“Your message helped me a lot in dealing with your mother’s situation (guilty conscience) and reassures my claims to her that you and she love each other. I try to explain to her too that you are not ready but with time all of this will be less painful.
Your pain, her guilt, my lack of diplomacy skills and other sad things that we all deal with do not overshadow the happy fact that you are giving birth to your son, our grandson, and that he will hopefully bring everyone together.
Best wishes,
M.
P.S. Can you please translate this for X?”
I’ve never talked about this publicly. I’ve eluded to it and I’ve carried it inside me until it bore a corrosive hole in my psyche—big enough to burn right through—but I couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell you about my big fat stupid trauma that made me nuts and that I thought—at one point—made me drink and that made me write a memoir about it and that, actually, didn’t make me do anything because I did it all myself. I’m saying this because I don’t want to have people read whatever I’d publish as some kind of trauma response, that easy, knee-jerk reaction we have to absolutely everything that ails us, including how we create art. Paradoxically and ultimately, it has nothing to do with me, it’s something that happened to me when I was pregnant—or when I was pregnant a very dangerous and shitty thing happened. And yet, the fact that I drank had nothing to do with it. I know that people have been searching for the reason for my addiction and I know that it would’ve been so simple to give them that, my trauma during pregnancy, but it’s never that simple.
I don’t want to be too cryptic about it and explain so you get the gist. When I was pregnant, my mother was going through some serious mental-health stuff and threatened my pregnancy. You don’t really need to know more—what’s important is that you know that shit was hard and at first, I overcame it and gave birth to a healthy baby boy but later, started drinking to cope with it—actually drank to cope with ALL kinds of things that were happening to me, some of it being what happened to me during pregnancy. What I refer here to as “the biggest shame” is the shame that many of us carry because of something that someone else does to us, and especially someone who should love and care for us, such as a mother—such as my mother who, at a crucial time, couldn’t. But what is truly shameful about it is actually resting on my laurels and giving into that sort of easy explanation.
I often talk about situations that could be easily classified as “victimizing” and although there’s an urge there to tell you my big victim story that has to do with my mother, it’s not as simple as that. I refuse to. I refuse to blame a situation—or worse, my mother—for something that impacted me in such signifiant way. Why? Because, ultimately, I could’ve dealt with it better. I could’ve given into the positive rather than the negative—the positive being that simply, life doesn’t stand still, doesn’t get stuck in quicksand of trauma until we let it. Life is ours to direct how we want it no matter what is being thrown at us.
We all have a responsibility to heal. We do. Even when we are at our weakest and most vulnerable, relying on our past traumas and the Bad Thing That Happened is detrimental. Sure, give it some room, grieve, rage, act out (relapse?) but at some point you truly need to take a responsibility for YOUrself. No matter how bad things have been, no matter how many obstacles you have… you need to stop dwelling and you need to move on.
I am saying this with kindness and I am saying this from a point of view of a person who has fucked up multiple times and who has secretly blamed the people in my life for how she reacted. I am saying this as a person who many people would probably excuse once had they known what really happened to me.
But, ultimately, the choice is pretty obvious: do I belong to my past? Or do I want to evolve?
I know that everyone carries their little hell with them and I know that many don’t have the resources and the ability to deal with it. But. The moment you do realize that there is a way out and that you have been relying on your big Trauma, Trigger and Difference for too long to excuse shady behaviours, that is the moment you can actually start fixing things and move on.
Don’t do it alone! Talk to friends, your loved ones, your therapist—get a therapist! What’s most important is that you don’t get stuck in your stuckedness. Claw your way out. And once you do, you can look back, cry about it—like I am on my nostalgic night tonight—and leave it behind. Do not let yourself be defined by your trauma. Do not explain your unhealthy behaviour by your past ad nauseam. Knowing what happened and knowing how you responded is information; it is not prescription. You have a responsibility. And that is to live well and to derive joy from life, no matter what it—life—throws at you.