Elisabeth Corey wrote this essay piece about her mother. It's honest, painful and difficult to read. Many will be able to relate. Our bonds with our parents can be complicated (no matter what our ACE score). But it's even more so when our relationships have been filled with ACEs and the hurt, betrayal, and scars that can accompany them.
Once we survive childhood and are not dependent on our parents we may have lots to sort through. Things that are not easy to live with or make sense of. Her essay makes me think about all of the moral, spiritual, emotional and even philosophical questions we can't always avoid even if, honestly, at times we would very much like to do just that. We went through ACEs, as children, and as adults, it feels like we are wrestling with the deepest questions that exist about humans.
What is family love?
How can people mean well but do harm?
Can people change?
Are some things unforgivable?
What does compassion in an ACEs context mean, for ourselves, for others?
Can we forgive people but not trust them enough to be in our lives?
Can we forgive ourselves for having such conflicted and complicated feelings and needs?
Can we tell the truth about traumatic experiences without shame or shaming?
Can knowing what our parents went through as children help our children go through less?
How can we live in the present, tend to our own lives and loved ones and do the work it takes so that our own children know love and safety at the same time?
These aren't questions anyone can answer easily. They are personal, intense and can be wrestled with for years or decades. Often, they don't even come until we have sorted through a long list of practical problems and immediate issues or "stuff" or symptoms.
It's hard. But this post is something else. It's tender. As I read these words that Elisabeth wrote I'm astounded by her. She is trying to understand her own mother while protecting herself. There's something raw, pure and beautiful about her reflections. A sort of grace.
I don't share this to suggest how others should feel or act. It's just so rare to get such a close-up look at what the personal process of reconciling reality can look long after ACEs have been survived.
Excerpt 1:
To be fair, she was trying to protect me, but her methods of protection would be considered ridiculous by most. She had two strategies. First, she taught me that I should do whatever men ask. Of course, this included sex with men when I was a small child. She didn’t want me to be raped as a small child. She taught me this because she wanted to keep me alive. She was sure that fighting back would mean death. And honestly, she may have been right. My father had made it clear on many occasions that he was not above killing us if we did not comply.
Her other approach may seem less severe, but had a major impact on my life, and like many bad decisions, it was born of money. She was constantly battling with her lack of financial security. She considered the lack of money as life-threatening as guns and knives. And her lack of money was used against us many times by my abusers. She truly felt that she could not be financially stable without a man, any man, in our lives. So she found any man … and allowed that man to do whatever he wanted.
Excerpt 2:
I know it may sound as though I am making excuses for my mother. I am not. I spent many years processing a very angry and desperately sad emotional response to my mother’s abusive behavior. Only recently have I come to understand the drivers for her behavior. An understanding is not forgiveness. An understanding does not excuse the behavior. It is simply the ability to look at behavior from an objective perspective. An understanding can relate the behavior to the experiences that helped form the person. What she did was not right. She was wrong. And in her current state of denial, she still is.
But an understanding of why it happens might just keep it from happening in the future … to some child … somewhere.
And that is why I will work so hard to understand it.And that is why I will write it down.
And my understanding will lead to awareness because some people are brave enough to read it.And awareness will stop this.It is the only thing that ever will.
And awareness will stop this.It is the only thing that ever will.
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