patriarchal dominance over women who are too wounded to embrace their power, who can't see that they deserve something better than what they have.
_______________________________
*"today," at first, referred to monday, march 3rd. but i didn't get around to finishing the post until today, sunday, march 9th. noted just in case the chronology of these events matters...even though i'm pretty sure it doesn't.
3) the ways in which a lot of women's reluctance to reject and deferment to the desires of (especially hetero) men is not only a sign of her own individual woundedness, but also indicative of our shared woundedness. i also want to discuss how "the patriarchy" (and everything that goes along with it) contributes to our own individual woundedness, how the oppression we feel is rarely capital-p Political, and how healing from it doesn't need to be Political. (healing, though, is inherently political, inherently an act of social change.
i thought about it, thought about Gerry, the (much older hetero male) customer at the cafe who seems to think that i want him to be more than just another regular customer i'm friendly with. i thought about my huge, huge difficulty with saying no to him, with refusing his gifts (...he gave me pearls. and a half dozen roses on valentine's day. i know, i know.) i thought a little about what that meant, given my own personal history and my socialization as a "nice girl."
i was about to write a long, well thought out post about the implications of my woundedness on my present life, how my past wounds carry on and continue wounding me now...as exemplified by this situation with gerry.
and then...my mother left me a message on my voicemail.
and, unsurprisingly, the direction of this post shifted dramatically.
this seems like a trivial anecdote, but it epitomizes the codependent, dysfunctional woundedness of my relationship with my mother (or, more accurately, of her relationship with/to me).
i recently changed my voicemail message. it's now much calmer, more peaceful, more mellow. a couple friends - friends who are part of this healing community of mine - have commented approvingly on it. they like the calmness, adultness, maturity of the new greeting.
my mom called today and left a message on my voicemail.
it started with a halting, seemingly distracted, uncomfortable: "you changed your voicemail. it just..it's...it throws me off every time i hear it."
yes.
of course it does.
because when i recorded it, i felt at peace. i wasn't in excruciating, life-impeding pain. the person on the voicemail isn't the daughter that you've grown used to, that you've cultivated. the person on my voicemail isn't a slave to the pain that you have created / rely on.
when i heard her remark, i laughed out loud. shook my head.
at some point, i know, the grief will set in. i'll mourn for the woman my mother never was, for the mother i never had, for the peace she's never felt, for the healing she will probably never feel.
but for now, it's funny. sad-funny, definitely. that kind of funny where you laugh, but you think that maybe you should also be crying. but still, funny.
the point of this anecdote? it's a generational thing, this pain. the generational legacy of abuse, of trauma, of woundedness. my woundedness, even if it weren't directly caused by my mother's wounded actions (and a big ol' chunk of it was), would still have a lot to do with the legacy of my mother's woundedness. because when a woman as wounded as my mother tries to parent, she inevitably passes on that woundedness to her child.
so, yes, in a way, my wounds are hereditary. my depression is hereditary, my PTSD is hereditary, my addictions - to unhealthy relationships, to self-injury - are hereditary. but it's not the hereditary that's passed along in genes (or maybe it is). it's a different hereditary trait.
this all means that generations of women are still wounded, grow up wounded, because they were raised by wounded women. these girls, raised by wounded women, will also raise wounded women...unless they address their wounds. acknowledge them. try to heal them.
this woundedness, this generational woundedness...it's sad. it's sad to see women, just about everywhere, in so much pain. my heart goes out to the women i see with unhealed, unacknowledged wounds. but it also makes me angry. because this legacy of woundedness is another one of those things that supports the continued prominence of patriarchal structures. it's this woundedness that, on an individual level, enables patriarchal dominance over women who are too wounded to embrace their power, who can't see that they deserve something better than what they have.
_______________________________
*"today," at first, referred to monday, march 3rd. but i didn't get around to finishing the post until today, sunday, march 9th. noted just in case the chronology of these events matters...even though i'm pretty sure it doesn't.
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