Cycles broken

It is a new year.  I have been neglectful in my writing.  This doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about a trillion things, I just haven't written anything down.

The holiday season is always hard to go through.  It is a reminder of what I don't have and what I have created.  I am profoundly grateful for the relationships that I have with my children.  Solid, truthful, and clear, my children and I communicate quite well.  I can't say the same for my parents.

I looked through a few photo albums that I have.  I can see how happy my first five years are.  It is in my face.  Smiling and glowing.  The pictures of me at 10 years old are very different.  Things had changed a lot.  My mother was in and out of the hospital, my grandmother had died, and my grandfather had died as well.  Things were deteriorating in my home.  My mother was growing more mentally unstable and my father was out of the picture.

I had walked in on my mother shooting heroin.  I wrote about that in my diary.  "My mother is a drug addict".  Of course she read it and I got in trouble for it.  Talk about twisted.  I could see and feel what was right and what was clearly not right about our lives.  Normal is all I wanted.  What was normal to me?  People who didn't lie, who were clear.  That made me feel safe.  Everything with my mother was muddled.  My extreme loyalty to her was starting to change.  She relied on me way too much.

Looking back, I could see that my individuation was a direct threat to my mother.  She had me doing all the grocery shopping, the house cleaning, and as I reached my teen years, she began to accuse me of actions I hadn't even thought about, much less acted upon.

It became harder to be in her house.  Then she started taking me to psychiatrists.  Insisting to them that I was an out of control teen.  They told her I was very normal kid.  She didn't believe me.  I went to another doctor and learned to just talk to him.

One rainy day, I arrived soaked to the skin.  I remember the impression of his office.  It was dark with a lot of leather furniture.  The room felt safe.  So I did something I longed to do, I told him the truth.  The bottom line was I saw one thing in my life and my mother was trying to convince me and everyone else of something the opposite.  Psychiatrists rarely talk directly to you other than to make a suggest or offer a direction.  This doctor talked to me at length for a bit.  His words filled me with hope.

He told me, on that very rainy day, that there was nothing wrong with me.  He said things were about to change in my life and to remember that I had done nothing wrong.  Do you know what it feel like to have an adult validate YOU?  For the first time in a very long time, someone believed in my.  He told me that my mother's problems were not mine to hold or to fix.  He told me that wherever I went I could hold my head up and be proud of who I am.

I left his office that day never to return.  I left my mother's home forever a few weeks later.  I went to a foster home in Valley Stream, New York.  Then to a group home in Far Rockaway, New York.  Those were very hard experiences that I have survived.

I have huge anxiety about random things now.  I sailed through some terrifying times when I was young.  Youth gives us such strength and momentum.  I didn't realize what I had missed until I had children of my own.  I did not parent with my ego out in front.  I knew a few things that people that come from a traditional childhood may not have known.

Children need to know you love them unconditionally.  Not just with your words but with the choices that you make in your life.  You may not be able to give them every new toy that comes out, but you can be there to listen.  You may not have a perfect life, but you can show them that you can wait trouble out and not fall apart.  You may not have all the answers, but you won't give up on them.

I have tried to show Samantha and Dylan what I didn't have and what I was committed to them to respond.  They are adults now.  With lessons in front of them that I won't be a part of.  I broke the cycle of abuse and neglect that was visited upon me.

I hope my grandchildren hear stories of how fearless their Nana was as a young girl and that they learn that our choices shape our future and touch the lives of so many that we don't realize how much of an impact we have in the World.