So, what do I do now? (spoken with angst)

Maybe I should explain the question, and maybe explain the angst too.

As you may have read in my 'Family' can hurt like Hell, and sooo complicated! blog post, my childhood was pretty damned sucky.  As I approached the latter third of my life under parental care, I was transferred from my mother’s custody to my father’s.  The culture shock was extreme!  I came from a home where my mother began each day with her glass of whiskey and drank all day, where my physical beatings were routine and harsh (I have x-ray proof!), where she climbed the employment ladder by extending sexual favors to her employers, where marriage was viewed by her the way most view dating (6 marriages in all), where her aversion to religious matters was equaled only by her profound hostility toward her parents (her mother most specifically), where I frequently was alone fending for myself.  I went to a home where there were no vices save the doting my father and his wife poured upon each other, where the only physical pain experienced was from hard work or corporal punishment (through to my 15th year), where employment and work were seen as holy activities “as unto the Lord”, where marriage was viewed as sacred and permanent “till death”, where religion was embraced with fervor and enthusiasm as though it were the very center of life, where parents were honored and loved regardless of how ‘inconvenient’ it might prove to be, where family did things together and everyone contributed to something bigger than themselves.  You may rightfully assume the transition was not easy.

So you may be assured that life, at best was ‘lumpy’ for me from the beginning on.

My relationship with my father has been either hot or cold from the beginning as well.  I cannot speak for his experience of the relationship, but I would guess that I was way more challenging than any child should be and that this ‘challenging’ boy was no doubt equally as frustrating.  I was unable or unwilling or both to fully wrap myself around what my father has always known to be true and right; and my inconsistent reaction to such standards and ideologies resulted in responses from him (or lack of response) that always felt to me like judgment.  And since I have had it physically beaten in me from early on by my mother that I was hate-worthy, any feelings I experienced (not just past-tense) as judgment were simply confirmation of an innate sense of self-loathing and worthlessness – that of course hurts like a hell worse than Hell.  So, as I was skillfully taught by my mother, the best way to avoid such pain is to push the ‘offender’ far away.  This, I believe, has been interpreted by my father as not dealing with what needs to be dealt with – a serious form of irresponsibility.  Let me know when you see a vicious cycle of pain and disappointment developing in this story-line.

Ahhh, but there is another level of complication to all this!  You see, my biggest problem in my relationship with my father is that I love him; and there is this deep dull ache for such a personality to have an active place in my life.  That sucks pretty bad, huh?  To make matters worse, I believe that almost universally, victims victimize (a statement worthy of tattooing somewhere where it will remind each of us of its truthfulness!).  So in a victim’s pain and emptiness and sense of profound loss, they tend to hurt and harm others along their path.  My father and his wife and my three half-sisters were no exception.  And I am sure my father has deep wishes and wants for his son; and the reality of my choices throughout most all of my life have no doubt been very grievous in their assault against such wishes and wants.  So the tension and pain of bi-polar emotions is probably just as profound and hurtful and frustrating for him as for me.

So I have solved this ‘problem’, throughout the bulk of my children’s lives, by carefully maintaining distance and almost silence between myself and my father and his family.  It kept the pain almost manageable.  Yet here I am in a situation which you may have read about in my blog posting

My precious girls in quite the similar position with my own daughters!  And my precious Judy mentioned the other night as we once again discussed the ugliness of my situation with my girls that maybe they have learned how to deal with their father from how I modeled it with my father.  THAT is horrifying!

So there you have it.

I have tried to survive and protect myself from what has been pain only to me; and in doing so have created in the hearts of my children the very problem that I have been.  What the hell do I do about that?  How do I cure this mess?  What hope do I have of making this all right?  Well, I do see a couple of obvious things that seem to stand out to me (Yes, if something is obvious enough, even I can see it).  Let me outline what I see:

  ·  I need to model the correct behavior.  Specifically, I need to demonstrate that I am serious about developing the best I can of a relationship with my own father.  And I can’t do it just for my daughters!  It has to be real and sincere.  I have been making ‘baby steps’ in that direction over the last 18 months, but I need to get more serious about it.
  ·  I need to extend a more aggressive effort toward my oldest sister and her family.  Again, I have taken ‘baby steps’, but I need to truly put my heart into it.  And again and with all such situations, it can only be motivated by my heart for them, not as a way to convince my daughters of anything; it has to be sincere.
  ·  I have two other sisters which I have kept at arm’s length; I need to do what I can about those families also.

Beyond that, I just am not sure!  I know I need to increase the frequency of my emails to my daughters, no matter how heart-wrenching it is that I almost never get a response.  I need to keep trying with them.  But I may well also be missing a lot of other elements or opportunities.  If you, my reader and/or my friend, see possibilities, please email or comment.  I would really appreciate any and all input in this area.

Also, if you may be heading down a road that may lead to estrangements with those you love – for whatever reasons – please consider my story and the pain that lives in me daily regarding it.  Maybe your path, though it may feel safe in the moment, is really destined for a bigger fire-pit than you can handle.  Consider if your path may lead to similar results even if you have trouble seeing the end result.  It seems our choices in issues we do not see as having anything to do with our children nonetheless do impact how they see the world and how they feel comfortable conducting themselves in it.

Lastly, as you no doubt read in my My precious girls blog posting, this is not the issue that has resulted in the estrangement between myself and my daughters.  This is one of the ingredients in the ‘cocktail’ that makes up the reason.  And I am still trying to repair where I know I did go wrong, and discover where I do not yet know where I went wrong. 

C'est la vie

My precious girls

I cannot write about my two wonderful precious girls, who I love and think about each and every day, without deep pain in my heart.  You see, we are a bit estranged right now.  We have been for about a year and a half.

As you may have read in my blog 'Family' can hurt like Hell, and sooo complicated!, I have not had the best modeling for being a parent.  But I tried!  But as my girls got older, I did not adjust well with their growth.  I did not keep pace with their growing needs for independence and freedom.  And I approached them much as I had years earlier.

And I also, when things didn't go well, took it all very personally.  So I allowed myself to carry my 'hurt' as anger.  I yelled, and I sometimes was a bit of a tyrant.  God, as I think back on those precious times I was with them over the last decade (custody issues, every other weekend), I remember the good stuff so much better than the bad.  I remember how much I looked forward to seeing them every chance I got!  I don't remember the bad times too much; I don't remember dragging them through a pretty dysfunctional relationship I was in with someone who resented them in my life.  But I do remember the joy of freedom we all felt when I broke free of that dysfunctional relationship and we relearned to enjoy our time together again.

But, damn it, my personal growth as a father and an individual was NOT keeping pace with their growth into beautiful young women.  I just wasn't growing fast enough!  And a moment came where I reacted very poorly on the phone to bad news from one of them; and they saw me as more hassle than I guess I was worth.

I email them, sometimes they email back.  I keep trying, and I will until I die.  I love them so so so much and miss them so bad!  Every time I encounter anything that reminds me of them (and that happens often), I feel the pain all over again and as fresh as the morning flowers.  It hurts like Hell!

Amanda

My oldest, Amanda, is such a smart, fun, bright girl.  She is 18 now, kind of on her own, in college, working so hard.  She is clever and resourceful and humble and quiet (most of the time).  We love a number of TV shows that we would watch together.  She was in her school's marching band in the production of 'Phantom Of The Opera' with her sister.  This was a group of kids that worked together so well with such precision and beauty!  They won the State Championship, the highest honor they could win in Arizona!  She is musically talented, loves to read, there is just no one in the world just like her.  I miss her so much!

Rebecca

My youngest, Rebecca, is also smart and fun and bright!  But in different ways.  She is so socially gifted!  She can make any room fun, just by being herself in it!  She was in flags in her school's marching band, doing the same production of 'Phantom Of The Opera' with her sister; and it was the most amazing example of artistic beauty I believe I have ever seen!  I was so proud of her!  I have saved one of her calls to me telling me how she did after a presentation. She was so excited; I am so proud!  She was amazing in that.

State Champions!

I keep looking for ideas in how I can get closer to each of them.  I keep trying.  And my heart keeps bleeding.  I will never give up; I will never stop loving them and trying to ignite the kind of relationship with each of them that is healthy and good for all.


Amanda, Rebecca, I love you!

'Family' can hurt like Hell, and sooo complicated!

The whole concept of 'family' is very intense for me.  Some families do it so well; while the rest of us struggle.  It seems that how much love one invests into the 'family dynamic' has absolutely no relationship to how big a struggle family can be.


And Pain!  No one can tap into painful emotions like a family member!  No matter how estranged you are, or for how long, the capacity to get hurt by a family member is huge.  And they can have no idea they are hurting you, sometimes even by doing nothing at all!



Perfect Family



This is one of the dynamics I understand the least. How can one family member be so hurt, while the other family member be so oblivious?  And what is it about shared blood that makes the impact so powerful and last so long?  Most of us are pretty adept at placing an ex-friend or ex-lover or ex-worker or ex-acquaintance into a category that doesn't give them the access to our hearts they once had.  But if we share blood with them, even just a little blood, the story totally changes.  The power of family to hurt is immense.

Yet the value of family is just about as hard to understand and just about as intense.  When we are hurting, family is what we look for to help us endure, to carry us through.  So for those of us with estranged family situations, the tension between need and fear may be the most intense feeling we will ever encounter.  We feel this tension about people we have not seen nor heard from in ages, who may be even far away; but we still feel it! What an interesting (albeit annoying) phenomenon!

My personal family situation started off awful!  As I alluded to in my previous post, I do not know how to do 'family'.  It was never modeled for me in my youth, or at best very poorly.  By the time I got close to any sort of meaningful or helpful model, I was way too screwed up to understand or appreciate it.  I come from a broken home, and a highly physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic mother who married like some collect spoons or tea cups.  As I got close to my teen years I was 'transferred' to my other parent.  The style of parenting was so radically different, I don't know how I could have adjusted.  How does a child just approaching their teen years whose only understanding of life is how to try to navigate the treacherous waters of abuse supposed to even understand, nevertheless navigate through a totally different family culture? My trust had been shot to Hell years before, and what I was being exposed to just confused me. I know, life's a bitch!

Well, a lot has transpired between then and now.  When you grow up in a world like the one I just described, areas of your life just have to grow up very very fast.  But any time parts of our lives accelerate in growth like that, other parts are invariably going to be left behind.  And I have a number of areas of my life and maturity which grew at a stunted pace because of how fast I had to grow up in others.  So even now, as I enter the second half of a century of living on this planet, I find myself still struggling to be who and what I need to be in a family.  I struggle with my father, I struggle with my sisters, I struggle being the father my daughters need right now, I struggle with being all I can be for my son, I struggle with my step-children.  I struggle in a process of learning how to be the best I can be for each of them; even while some of them still scare the shit out of me.  Here I am connected with a woman (Judy) that may be the best I have ever met at family, and I feel like I am struggling to get through what I need to learn in the first year of a 9 year doctoral program!  But I have help, Many of those who make up my family are pretty patient with me.  I have situations that cause me deep emotional pain every single day, but I also have people who love me as I am and who pull for my growth and success.  

Maybe I am a lot more fortunate than I realize . . . . .

Inspiration

I believe it is really important that we, as humans, be open to inspiration.  We don't get to decide where it will come from; and if we aren't looking for it, inspiration can easily just pass us by.  Yet our lives can be deeply enriched by inspiration.


I have the honor of sharing my life with the most wonderful and loving and gracious woman in the world, Judy.  And in our time together I have learned that the 'package I received in my life when Judy entered it did not just include Judy.  You see, Judy has a family; and this family knows how to do family way better than I have ever known.  I have learned SO MUCH!!  And it appears my learning is hardly over!  One member of that family is one of Judy's daughters, a young woman named Megan.  Part of the casserole that my life has become with Judy is seeing the value that other family members bring into the mix, allowing them to work themselves into the place they are to occupy in my life, and to work toward assuming the role that is mine in their lives.  Megan is slowly working herself - without trying - into a place of being a bit like an adult daughter to me.  And in that role, as it is with kids, she is in a place to inspire me.

The latest inspiration she has unknowingly sent my way is this blog.  I am not sure I saw the value of a blog just about the normal moments of life and family until I read hers (Megan's Blog).  Megan has, in the writings of her blog, given a special dignity to family life, and the events which milestone that life.  She has chosen to document for the world those things which are special to her about life and family.  This is 'the high road' elegantly defined.  It will strike some as boring and futile; but they are wrong.  It is no more boring than blood or air - critical ingredients to life.  I hope the attitude I get from her blog will maintain a powerful inspiration to me and all further writings I may commit myself to.  Her inspiration has got me this far!  Megan, thank you!,