Hannah Fraser Moore. Nate Postlethwait. Two of my favorite online people writing about trauma. And Jung, always in the wings. He had a concept where if we hold two tensions long enough a third, clearer, better option will make itself visible to us. I know in my life when I wait on deciding things, the choices I make are often much better than the spontaneous ones. Don’t get me wrong, I am a seat of the pants person and will be always - but in times of deep stress, the waiting is almost always a better thing.
Hannah’s writing is focused on returning to instinct, self, hunger for life. There are so many of her posts that would hold your heart, so go take a look at her writing. One reason she is a favorite of mine is how her writing talks about letting the silence go. That thing we were all trained to do. Make ourselves small. Be quiet. Don’t. Don’t Don’t. The wild girl of stories is s bad thing. We were taught to give what other people wanted, to cover for the system that hates us. To disappear.
You know that saying, childhood is wasted on the young? I think it needs to be updated to Children should be taught to be voracious explorers in childhood. Now, I know there are lots of moms who encourage their kids to be voracious - I hold them, no matter their age, as role models for the future, and even for me in this chapter of life. It’s lovely when I meet them.
And. There are lots of moms who are steeped in this poisonous culture in many forms so that they get to a point where the wild girl is no longer allowed. And it’s heart wrenching.
My dad was almost there. He verbally supported virtually everything I wanted to do in life, but he had zero idea how to connect to me once I got to puberty so I basically fell off his radar as a buddy. My mom was not able to set aside her own training to be a good girl so she modeled for me the only way she knew and tried so hard to infuse me with whatever her beliefs were about womanhood. Not through conversations mind you. And to this day I don’t have much of an idea of what their life dreams were individually or together let alone their beliefs about me. Neither of my parents were the talk to you about serious kinds of things parents.
This is the spot where I feel like I have to make excuses for mom and dad because they were good in many ways as parents. Sadly in the growing a girl department, they weren’t.
So as I grew up I was left to fend for myself. And at that time, there was a lot of fending to do. Men - of all ages - felt entitled to my body. Religious men felt it was their job to tell me to be something other than independent. Men my age were immature, being trained in this culture and could not fathom a woman who was not focused on finding a man.
Then as the Dark Decade came to a close I had a choice to make.
Stay and live in the increasing bitterness growing between my children and myself, leave and make my life a thing I still wasn’t sure of even at 63. The bitterness was not going to subside. My children were dug into a path they set out for me that almost didn’t really include me. The leaving was what I chose and with purpose: it stopped my children supporting my life, it allowed me to focus on figuring out my health, my goals and to open a crack of that dreaming about what my life will be again.
And so my children don’t speak to me. There are a thousand reasons wrapped into the estrangement that all come back to my not having the models of building maturity or skills needed to be in the situation I let myself be in at all let alone find my way out of it. They lost sight of the impact 13 years of immense pain has had on my body and my mind and felt all I needed was mental health drugs and a job. I lost my voice and gave over almost all control for my life to them. They supported me financially, rented me a home for a crazy small amount of money, and whether I consented or not were making decisions for my life. I did not keep my word to them during that time when I would, in the heat of a moment, agree to do something I knew without a doubt I would not do - I felt if I said what I thought the very very fragile tie we had at all would sever.
It did sever when I chose what I wanted to do. This current iteration of my life, living on the road, meeting people all over the place in this country, taking my time each day, no real itinerary except what I find appealing. Such a new experience for me and it has made my heart so happy, my body is getting stronger and my mind is not necessarily returning to but remembering, who I am. And I am in love with my life and falling in love with myself for the first time in my life.
Nate’s writing fiercely holds up the person who experienced trauma, giving them the knowledge that they are not in fact something to toss away, to denigrate, to insult, to insist they forgive or get over. I absolutely adore him and his work. He says “if it has to be earned, it’s not love” oof. See his instagram post here
That small but powerful point: life is meant to be lived with those who want you to feel free. Whew. So many of us don’t have that in our lives. The way Nate shows up in this world is a genuine treasure. His writing has helped me learn to grieve the family I did not have, that could not have been because of their own trauma. It lets me have compassion for my parents and their pain, while understanding there could have been something better if they had gained some tools. And that’s where I know it was a long legacy of people who both could not and chose not to learn to do better that made who they were.
I grieve and I give myself the grace to have the correct anger I do about that life.
For this season of my life I am confident in my choices - some of them won’t be good ones. That’s the beauty of getting older, I know this living thing comes with good and bad and will work through it all. I am confident that my leaving is healthier for me. I believe my children feel that way in the scenario where I had stayed. They gave so damned much to me. I have given so damned much to them. We are worlds apart in our approaches to life. And that has to be the way it is in this moment.
I will work toward improving my health, something I had given up on for the Dark Decade. I will work on reaching out when or if a door gets opened. I hope my children will come to understand we are four independent humans who have widely varying values and dreams and I will love them always. Whether we have relationships in the future or not, I love my children always.
Thanks for reading, talk to you soon.