Two hours to unravel
Each week, I sit in a two-hour meeting where I unravel the carefully composed narrative I have created about my family. This is the story I have told myself, as well as others, for so long.
In the meeting, I’m asked to take a closer look and like any good story, there are stories hiding within the story, and none of the characters are truly who they seem at first gloss.
In the long held version of my story, my father is a hero, my mother is beautiful, and I’m the beloved baby girl in a family of eight. My family, my siblings, are all close knit. We have a shared history, culture, religion, timeline, and memories.
In this meeting, we list adaptive behaviors that helped us cope – me with a rageaholic father, an alcoholic mother, and a family unit so enmeshed and codependent that none of us knew where we began and my father ended.
Until my dad died, then the narrative pulled at our seams. My sister spun off from the family. My brothers’ children shot out in varied directions. Everyone coped in a different way. I seemed okay. I just kept adding coping mechanisms.
My laundry list of responses, reactions, and skills I now realize infected and affected every relationship I have had in my life. Who knew?
Nowhere are you more vulnerable than when you begin to unravel your origin story.
Last night, we were talking about shame and regret. I spoke about my son, how he needed to feel safe, and I did not feel safe enough to give him that space. It was only last night when I was able to say aloud, without flinching, “My son needed to feel safe (and then added) and so did I.“
I, being the young girl, who always showed up in me when my son was dysregulated. The little girl, scared and tired of chaos, who lives inside me and needs to be reparented. I try to give her as much love as I can now that I know what she needs.
Safety. It’s one of the biggest gaps in most of our recovery stories. It’s in my son’s story and mine. Lack of safety is what separates healthy families from the ones from which we need to recover.
Today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 99 years old. Thirty-seven years ago, my dad raged into an early grave at the young age of 62. He was everything to me for so long and yet, because I feared this bull of a man, I stayed clear of men like him my whole life. That was one of my coping skills.
