Recently I talked to a brilliant young woman I know, someone who reached out to me after reading Drunk Mom, whose own mother passed away from addiction two years ago when O. was 18. O.’s father passed away the same year due to suicide. O. talks about that and her story on Soft White Underbelly, she is public with that information and there’s a reason for it— as she says it, she wants people to know because she wants to help. She’s one of those incredible human beings who at 20 has more maturity and wisdom than most of us twice her age, and what I think is the most striking about her is the depth of her compassion and understanding. This is someone who went through hell because of her parents’ issues and yet she has the intelligence and the ability to recognize that humans are complex and that they make mistakes, sometimes really bad mistakes and sometimes they make them with their children. O. is very vocal about what she went through but she’s equally vocal about the fact that she loved her parents fiercely and when she speaks of that love, that depth of her understanding, I am dumbfounded, humbled and inspired.
And I’m not just saying this because as an addict I project and consider O.’s words as some sort of an absolution (having been a drunk mom myself), and because I am indignant about having had a different sort of treatment from some people in my life—not at all. I believe the people in my life did the best they could, none of us had an instruction manual on how to deal with my addiction.
Which brings me to my first point. As another friend said recently about forgiving his mother who he considers abusive, “because it’s her first time on the planet.”
It’s O.’s first time on the planet too, and she has learned about forgiveness a lot faster than many of us. She understands better than most that it was her parents’ first time on the planet. She says for the most part she’s had a great childhood. Then came the addiction. When her parents’ fighting got out of control one night, she had to call a sister in another state to drive her to school the next day (please listen to her story if you think, “oh that’s nothing!”). O. knew that what was happening was not the entirety of who her parents were. I’m not saying that anyone should put up with an abusive situation (we’ll get to my second point in a moment), but I’m saying that O.’s supernatural strength and resilience lay with her love and I think that’s what helped her conquer what happened to her.
O. is 20 years old now and for the first time in my life, I understand what people mean when they talk about meeting your teachers where – or more accurately in whom – you least expect them.
During our conversation on hearing O.’s completely baffled “but they’re your parents” when she talked about people cutting off their incompetent mom and dads I admit I kept thinking, “maybe the anger hasn’t just hit her yet?” Then I remembered that O. has a great self-preservation instinct too, she has had left the home to stay in a safe spot before, she has worked with a therapist, she’s actually not new to any of it – anger included. She’s young but she’s not new. She just doesn’t let it (anger, resentment, self-obsession) blind her and I sort of imagine someone like O. having some special ability to zoom out of a picture – where another person could get myopic about the bad thing – and keep zooming out, till she sees whatever’s outside of it.
In that way, O. is a soaring bird, and many of us are still chickens.
I find myself somewhere in-between, a chicken that can fly for a few minutes. When O. talked about loving her parents through their worst – and their transgressions – I instantly thought how hard it’s been for me to keep working on my own forgiveness around my parents and how I’ve been faking it till I make it for so long, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, etc., you know what I mean. And I am successful for the most part, but unlike O. I don’t have that natural forgiveness in me, it’s always work and the worst thing about it is that yes, they are in my life, but I am afraid to get closer and I am afraid to get closer because it’s dangerous. So I fly for a little bit but then I have to scale a wall I’ve built. Sometimes I can’t even be bothered to do that, it’s too exhausting.
I have some shame around that, I am ashamed I’m not at O.’s level (yet?). But I am also grateful for O.’s teachings, and find it amusing that she contacted me to thank me but, really, it’s me that owes her a million thanks.
The second point, and one related to the theme of this substack is connected to the incident O. talked about when the fighting at home got out of control. I mean the shame of having an abusive home and not being able to tell anyone because of things like stigma, fear of authorities, lack of resources, etc. The day she had to call her sister to come get her, O. arrived at school and her friends laughed when she broke down and cried. She said, “You have no idea what kind of night I had,” but didn’t elaborate. She couldn’t elaborate. Her parents owned a tattoo shop in town, and O. was terrified of people finding out what was happening at home because she didn’t want that to reflect badly on the business so she kept her secret. And she was worried about child services finding out as well–her parents, as she always insists, were good parents (and I believe this, if anything, O.’s integrity is the testimony to that). But imagine that burden?
I can imagine it a little bit. When she told me that story, I remembered the few times when I picked up the phone as a teenager after looking up a certain number. I wanted to call that number because I was desperate and didn’t know what else to do, how to stop it. I don’t mean to be cryptic. My parents weren’t addicts, no furniture was destroyed, my father never hit my mother, I never went to bed hungry, we were a nice family if you were to just take a couple of snapshots, and there was a lot of love. But there was darkness too, enough darkness that I sought that certain number. And then I hung up the phone, worried that the consequences would destroy my family… and bring shame. So I hid it. For them I stayed quiet. Not for myself. Would things be different had I called at least once? Safer? I don’t know and I’ll never know but when O. talked about her experience and having to protect the very people who hurt you – because you were a powerless kid back then – I understood.
I am not here to take my parents’ inventory. I know a lot more now and I am able to be a flying chicken for long enough to see that the picture has edges and beyond them a wall and beyond the wall a whole landscape to consider. It’s their (my folks’) first time on the planet. You can’t fix the past. And yet, you can fix some things. Because I also realized that me and O. talking about those experiences, we did the one beautiful thing you can always do to annihilate shame–we exposed it and made it smaller.
This is a great service where professional and knowledgeable counselors are able to help kids and where the callers’ anonymity is assured (contrary to what I believed):
https://kidshelpphone.ca/get-involved/about-us/about-kids-help-phone/
(International help phone: https://childhelplineinternational.org/usa-national-child-abuse-hotline/)
Lovely piece. I am keen to read more of your thinking around shame and unshame, and am glad you are re-focusing this substack on those themes.
Would love in particular to hear more from you about this sentence:
“ the one beautiful thing you can always do to annihilate shame–we exposed it and made it smaller.”