In my last entry I offered a metaphor of my daughter and me walking towards one another from opposite ends of the Appalachian Trail. In this essay I'd like to invite you to walk a little way with me. Many months since our daughter’s time at wilderness and years beyond the original issues that landed her there, my emotions continue to rise and fall much as the tide does. I don’t have control over the these feelings and I can be knocked down by a big wave of guilt or shame or anger. I’ve learned what to do when a big rush of emotion comes on--get somewhere safe and quiet and wait for the feelings to subside. So far they always have.
Sometimes the wave will come out of nowhere when I’m falling asleep or taking a walk. Usually then, the inner dialogue starts up that I failed as a mother: What did I not do or say? What could I have done differently? Why didn’t she feel she could tell me what was really going on with her?
Sometimes I’m out in public. Then I mostly feel intense shame. This happens most often when people start talking about all the things their children are doing. They turn to me and ask me about my daughter and I have to, basically, lie or prevaricate, neither of which come easily to me. Humans shy from telling the truth about imperfections, difficulties, and problems within the family as that would give them an appearance of weakness and vulnerability.
I have a history that feeds this. In my thirties I had multiple miscarriages—seven in all—mostly due to a chromosomal weirdness (which I share with Cher of all people) that caused the fetus to stop developing and miscarry somewhere between two and three months. My marriage survived this trauma and about when I had moved on, at the age of 40 I got pregnant and stayed pregnant, et voilà. During that decade between 30 and 40 I struggled with depression and shame but most of all anger.
The fact is, my marriage did survive and I didn’t lose my mind and I stubbornly persisted with constant ups and downs and worked hard to move through my grief which I did get better at doing. I learned that I am a patient, resilient, and determined person and on my good days I know this to be true. Nonetheless I still struggle with shame which, apparently, is hard-wired and unavoidable. (See the Brené Brown review further along here.) I struggle constantly with the sense of “Here I am, once again, on the outside looking in at all the other people.” Not only that, but once again, sometimes friends or family fall silent when I walk into the room and I know probably they were talking about the great things their own kids are doing. Do I stay? Do I leave the room?
Other parts of my life have been problematic but I really believed I’d been a terrific mother. It’s been a terrible journey, and I have been a terrific mother, in fact, just not in the way I imagined. That’s not so easy to explain but in essence the qualities that got me through my thirties: patience, persistence, resilience and determination are likely to carry me through this and have been what I have modeled most successfully to my daughter. She has demonstrated that she possesses these qualities beyond all expectation: patience in learning how to start a fire with a bow-drill, for example; persistence in picking herself up over and over again; resilience in seeking solutions and asking for help; and determination, in deciding to do a hard thing and staying the course.
In the supermarket I bump into someone I used to know a little but haven’t seen in awhile. She has a son around the same age as my daughter; our acquaintanceship was formed around carpools for after school activities that our children shared and the fact that we were both the type of parents who turn up to help with the fund raiser for the senior trip or whatever. I liked her son a lot and enjoyed his presence and conversation in the carpool when I was driving.
After the enthusiastic, “It’s been so long!” and “How are you!” There is a small silence.
“How is your daughter?” my friend asks tentatively.
“She’s ok,” I say carefully, “She’s good.”
A shadow crosses her face. Something in me shifts.
“She’s not that good,” I admit. “She’s had some struggles.”
This friend sighs in relief and then tells me her son has been having a hard time. Different hard times from my daughter’s, but just as hard.
We talk briefly and end by saying how hopeful we are, how much we love our kids. And then we part. That’s a good encounter. Neither of us reveal too much, but we both feel less alone. And no, in case you are wondering, I’m still not there. I get that I am still holding onto my own idea of what my daughter’s life is going to be. These expectations are ordinary enough: finish college, find fulfilling work, find a good life partner . . . but the reality is that I don't even know if those notions are a good idea to have. If I can, probably best to let go of the ideas altogether.
My therapist is enamored with "reframing" everything, so I'm not to say things like "let go of" or "give up" because they connote failure, but I am engaged now in finding ways to not base my own sense of self worth on my daughter’s life. To not think in terms of success and failure.
So that's where I am and before I get back on my trail, I wish you well in your own journey.
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