Dealing With It

"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." 

-Sigmund Freud

^ You know what else I've been doing lately? Shopping at antique stores. Here's a haul from late December, clockwise from the top right:

Old wood frame; the bird art will be flying away soon.

Tiny wicker rocker

Artificial apples - more on those below

Wood organizer.

Silver pitcher

Three tiny teddies - more on them below too.

So I've been going to counseling lately.

I've been before. Over the last fifteen years or so, I've gone on and off for a variety of reasons. But never before have I gone to counseling specifically to work on my childhood trauma. So last fall when our family therapist suggested that I might want to work on this part of my life, I figured that this was a great time to check in with myself and see how I was doing.

* * * * * 

Long story short, my father was a cheater. For the first ten years of my life, he had a series of long-term affairs that he didn't even try to hide. Needless to say, that created an explosive environment at home and I found myself living smack dab in the middle of a war zone. When I was ten, my dad left once and for all, and I saw him only two or three times in the rest of my childhood. Left to my own devices to sort through the emotional fallout, I grew up really fast and thankfully settled into my early adulthood with my head on fairly straight

Then came my own marriage and kids. Determined not to make the same mistakes as I'd lived through, I married a man with a storybook childhood and loving parents. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to protect my daughters from my traumatic past, while also telling them the age-appropriate truth about my dad. Walking that razor's edge was never easy but I did the best I could. 

Cut to 2016. My parents, long since divorced and thoroughly estranged, died less than two months apart. That kinda freaked me out. But to be honest, I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought (and fervently hoped) that their passings would bring me a certain level of peace and a sense of resolution.

But that's not what happened at all.

Within hours of my dad's death, I found out that I had a brother from another mother. Yep, my father had conceived a child from one of his long-term affairs who was immediately handed over to an adoption agency and hush-hushed for the rest of my father's life. This secret, carried so successfully to my father's grave, didn't bother me at all - in fact, I love my newfound brother and I'm grateful that we've found each other. But it did open my eyes to a new level of lies and deception that my father employed against us all. Like waves crashing on a beach, the trauma kept a-rollin' in. 

^ One of the stalls in the local antique mall has been going out of business; I learned that the owner fell down a flight of stairs, broke her leg in multiple places, poor thing, and decided that it was time to shut down her sweet little shop. Among her last few pieces, I found these apples  - for which I have a specific use to be explained later - and in her enthusiasm to be done, she gave them to me for free. How incredibly kind. 

* * * * *

This week, after three months of weekly sessions and a deep dive into my past, my trauma therapist pronounced our work as complete. 

And here are six new lessons I've learned about my childhood trauma:

1. My trauma is worse than I've let myself believe. Like many people who suffer significant trauma, I have spent years trying to minimize it, push it away, tell myself it's not that bad. But what I really need to do is face that big ol' elephant in the room by pulling her out of the shadows and keeping her clearly in my sights. 

2. My trauma will never go away. Dang. I wish it would. But while the waves of emotion may settle quietly at times, I'll always carry the pain of my past, and need to be prepared for the fact that it can crash down over me at any moment.

3. Trauma is readily handed down through the generations and I can't fully prevent that from happening, Still, I care very much about protecting my daughters and my nieces and nephews from the worst of the family trauma they inherit. I feel deeply responsible to each one of them and do whatever I can to help them feel connected and loved.

4. Trauma is something we can only understand when we live through it. True, we all experience some levels of overwhelming emotion in our lives - we endure physical, mental, and spiritual pain on the daily. But people who have never experienced the profoundly disruptive events of "big T trauma" - especially when inflicted during childhood - can never fully understand what that feels like. 

5. Talking about my trauma often makes me uncomfortable. Not because I'm ashamed or afraid to share my story, but because I need to feel safe before I open up to another person. For me, writing is usually the best way to process and share my feelings.

6. Trauma has changed me. There's no telling how I might have turned out in a happier world, but then again, I know that my trauma has made me a stronger and more compassionate person. And you know what? I really like that. 

^ Back in the 1990s, my mom developed a passion for collecting teddy bears, and specifically, the super popular Boyd's Bears. When I found the bear from that brand, on the right, complete with angel wings, well, you know I had to have it. Suddenly, a vision of tiny teddy bears decorating not only my Christmas tree but gathering in the space below the tree popped into my brain, and just like that, my own passion for collecting teddies was ignited. 

* * * * *

I'm excited to be done with this leg of my journey. Sure, I know now that my trauma will be with me for the rest of my life, but I have confidence - stronger than ever before - that I'm up to the task of dealing with it. 

* * * * *

More stories about my mom, my dad, and our journey together:

Father's Day Musings About A Bad Dad

My Mother And Me

Spinning Gold Out Of Straw

Fresh Air

On Grief

My Newfound Brother

Never Mind. I'll Do It Myself.