You’ve Paid Enough Penance
Dear Mama,
Don’t think it has gone unnoticed how much you’ve changed in the past two decades. Your recovery unfolded over time. It began to be clear when you could take an emotional blow, but react to it without spilling a bloody mess of toxic words all over everyone. If we joked with you, you laughed along and didn’t take offense. Your focus turned from your own pain to ours, and you’ve never stopped giving it all you have. I appreciate having you back as my mother. We all do. But, I think it is time that we all let you retire from active duty. You’re over 70 now, and still running around from child to child like we’re toddlers in a national living room.
You must have been feeling like you had a lot to make up for, because each of us is damaged in our way by what you were not able to do as a mother when we were growing up. The more I learn about what is wrong with me, the more I understand what was wrong with you. It took you until you were in your 40s to admit your childhood was not ideal. There was physical abuse. There was domestic violence.
You spent so many years believing religion would cure you. Then vitamins and chiropractic. You looked for every physical health explanation possible for why you cycled between a person who screamed that no one loved her to a person buying bags of soda and chocolate to binge on. No, low blood pressure was not going to be the answer. The last explanation that occurred to you was that you had a mental illness, despite being told as much a couple of times by people who bungled telling you. Hopefully, stigma is not as strong today.
You first started getting better slowly after you attempted suicide in March 1987. When they moved you from ICU to the psychiatric ward, I remember how shocked I was when you said you would be there more than a month. What was going to happen to us? Would we go back to foster care? But, that was the turning point. You had therapy from that point on. You were connected to the mental health system.
It still took you over a decade to get past this idea your children owed you something. Our basic needs have always been questionably provided. We’ve chipped in extensively to meet those basic needs. You said the family was broken. You said the State broke us by taking custody of your children in 1981. Here’s the thing. I was there. Somewhere in the chaos, the fact that the family was already broken by mental illness, and then poverty, was lost.
A police officer on a TV crime drama just told a child, “Never trust an adult who tells you to keep a secret.” We lived in Canada for four months when I was six. While we were there I had major life experiences like seeing a man masturbate while he touched me, living with polygamists and attending their school, and learning to play chess. You and dad told me I had to keep Canada a secret. Your reasons were not even covering a crime. You were just paranoid about the seedy connections you’d made. Your judgment was so poor when your mental illness was not treated.
When we got back to the United States, you were attacking each other violently. You punished us by pulling hair, cracking heads, and using the belt for doing things children tend to do. You wouldn’t let me go to school so many times, and you knew how much missing school broke my heart. We didn’t have health insurance; I have hearing loss from an untreated ear infection. I still remember hugging the heat register along the wall of our living room in our unfurnished apartment, crying in agony, with only Vitamin E drops in the ears as treatment.
I know that unemployment affected this every step of the way. My husband and I just went through nearly a year of unemployment. I saw behavior and personality changes I never dreamed imaginable. I know so much of your problem came from financial stress. No one ever wants to believe that Ronald Reagan was indirectly responsible for splitting us up, but he wanted welfare cut, so welfare for two-parent families (AFDC-UP) was cut. This was the last straw for keeping the family intact.
But, I know your history and I know dad’s history. You both have mental illnesses that went untreated and unacknowledged all those early years, even before you met each other. Why didn’t your families do something? When I used to blame you for the worst years, I’d stop short and couldn’t help thinking, “What happened to the community mental health act of the 1960s? Why don’t we have a mental health system in this country? Could they have helped our family survive?”
I’m just lucky to have had a mother as an adult. Someone who sacrifices a great deal for her children and grandchildren. Someone who other people think of as a saint for all of her volunteering in the community with seniors, people with disabilities, and the poor. You’ve shown me recovery from serious mental illness is possible. I love you and thank you for all that you do.
Your daughter,
Deborah
