Thanksgiving 2018: Gratitude for Pain

The holiday season is in full swing in America. Christmas items have been in stores since before Halloween, but I haven’t seen much of them because I haven’t done much shopping. In fact, I don’t know what kind of money I may or may not have for Christmas. I might not have anything at all to spend.

            We’re fast approaching Thanksgiving, an extremely American holiday dedicated to feasting, or, as it’s rather commonly imagined, absolutely stuffing your face until your stomach screams in protest and you pass out in a food coma. Naturally, this is followed by Black Friday, which has essentially become a holiday all its own, arguably more American than Thanksgiving itself. Black Friday is a true ode to consumerism, and ever so American as people literally assault one another just to spend less money for products they don’t really need, than they would have spent otherwise.

            At this time of year, the paradox is this: We give thanks for what we have, only to wake up the very next morning and buy more things. It seems quite contradictory to me, and that’s why I don’t participate in Black Friday. I don’t participate in Cyber Monday, either, although the idea is rather brilliant for targeting people like me who would rather die of suffocation or drowning than ever be caught in a Black Friday crowd at an outlet store.

I’d like to dedicate this entry to gratitude.

            Often, people who have been through trauma as I have find that this is an exceptionally difficult holiday. Family dysfunction throughout our lives throws a cog in the gears of attempted joy on a day dedicated to, well, food. That’s why I think it’s important that I talk about my past as I say what I’m grateful for.

My father has never hosted an event for Thanksgiving.

            He’s seldom had his own residence, but more than that, I have no memory in my life of my father hosting Thanksgiving, with or without roommates. He always sees his mother, my grandmother, for the holidays. This isn’t a bad thing until one realizes he wasn’t there for a lot of Thanksgivings. He broke a lot of promises and made me feel very small when he would see me. He’s been one of the most dismissive people in my life of my dreams, my desires, my goals, and my personality—my own essence of being.

I’m thankful for my dad.

            The abuse and neglect have taught me a lot about forgiveness and human nature. No, it’s not human nature to be the way he was, but given his own background, the explanations exist. The reasons are there, and they have nothing to do with me. I’m not convinced my dad loves me the way a father’s supposed to love his daughter, and there’s no way to go back in time to give him another chance to be my dad. But he’s doing better with his new kid than he did with me, and even if he doesn’t contact me very often, it seems he’d like to have a relationship with me. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

            He’s my father. I respect him for his experiences and wisdom, for what they’re worth.

Thanksgiving with my mother is never a great time.

            I’m sure she’s hosted Thanksgiving in my lifetime. I’m almost sure I have refused to attend them if she’s hosted. More often, she would take us to her uncle Ken’s house, with her mother. These days, Uncle Ken doesn’t seem like much of an option. He seems to be losing his marbles much the way his late mother did (dementia is a beast), so my mother told me the celebration this year would be like last year: hosted at her mother’s house.

            The problem is, it’s always awkward. The good news is, it’s only awkward, now. The reasons for the awkwardness aren’t great, though, as my mother was a terrible parent. I can’t speak for how she parents now, but I have a hunch it’s only marginally better. She makes a lot of poor choices, and has for most if not all of her life. She’s certainly made poor choices and poor judgment for the entirety of my life.

I’m thankful for my mom.

            Let’s be real. No matter how much of a fuck-up my mother may be, she still gave me this life. With the trials, tribulations, and exposure to opposing and coexistent worlds, I wouldn’t be here without her. It’s a hell of a trip, living life. It’s not easy, nobody gives you any shortcuts or manuals, and anyone who gets those things is only lucky to those who do not know better. The truth is, even the silver spoons and life manuals only do so much, and nothing beats the hard, hands-on experience that comes from bumbling through life without instructions.

            My mom’s been through trauma at least as much as I have, if not more. She didn’t have the best mother in the world, either, and she didn’t have the best father. I would never speak ill of the dead, much less the grandfather I never knew. I met some of his family and they never spoke badly about him, but I know what my mother and uncle have told me. While I’m thankful for my mother giving birth to me, I’m more thankful to her for letting me go when she did. I’ve often wished I could go back in time and take away the two years I spent with her. I’ve thought, I wouldn’t have developed such anxiety, or I wouldn’t have developed an adjustment disorder, if only she’d never had custody of me.

            Even so, if I hadn’t lived with her, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to live in poverty. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have an abusive, dysfunctional household. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to be yelled and screamed at instead of spoken to, or what it’s like to beaten with a wooden spoon. I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have lice, to be outcast and treated like shit for things you have no control over.

Thanksgiving with my grandparents is a wholesome family experience.

            Throughout everything, I remain most thankful to my grandparents. They took me in, gave me shelter, provided me with everything I needed: food, drink, education, clothing, healthcare, and even vacations. Thanksgivings and Christmases with my grandparents is almost always a great time. Still, it’s occasionally been something like your typical American family Thanksgiving: awkwardness and some fighting.

            Year before last, when I was married, I didn’t enjoy Thanksgiving with my grandparents. Part of it was that my ex-husband had ruined my daughter’s and his own appetite before we arrived.

I’m thankful for my grandparents.

            They’ve always had my back. They’ve helped me more than anyone else in my life. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to repay them, and that’s okay, because I’ve learned throughout my life thus far that it’s more important to pay it forward than to pay it back. I didn’t learn that from my grandparents, or my mother or father. I learned that through the myriad of experiences I’ve had, and it’s something that’s confirmed every now and then as I continue living.

            If it weren’t for the time I had with my grandparents, I wouldn’t know that it’s possible to improve my station in life. I wouldn’t know anything about the possibility of a person to overcome their past, their heritage, their own culture. If it weren’t for my grandparents, I’d never have joined the military, and if it weren’t for the military, I wouldn’t have as open a mind as I do.

            A lot of fear remains. I’m not married anymore, and I’m grateful to no longer be in an unhealthy and toxic relationship. I’m grateful for my daughter, who wouldn’t be here if not for my ex-husband. I’m grateful for the lessons I gleaned from my relationship with him, the character wisdom I gained.

Life is a journey whose end you can’t see, and whose beginning varies in meaning and importance.

            I’m in a better place than my parents have done. I’m relatively stable, with every opportunity to keep what I have and continue to improve. It’s overwhelming, and difficult. I can’t survive on a single income, unless I manage to increase my VA disability to 100%. I believe I qualify for such a rating, but it’s not something that’s been high on my list of priorities because I’d rather push myself to do better. I don’t want to lie around doing nothing, collecting a check just for having a pulse.

            Life is about the struggle. It’s about the journey, the ups and the downs. It may be true that we don’t have a choice to have it any other way, and showing gratitude is a great way to cope.

Parenting as an Abuse Survivor

Abuse is a cycle. Once started, it is hard to stop. Children who grow up in abusive households often become abusive parents when they have children of their own.

I am no exception to this rule of continuing abuse. When I gave birth, I fell hard into postpartum depression, exacerbated by a broken ankle, a sprained ankle, and a husband who went behind my back, buying formula in order to prevent me from waking up at night to feed my baby. I became abusive.

My words were abusive and before too long, I would spank my little girl's butt for a perceived transgression after telling her a number of times what the correct action is and why she was wrong. My tone of voice was abusive. I found myself neglecting my own needs and the needs of my daughter, feeling helpless and hopeless. The postpartum depression stayed and worsened in the first two years of her life and I found myself sedentary, trying repeatedly yet in vain to attend college for a degree. What degree? I didn't really know.

This is my story and I share it because when I make improvements in my life, I do so immediately and without hesitation. Once I know what's wrong with a situation and why I'm feeling a certain way about a certain thing, I correct it with all the energy and fervor of a new recruit.

Yesterday was a bad day. Persephone was being little and, naturally, getting into things that didn't belong to her. Case in point, this time: My grandmother's CD case, full of all kinds of CDs from Elvis to Barbra Streisand. To my daughter's credit, it seemed that all disks remained within the case, but she had unzipped parts of it and begun taking it apart (it is a three-part CD case that zips together in two places and each of the three CD holders that make up the case zips closed).

I yelled. I screamed in her face. I spanked her butt harder than I've ever spanked it before because I have had umpteen million conversations with her about playing with her OWN toys, leaving everyone else's things alone, etc. I felt guilty immediately, as is always the case when she breaks down in tears over my response to her perceived bad behavior. Then, I thought: How can I do something better that will have a lasting effect?

Recently, when visiting my college campus to check out the childcare center, I picked up a handful of packets of paper. One is about Time-Out and whether that method of discipline is really effective. According to the article I picked up, Time-Out is a cop-out for parents and child educators who do not wish to deal with children's behaviors and instead remove them from situations wantonly. Multiple alternatives to Time-Out are mentioned in the article, all of which translate to every situation you may find yourself in with your child.

My first response when frustrated is to raise my voice. My muscles tense, my heart rate quickens, and I want to cause physical damage to something or someone, but since I can't, my voice rises until people three blocks away could hear it with their windows open. These are not the responses I want to have with my daughter. My daughter deserves better than this, because this is what I was raised under and I know it is abusive.

Survivors of abuse bury things deeply. It always comes back up, though, and we find ourselves unreasonably angry over the smallest perceived transgressions. We find ourselves racked with sudden panic, rage, or any number of overwhelming emotions that do not seem to fit the situation in which we are existing, working, and functioning.

I have found some helpful tips online for Constructive Discipline. The source I chose to print from came from PBS, the source I trust most when it comes to child development and mainstream media. Ultimately, the power lies within us as parents to break the cycle of abuse for our children. From now on, my daughter will experience only the best I can offer of constructive criticism. Sometimes, I need to take a step back and take a deep breath before addressing an issue. Sometimes, it may turn out to be most effective to spank her butt over an issue. But right now, right before she turns 3 years old, she doesn't need that.

Children need to know what is okay to do. They need to know how to control their actions, express their emotions, and act appropriately when they feel intense emotions. That is what I work on now with my daughter. We are in the process of potty training, which many parents will know is a truly grueling task for some. Today, she has pooped in her pull-up THREE times!!! The first time she did it, I lectured her on pooping in the toilet. The second time, I slowed down and did the following:

• I asked her why she pooped in her pull-up. Based on her reaction and repsonse, she really had not registered yet that pooping makes the pull-up dirty and therefore she did not see what was wrong with pooping her pants.
• I used positive language to tell her the correct course of action: "You need to poop in the toilet. Where is the toilet?" I went to great lengths to ensure she knows where the toilet is located.
• After she was changed and clean again, I asked her what she's going to do the next time she has to poop. She said she would poop in the toilet.
• When she did not, in fact, poop in the toilet next time, and filled yet another pull-up with stinky, smelly feces, I thought I might lose it. But I asked her instead why she pooped in her pull-up. I explained that the pull-up is NOT the toilet, and she asked why, so I explained that pooping her pants is a dirty habit and big girls use toilets.

It is important to use positive language as much as possible. Language such as, "Don't poop in your pull-up!" or, "Bad! You're a bad girl for pooping in your pants!" is not helpful. It does not teach children to use the toilet. Our brains do not register "not" in a statement, so to say, "Don't poop in your pull-up," registers to a child as, "Do poop in your pull-up," because no positive alternative has been given. Telling your child they're bad registers in their brains and lasts, making them think they are bad children and justifying their bad behaviors ("If I'm bad, I might as well be bad").

Some statistics on the matter:

• "Neglect is the most common form of maltreatment. Of the children who experienced maltreatment or abuse, three-quarters suffered neglect; 17.2% suffered physical abuse; and 8.4% suffered sexual abuse. (Some children are polyvictimized—they have suffered more than one form of maltreatment.)" (http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/media-kit/national-statistics-child-abuse).
• "The United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations – losing on average between four and seven children every day to child abuse and neglect," (https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/#eneglect).
• "40-80% of juvenile sex offenders have themselves been victims of sexual abuse (Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, page 19)," (https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/statistics-on-perpetrators-of-csa).
• "Hindman and Peters (2001) found that 67 percent of sex offenders initially reported experiencing sexual abuse as children, but when given a polygraph ("lie detector") test, the proportion dropped to 29 percent, suggesting that some sex offenders exaggerate early childhood victimization in an effort to rationalize their behavior or gain sympathy from others," (http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/som_mythsandfacts.htm).

Abusive Relationships: Parenting and Romance

There are very few things in this world that I simply fail to understand. It is true that in almost any case, if someone explains something well enough, I will understand it. I may not understand well enough to explain, myself, but I can at least grab onto the gist of the idea and go from there. Some things, though, do not allow such grasping of comprehension.

            I do not understand deadbeat parents or parents who keep their children from each other. I simply cannot fathom why anyone would make a child only to abandon it. I cannot wrap my head around any parent preventing the other parent from seeing the child. It boggles my mind when women stay with abusive men who demonstrate a clear lack of interest and effort—these women bending over backwards, rubbing the men’s feet, giving them head and poon, and otherwise doing everything possible to make these men’s lives easier when these men are doing nothing to reciprocate… I do not understand.

            Now, those statements are simple and broad enough to allow for easy argument. “People have babies on accident all the time.” First of all: How? Babies are not accidents. There are entirely too many ways to prevent pregnancy and even further options for terminating unwanted pregnancies for it to ever be an actual accident. Next, I could see someone saying, “Well, I keep my kids from their dad because he’s on drugs.” Okay, I get that. You don’t want your kid around an addict who is abusive. I get it. That is completely understandable. I’m on board. As for the women staying in abusive relationships, I’ve heard the other side for that, as well: “It’s so hard to get out of it because we really believe we do not deserve better, will never find better, or else there is the very real fear that he will kill us.”

            What I am not on board with is how some mothers will prevent their hardworking, more-than-willing-to-provide, wonderful fathers from seeing their children. There may be dads who do the same shit, keeping their kids from seeing their moms, but I get the distinct feeling that is much less common. What I am not on board with is deadbeat parents pretending to want a place in their kids’ lives, only to never call. I am not okay with a little four-year-old girl saying, “No, it’s okay, Daddy is probably busy, I’ll just wait for him to call,” when her mother asks her if she wants to call her dad because the little girl asked why he hasn’t called in a while. I am not okay with a mother telling her children’s father, “The girls are too busy to see you,” when the daughters are ages 4 and 1. Before school age, there is no such thing as too busy, ever. Then, when kids start school, there are always breaks. Winter break, spring break, summer break, weekends. What I cannot get on board with are women who reach out for help and do not take it when it is given—those women who continue to defend and make excuses for their abusers, saying things like, “He’s just so stressed out because of factors X, Y, and Z, he’s really not like this.”

            If you do not want children, use a condom or birth control. When that fails, as it does, use Plan B, spermicide, or run off to Canada for an abortion because we all know America is going back to butcher abortions within these next four years unless Angela Merkel appropriates the U.S. government for Germany. I wouldn’t complain, but I digress. If you have children, share the children. It’s okay for parents to split up. It’s okay for relationships to fail and for people to move on and find love in others. But there are things that are simply not okay.

            It is not okay to withhold your children from their parent. It is not okay for you to influence your children’s opinions of their parents. When you tell your little girl that her father is some kind of piece of shit, when that man was willing to support your ass to be a stay-at-home mom, you are wrong. When that man supplied you with your own cigarettes and never complained about you stealing the ones he had for himself, you are wrong for demonizing him. When that man was bending over backwards to make you happy, I disagree with you dumping him out of the blue for someone who is far less productive and has three additional children. Yes, that is quite the specific example, but they are specific examples that have inspired this post.

            It is not okay to treat your partner like shit. I cannot and will not tolerate my friends being treated worse than they deserve. When my friend tells me that nothing she does is enough for her man, I want to tell her to leave him, but it is against my spirituality to provide unsolicited advice. Therefore, I ask if she wants advice or sympathy. When she says she’s not sure, I opt for sympathy but slip in a word of advice to test the waters. I say things like, “I’m sorry you’re dealing with that right now,” and, “You deserve better, that’s bullshit.” My advice sounds like, “If you treated him the way he treats you, he would have left a long time ago.” I want her to see what I see and I want her to leave him if he’s not putting anything into the relationship. I simply cannot understand the mentality that makes someone allow anyone to walk all over them.

            I will end this entry with some good news. While there are these things that I cannot comprehend, I am grateful to spend time with friends. I took a high chair to Federal Way for my friend’s youngest daughter, then took another friend out to her neighborhood Applebee’s—on her dime, because I’m waiting for my check, but still. She needed the time out and someone to accompany her, so I took a friend with me and there were three of us. Even these good times, though, are marred by darkness around me. Deadbeat parents, withholding parents, abusive men… It is true that social issues are important.

Anxiety and Depression: Roots in Childhood

All good parents want the same thing: Health and wellness for their children. As we propel ourselves into the future, parents take action and give more and more thought to better provide healthful foods and activities for their children. Studies that prove the detrimental effects on children of such disciplinary practices as spanking and yelling resonate with today’s new parents on unprecedented levels, encouraging parents to be gentler and kinder when shaping the personalities and characteristics of their children. This article aims to let parents know what they may be doing wrong and why their kids may act out more than others.

            The purpose of this entry is to shed light on the ways in which parents are unwittingly damaging to their children, how they can better support their children moving forward, and what happens to children who grow up without proper support from their families. To accomplish this goal, I will tell my own life’s story as a means of letting others out there know that they are not alone. Abuse takes many forms and we do not have to lie down and take it.

            My life started like any other girl’s life in the early 1990s. I was born in a secular hospital to a mother who had been abused most of her life since childhood, did not know how to tell someone “no,” and wanted nothing more than to work as a secretary while raising her children in a farmhouse with horses in the fields. My father was a tweaker.

            I fit in perfectly to the heteronormative expectations of our society, always a people pleaser. Early on, I lived with my mom, but it wasn’t long before I lived with my dad, who, unbeknownst to me, did not make me his first priority and that’s why he would yell and spank me if I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, even if what I said was the truth. It didn’t take long for him to get rid of me so he could focus entirely on himself and his addiction, though. Before the age of 5, I was living with his mother and her husband, none the wiser to his habits or any of the reasons behind my not living with my own mother.

            Those were the easy days. Kindergarten and first grade were the best years of my life. I had friends, teachers loved me, I was social, I fit in exactly the way I wanted to—exactly the way I was supposed to. I was a good kid. I was happy and I didn’t think very deeply about my mom or dad because they were just never around. It didn’t matter whether they were there or not because I lived in a nuclear household with the only exception being that the “parents” were actually my grandparents. Before first grade ended, though, my mother filed to take custody of me and my grandparents asked me if I wanted to go live with her.

            At the time, I could not fathom why I hadn’t been living with my mother all along, so I eagerly accepted the idea of moving to her house and being with her. I knew that my dad was not always nice to me. He liked to tease me, make fun of me, tickle me too much, yell at me, and spank me. Surely, my mother would be much better, I thought. I was wrong in the way only those who have made a decision that ultimately lead to various health problems would understand.

            My mother was neglectful. She would pay no attention to me, leaving me entirely to my own devices, unless it was a meal time or she thought I’d done something wrong, at which time she would yell at me either way. Yelling for food is one thing—most parents do it and it is not a detrimental practice—but when she would yell about the disobedience she perceived, it was a different story. My grandparents would drop me off at my mother’s house and I would scream bloody murder and cry as if my cat had died, clinging for dear life to the elders who provided me safety, security, good hygiene, prescription spectacles that were aesthetically pleasing, and clothes that fit.

            My paternal grandmother took notes. Every time I came back for a visit, she would check me over and note anything that construed child abuse. The welts on my butt from wooden spoon paddlings were the most obvious sign. What she couldn’t see or record was the true damage done to my psyche, but that is not to discredit her by saying she failed to record any important information. On the contrary, her notes were thorough enough to use in court, as that was their intention, and outlined everything from the lice on my head to the dirt in my toenails.

            There was one thing that didn’t make it to my grandma’s notes, one thing that was significant enough to change the way I saw myself for years to come: My mother told me I wasn’t pretty. Explained to me later, as an adult, my mother said that her reasoning behind such a statement was that she was told the same thing as a child. I don’t see how that justifies such abusive language—there is no way to justify abuse—but I don’t hold it against her because now I understand her mental illness, not just how it affects me. The other significant abusive event was when my mother’s boyfriend molested me, continuing to touch my private parts after I told him “No,” and “Stop,” multiple times.

            When he came into my room, lay down on my bed, and began feeling me up, it was the climax to the abuse I’d endured from him over the course of my stay with my mother. Previous abuse, I had tolerated, but this time, I told him to stop. Instead, he licked my earlobe and I could not protest due to the laughter generated from the tickling sensation of his tongue. Previous abuses fled my mind. All that mattered was that he had woken me up and all I wanted to do was sleep, but he would not leave. I was appalled—he had always stopped when I told him to, before. He tugged my pajama pants down and I said, “No,” and he told me to let go. I struggled, my tiny, 9-year-old fingers holding onto the hem of my pants for dear life as this middle-aged man forced the fabric from my grip, baring my legs and letting the cool air of the room violate my sensitive, prepubescent skin.

            “Don’t tell anyone,” an earnest, hushed, panicky request, sounded like a joke when the unwelcome stench of his spunk filled the room and the gooey, sticky substance rendered my blankets unusable. How was I to keep this thing a secret when I had told him I didn’t want him to do it in the first place? I was a good girl and I had been told that it was the right thing to tell on someone who was not respecting your autonomous desires. So, I did. I told my best friend, then my older brother, then my mother. The reactions of the first two were bolstering; the third reaction left me confused and damaged.

            My best friend listened with sympathy and offered me her support. My older brother began scouring the property for blunt force objects including crowbars and baseball bats, with which he intended to beat my offender over the head until death. My mother looked at me and said, “Keep it in the house. Don’t tell anyone else.”

            I was hurt and confused, but I listened to her. I didn’t tell anyone else, so when the cops arrived at the house, I couldn’t figure out why. It turned out my brother had told a neighbor girl whose mother had alerted the authorities. My mother’s boyfriend, the father of my second-youngest brother, was hauled away and I was taken to the hospital for examination given the nature of the crime.

            The hospital gave me an adult-sized, preheated, white blanket that I wrapped around myself, taking comfort and solace in its heat and security. I would keep this blanket for nearly a decade before deciding it served as nothing more than a reminder of my trauma. They looked me over, checked my insides for seed, and then let me go, never once losing their faces of friendliness, concern, and compassion.

            With her boyfriend gone, my mother was faced with homelessness, a fact to which I was clueless in part due to a complete lack of understanding that people could actually fail to find housing. Thinking of what was best for her children in the best way she could think of—all the while telling me it was my fault he was gone, my fault she was facing eviction again, and my fault my baby brother would never see his daddy again—encouraged her to allow me to move back to my grandparents’ house, the very house from which she had taken me.

            I thought I could be happy again. I thought moving back under my grandparents’ roof would somehow fix everything and make it right. The reality turned out to be very different, taking instead the form of further abuse from my mother. Phone calls from my mother greatly upset me as she would yell and scream at me over the phone, telling me that her circumstances were my fault, leading to the purchase of a speaker phone that would allow my grandmother to listen to the entire conversation and help me cut it off when the time was right. I never thought that I needed actual guidance, encouragement, or attentiveness to my development as a 9-year-old child.

            It was not until after I separated from the military that I realized the depth of my childhood ignorance. The advice my grandparents gave me was sound and given with the best intentions, but I thought the advice lacked encouragement. I thought it lacked the kind of rhetoric that makes a child think, “I can do this!” and instead included the kind of rhetoric that makes a child think, “I’d better not try it.” Case in point: When I told my grandma that I wanted to go to art school because my dream was to be an artist, her words were, “What are you going to do with it? Are you going to be a starving artist?” This was a significant exchange, one of many smaller exchanges, that caused lasting damage despite the fact that it was not the entirety of the conversation or even the whole of her advice.

            My grandparents found a counselor for me immediately after the sexual abuse incident. The counselor told them I’m strong and they trusted me when I told them I no longer needed therapy. I had no way of realizing the depths of my mental illness or how it would manifest later in my life. Pieces of conversations are missing from my memory, leaving me with the damaging pieces and not the helpful bits. Phrases like, “That’s not helpful,” stick in my mind, while encouragements like, “You could look into doing a double major,” fall short of my mental registration. The therapist I saw as a teenager was unable to target all of this, but she was able to pinpoint my mother as the root cause of my insatiable rage, thus provoking me to write a large series of violent poems directed at my mother.

            I was lucky. I had access to care, no matter what. I had family members who honestly and truthfully looked out for the best for me. They were not perfect. No one is. Every parent is going to say something damaging to their child. The important thing is to heal the wounds as much as possible. When I finally swallowed my anxiety and called my mother from Germany, I was pleasantly surprised by her response and my ability to have a full conversation with her that ultimately led to the healing of our relationship. When I mentioned to my grandmother her response to my desire to be an artist, she came back a little later and reminded me of the rest of the conversation, giving me a better understanding and helping reassure me that my childhood was not actually as terrible as I had come to believe as a disabled veteran.

            If the most important thing is communication, though, my dad falls short and always has. Where my mother grew and became healthier, my dad has stagnated in that I feel more comfortable of talking to my mother about any issue I have than I am comfortable talking to my dad. I have gone through the forgiveness process with my dad as much as my mom, for they were both equally nonexistent for much of my childhood, though in different ways. When I called my mom from Germany, it was with the goal of forgiving her for the neglect and abuse of my childhood. It went well. Forgiving my dad felt much more forced because he came clean from drugs and practically demanded forgiveness.

            Forgiveness cannot be forced or demanded. Demanding or forcing forgiveness is a good way to eliminate all possibilities of future forgiveness. When my dad came clean and said, “Yeah, I’ve been doing methamphetamines. I would get clean for a short while and get my shit together, then I’d go get loaded and lose it all.” It explained the pattern of behavior I so abhorred in him as a child and with his insistence and my grandmother’s willingness to listen and forgive him, I found myself sucked into his web of deceit. Deception in the form of words that assured me that he would turn around and be a good father. A supportive dad who would actually care about me and encourage me towards my goals. I thought the elimination of drugs from his life would turn him around. I was wrong—not in that he ever relapsed, because he is still clean, but in that his attitude never changed. His way of approaching me never changed.

            It is important that one day, I forgive my father. It is important to forgive those who hurt us, not to excuse their behavior or even to say it was, is, or ever will be okay, but to relieve ourselves of the negative emotions that we harbor without forgiveness. Parents are imperfect. Now that I am a parent, I have a much deeper understanding of what my mother went through. I also have a much better understanding of the ways in which my father has interacted with me throughout my life. I interact with my daughter in many similar ways to how my dad interacted with me when I was young. I also interact wither her in ways my mother interacted with me. But more than that, I have the best example of a parent I could ever have asked for: My husband.

            Without my husband, it is likely I would not be writing this blog post. It is likely that I would not recognize the abusive nature of my father’s rhetoric. So, I will close with advice for parents. Perhaps it will seem cliché. Perhaps it will seem overdone or unsolicited—parents get so much advice already, who am I, as a newbie mom, to interject?

            I’ll tell you who I am. I am a woman. I am a disabled veteran who suffers from major depressive disorder, persistent postpartum depression, generalized anxiety triggered by certain social interactions, and PTSD from not only my time in the military, but also from the course of my life.

            So, to parents, I have this to say: Listen to your children. When they tell you their dreams and aspirations, think before you speak. Make sure your FIRST words are words of encouragement, not of advice or caution. It is good to caution our children of the dangers in life, but it is more important to ensure that our children feel strong, confident, and capable of facing the challenges ahead.

            Be mindful of your reactions towards your children. When your son or daughter spills an entire gallon of milk onto the kitchen floor, take a deep breath before you speak. Walk away if the adrenaline is making your hands shake. Take your child to the side, away from the mess, to explain to them why their actions were wrong. Demonstrate what they must do to make it right and lead them to do it themselves—with the gallon of milk example, clean it up with them, but make sure they do most of the work and remain positive while doing it. There is nothing in the world harder than keeping your cool when your child is testing your last nerve. But that is the absolute most important thing any parent can do for their kids. Keep your cool, remain positive, and encourage more than you advise.