Your storytelling is masterful. I’m agape at the man’s pathological cruelty. No healthy person is that selfish / self-centered. Thanks for the reminder of the Larkin poem. It’s alchemical. I forget which British comedian said this bit, but it goes like this: you Americans are always going on about “dysfunctional families,” and whenever I heard that, I would get so confused. What is a “dysfunctional family?” Finally someone explained it to me and I said, “Ah. Here, we just call them ‘families’.”
Thank you, Julie. You are very kind. I’ve been telling these stories privately for years, so I’ve had a bit of practice. I suspect the comedian you’re thinking of might be John Cleese? In my head it’s associated with him.
And I also think his at times questionable politics is more harmless nostalgia than some deep-seated cruelty in his soul. Or maybe I forgive all clowns in advance.
Heartbreaking. I have so many questions, including about your Mom even marrying and staying with such a cruel guy: she must have had low self esteem also and felt trapped.
I am glad you’ve done better for your self and your kids and hope you realize YOU were not at fault.
Yes, my mum’s story was complex. When I was twenty I asked her to tell me the story of her early life by letter and she typed it out and sent it to me in chunks. In my thirties I spent some time getting her drunk (!) so I could ask her questions and try and understand her: why she left dad for this man who had made her children’s lives so miserable (without saying that, of course). I shall write a piece about her to unravel all that, too: good idea, thank you!
Thank you, Wendy. I hated going through it at the time but now I appreciate how important it was in creating (eventually) a life of greater meaning and usefulness. We never yearn for happiness so much as when we are deeply miserable and in my yearning I created a very powerful vortex of joy that I am now being sucked into.
I’m reading through some of your earlier posts and they’re full of wisdom. I agree tough childhood memories can spur you on. I feel fortunate, though, that in my family, though we only got one fifth of a Mars bar as a special treat, it was at least an equal share for all of us!
Ah, how I dreamed of such fairness! It’s time for humanity’s wisdom quotient to rise a little, I think, so it feels like the right time to share what I’ve learned in case it’s useful.
Oof. So so good. Sometimes it is not until you write this shit down that you realize how NUTS (and sad) it is. Your story reminds me a little of Jeanette Walls recounting, in her book, The Glass Castle, how her mom would hide and eat chocolate bars under a blanket on the couch while her kids were going without any food at all.
The horror of that story really stuck with me, as will yours. Thank you for writing and sharing it.
It also makes me think of random childhood traumas that I experienced and did not fully understand until I was an adult. Unraveling the whys behind them can be such tricky work.
Thank you, Pilar. I honestly think it was all this stuff that made me a writer. I had to write it down at the time (in poems, and journals) because it was indeed nuts and apparently no-one liked me telling the truth about it, but I couldn’t just live with it all inside me, so writing became like a sort of constant exorcism, keep the stuff coming out so it doesn’t build up inside you! Unravelling the whys is certainly tricky, but it helps so much in the healing process.
Exactly! I sometimes think about childhood trauma and talking people who don't want to acknowledge it hear as bein like those scenes in Westworld where a robot with pioneer-days consciousness is confronted with something modern (like a lottery ticket or candy wrapper) and they are programmed to just look at it blankly and say "That doesn't look like anything to me."
I was idly thinking of unsubscribing to several Substacks just to get my inbox more manageable, but I was drawn in by the first paragraph and read all the way to the end. What a rough thing to go through for you and all your siblings. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and life experiences with the world.
Nudism, or naturism, is a kind of "live wire" of human tolerance - I think. It requires so much evolved acceptance, etc. So instead we get porn, "adult" videos which are mostly rather adolescent in the worst or more obvious way,"erotica" which is not even sexy, much less erotic, and then in "R-Rated" movies, well, some real art, for sure, and maybe sometimes it's sexy, too. Without being "creepy," I mean.
But nudism, yeah, that's a real challenge. I don't think we have evolved to that level yet, dolphins and cats know better!
Sorry, I pressed the button before I’d finished. I asked my wife what was wrong, and eventually she said I left her to do too much. She’d had a difficult childhood and was determined her children - our children - would not just be loved, but also respected. And I wasn’t respecting her by doing less than my share. After which, I made sure I did. The lesson I learned was you have to be honest about what you want and expect from a relationship, whether it’s with your parents, your children, or your partner. Happiness involves honesty, which is hard.
Wow! What powerful pieces!! I loved the essay and the poem and the moral of the story, and I'm so very sorry for your Food Apartheid experience.
I'm just beginning neurofeedback to deal with PTSD from a decade-long abusive relationship (apparently, 20 years of therapy still isn't doing the trick) rooted in a childhood trauma. What you wrote about calling into existence the thing you focus the most on rings true. When you buy a white car, suddenly all you see is white cars.
But once you realize that cars come in every color of the rainbow, you realize that the universe isn't shitting on you (although that's certainly how it feels and what that religion says you deserve)--now it's you shitting yourself. A firehose is just as effective at cleaning up that mess as it is as putting out the embers next door.
Also sorry that autocorrect misspelled your name after I very carefully spelt it correctly! I try to take care with people’s names because mine is mangled so often (Ross, Rose, Roz), but autocorrect wants to homogenise us.
Thank you, Gia. Ooh, neurofeedback is a really interesting therapy, let me know how that works for you. Yes, don’t we spend a lot of time shitting on ourselves (or at least I did, for quite a while). A good hosing all round! Lovely to see you here.
Thank you for this, Ros. While reading the work Christmas party anecdote, a saying came to mind: "hysterical often means historical".
I ascribe to the theory that in life, we are dealt what we can handle, but it's up to us to figure out what our burden is and do the work to resolve it. Your 'aha' moment with the crepes is similar to many I have had. My mother can't love; money is the substitute. She controls who gets it and what it can be used for. I played the game for a long time, always trying to please, though it was never enough and not the point. It was the game of control and the attention that mattered.
It's so good to work these things out about our parents and realise it is not us. Or it is now, but we can heal and move past it, and it came in fact from someone else's damage and consequent warped view of the world. Those hyper focused on money often had early trauma associated with it; I think my stepfather was traumatised by his wartime childhood and insecurity. Money bought him security and he was loathe to dish it out to those who weren't blood relatives. We grow past all this, and that is how humanity as a whole, by degrees, evolves.
I’ve arrived late to this piece Ros, but gosh, my heart aches for those kids. Speaking as someone who came from a happy, loving home, and went onto step-parent 3 kids, I’d willingly ram those Kellogg cornflakes down Colin’s throat! Wonderfully written.
Buzzcocks, one of my favorite bands ever, lucky you! Slits were pretty good too. I believe we all have a particular wound, different for each of us, that will never quite heal, but the more conscious of it we are, the better we can deal with it. It seems this one is tied to the loss of your brother. I lost mine to mental illness and alchohol/drugs. It can be very difficult for a child to make sense of the loss of a sibling. I never have, even as an adult. Such a wonderful piece of writing, thanks. Glad you reposted. I hope you never had another punch in the gut. Such a cute young girl, if I may say so
I did actually have another punch in the gut. 2008. Just as shocking as the first one. The person who punched me now denies it ever happened, which I find a bit difficult. But people's need to feel better about themselves is one of the strongest urges imaginable, and you have to allow that. Yes, the loss of my brother is something that has shaped my whole life, and it took a very long time to process the grief of it (decades). I still miss him. I'm sorry you lost yours too.
We were very close. I remember we had to hide Mad Magazine, these were strictly forbidden. Marty was institutionalized in NYC at 16, by my surgeon father, and he was not happy about it. Escaped once by climbing a 2 story wall. When we all returned to Winnipeg, he ran away back to NY, where he lived on the streets, and did a huge amount of acid, it being the 60s. I was 10 and it felt like a death. He returned a year later at 17, but after a violent physical fight, where he almost killed my dad, I didn't see him for some years. He cut ties with the fam, moving out to Victoria, BC. The rest was a steady decline due mainly to alchoholism. Stabilized for awhile with bricklaying and 2 sons. Passed away 11 years ago. A month apart from my mom, strangely.
Thank you for writing this. My trauma is getting in the way of participating in this world, I’ve worked so hard at therapy but nothing is helping. I live alone and hide from life as my trauma patterns just keep recurring just you say. I need to break these patterns.
I feel for you, Jenny. You are not alone. If you haven’t yet tried EFT, I highly recommend it. But go gently with yourself. A lifetime’s trauma will take a lot of unpacking but if you break it down into its smallest possible pieces you can clear it bit by bit and with no need, in fact, for a therapist (so no financial expense and no need to leave your house). I did a year of therapy in my twenties and at the end concluded that I at least knew why I was messed up but was no less messed up. EFT was the only thing that helped and I still do it daily to get clearer and clearer. The relief is exceptional. The training from the founder, Gary Craig, is the best (linked from this piiece). But yes, go gently. Learn its subtleties, keep at it, and you will start feeling the difference.
Your storytelling is masterful. I’m agape at the man’s pathological cruelty. No healthy person is that selfish / self-centered. Thanks for the reminder of the Larkin poem. It’s alchemical. I forget which British comedian said this bit, but it goes like this: you Americans are always going on about “dysfunctional families,” and whenever I heard that, I would get so confused. What is a “dysfunctional family?” Finally someone explained it to me and I said, “Ah. Here, we just call them ‘families’.”
Thank you, Julie. You are very kind. I’ve been telling these stories privately for years, so I’ve had a bit of practice. I suspect the comedian you’re thinking of might be John Cleese? In my head it’s associated with him.
I’m sure you’re right. I’m also 100% certain he tells it better.
And I also think his at times questionable politics is more harmless nostalgia than some deep-seated cruelty in his soul. Or maybe I forgive all clowns in advance.
Clowns do have an edge and deserve forgiveness. They carry a lot for us.
'Heart-wrenching' doesn't do it justice. How terribly sad. Excellent poem, though!
Thanks Garry.
Heartbreaking. I have so many questions, including about your Mom even marrying and staying with such a cruel guy: she must have had low self esteem also and felt trapped.
I am glad you’ve done better for your self and your kids and hope you realize YOU were not at fault.
Yes, my mum’s story was complex. When I was twenty I asked her to tell me the story of her early life by letter and she typed it out and sent it to me in chunks. In my thirties I spent some time getting her drunk (!) so I could ask her questions and try and understand her: why she left dad for this man who had made her children’s lives so miserable (without saying that, of course). I shall write a piece about her to unravel all that, too: good idea, thank you!
Really powerful writing, and heart-rending. Food apartheid is such a good description. So sorry you went through this.
Thank you, Wendy. I hated going through it at the time but now I appreciate how important it was in creating (eventually) a life of greater meaning and usefulness. We never yearn for happiness so much as when we are deeply miserable and in my yearning I created a very powerful vortex of joy that I am now being sucked into.
I’m reading through some of your earlier posts and they’re full of wisdom. I agree tough childhood memories can spur you on. I feel fortunate, though, that in my family, though we only got one fifth of a Mars bar as a special treat, it was at least an equal share for all of us!
Ah, how I dreamed of such fairness! It’s time for humanity’s wisdom quotient to rise a little, I think, so it feels like the right time to share what I’ve learned in case it’s useful.
Oof. So so good. Sometimes it is not until you write this shit down that you realize how NUTS (and sad) it is. Your story reminds me a little of Jeanette Walls recounting, in her book, The Glass Castle, how her mom would hide and eat chocolate bars under a blanket on the couch while her kids were going without any food at all.
The horror of that story really stuck with me, as will yours. Thank you for writing and sharing it.
It also makes me think of random childhood traumas that I experienced and did not fully understand until I was an adult. Unraveling the whys behind them can be such tricky work.
Thank you, Pilar. I honestly think it was all this stuff that made me a writer. I had to write it down at the time (in poems, and journals) because it was indeed nuts and apparently no-one liked me telling the truth about it, but I couldn’t just live with it all inside me, so writing became like a sort of constant exorcism, keep the stuff coming out so it doesn’t build up inside you! Unravelling the whys is certainly tricky, but it helps so much in the healing process.
Exactly! I sometimes think about childhood trauma and talking people who don't want to acknowledge it hear as bein like those scenes in Westworld where a robot with pioneer-days consciousness is confronted with something modern (like a lottery ticket or candy wrapper) and they are programmed to just look at it blankly and say "That doesn't look like anything to me."
Haha, I like that analogy A LOT :-)
I was idly thinking of unsubscribing to several Substacks just to get my inbox more manageable, but I was drawn in by the first paragraph and read all the way to the end. What a rough thing to go through for you and all your siblings. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and life experiences with the world.
Thanks, Libbie. I hope you’ll hang around a bit longer, because there is more. We haven’t even touched on the nudism yet!
Nudism, or naturism, is a kind of "live wire" of human tolerance - I think. It requires so much evolved acceptance, etc. So instead we get porn, "adult" videos which are mostly rather adolescent in the worst or more obvious way,"erotica" which is not even sexy, much less erotic, and then in "R-Rated" movies, well, some real art, for sure, and maybe sometimes it's sexy, too. Without being "creepy," I mean.
But nudism, yeah, that's a real challenge. I don't think we have evolved to that level yet, dolphins and cats know better!
I think it all depends on how it’s done. I shall enjoy telling you the reason why I can’t abide pate (the ground meat substance, not the scalp).
Well, now you've really got my attention! Lol.
Food is a love language all by itself. So I think it is natural to feel unloved when you grow up in such an unjust situation, related to food.
Sorry, I pressed the button before I’d finished. I asked my wife what was wrong, and eventually she said I left her to do too much. She’d had a difficult childhood and was determined her children - our children - would not just be loved, but also respected. And I wasn’t respecting her by doing less than my share. After which, I made sure I did. The lesson I learned was you have to be honest about what you want and expect from a relationship, whether it’s with your parents, your children, or your partner. Happiness involves honesty, which is hard.
Wow! What powerful pieces!! I loved the essay and the poem and the moral of the story, and I'm so very sorry for your Food Apartheid experience.
I'm just beginning neurofeedback to deal with PTSD from a decade-long abusive relationship (apparently, 20 years of therapy still isn't doing the trick) rooted in a childhood trauma. What you wrote about calling into existence the thing you focus the most on rings true. When you buy a white car, suddenly all you see is white cars.
But once you realize that cars come in every color of the rainbow, you realize that the universe isn't shitting on you (although that's certainly how it feels and what that religion says you deserve)--now it's you shitting yourself. A firehose is just as effective at cleaning up that mess as it is as putting out the embers next door.
Good hosing to us all!
Also sorry that autocorrect misspelled your name after I very carefully spelt it correctly! I try to take care with people’s names because mine is mangled so often (Ross, Rose, Roz), but autocorrect wants to homogenise us.
Damn you, autocorrect!!!! :)
Thank you, Gia. Ooh, neurofeedback is a really interesting therapy, let me know how that works for you. Yes, don’t we spend a lot of time shitting on ourselves (or at least I did, for quite a while). A good hosing all round! Lovely to see you here.
I'll keep you posted on the hosing situation! Thank you for sharing your story!!
Thank you for this, Ros. While reading the work Christmas party anecdote, a saying came to mind: "hysterical often means historical".
I ascribe to the theory that in life, we are dealt what we can handle, but it's up to us to figure out what our burden is and do the work to resolve it. Your 'aha' moment with the crepes is similar to many I have had. My mother can't love; money is the substitute. She controls who gets it and what it can be used for. I played the game for a long time, always trying to please, though it was never enough and not the point. It was the game of control and the attention that mattered.
That's a good saying.
It's so good to work these things out about our parents and realise it is not us. Or it is now, but we can heal and move past it, and it came in fact from someone else's damage and consequent warped view of the world. Those hyper focused on money often had early trauma associated with it; I think my stepfather was traumatised by his wartime childhood and insecurity. Money bought him security and he was loathe to dish it out to those who weren't blood relatives. We grow past all this, and that is how humanity as a whole, by degrees, evolves.
I’ve arrived late to this piece Ros, but gosh, my heart aches for those kids. Speaking as someone who came from a happy, loving home, and went onto step-parent 3 kids, I’d willingly ram those Kellogg cornflakes down Colin’s throat! Wonderfully written.
Buzzcocks, one of my favorite bands ever, lucky you! Slits were pretty good too. I believe we all have a particular wound, different for each of us, that will never quite heal, but the more conscious of it we are, the better we can deal with it. It seems this one is tied to the loss of your brother. I lost mine to mental illness and alchohol/drugs. It can be very difficult for a child to make sense of the loss of a sibling. I never have, even as an adult. Such a wonderful piece of writing, thanks. Glad you reposted. I hope you never had another punch in the gut. Such a cute young girl, if I may say so
I did actually have another punch in the gut. 2008. Just as shocking as the first one. The person who punched me now denies it ever happened, which I find a bit difficult. But people's need to feel better about themselves is one of the strongest urges imaginable, and you have to allow that. Yes, the loss of my brother is something that has shaped my whole life, and it took a very long time to process the grief of it (decades). I still miss him. I'm sorry you lost yours too.
We were very close. I remember we had to hide Mad Magazine, these were strictly forbidden. Marty was institutionalized in NYC at 16, by my surgeon father, and he was not happy about it. Escaped once by climbing a 2 story wall. When we all returned to Winnipeg, he ran away back to NY, where he lived on the streets, and did a huge amount of acid, it being the 60s. I was 10 and it felt like a death. He returned a year later at 17, but after a violent physical fight, where he almost killed my dad, I didn't see him for some years. He cut ties with the fam, moving out to Victoria, BC. The rest was a steady decline due mainly to alchoholism. Stabilized for awhile with bricklaying and 2 sons. Passed away 11 years ago. A month apart from my mom, strangely.
Loved reading this thanks for sharing it!
Thanks, Katie :-)
This was truly an inspiration to read. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Echo.
Thank you for writing this. My trauma is getting in the way of participating in this world, I’ve worked so hard at therapy but nothing is helping. I live alone and hide from life as my trauma patterns just keep recurring just you say. I need to break these patterns.
I feel for you, Jenny. You are not alone. If you haven’t yet tried EFT, I highly recommend it. But go gently with yourself. A lifetime’s trauma will take a lot of unpacking but if you break it down into its smallest possible pieces you can clear it bit by bit and with no need, in fact, for a therapist (so no financial expense and no need to leave your house). I did a year of therapy in my twenties and at the end concluded that I at least knew why I was messed up but was no less messed up. EFT was the only thing that helped and I still do it daily to get clearer and clearer. The relief is exceptional. The training from the founder, Gary Craig, is the best (linked from this piiece). But yes, go gently. Learn its subtleties, keep at it, and you will start feeling the difference.
Oh Ros, my heart to your heart, what a story. Riveting and heartbreaking. Sending you my love. Xo