Change is the cycle I want to repeat. Love is the legacy I want to leave.
My father was gone before my third birthday. But my story, like this song, is about far more than that loss. Make no mistake about it—“Piece by Piece” is a survival song.
It’s study, strong and defiant without minimizing pain.
The song is a tribute to learning how to love, as an adult, while carrying the pain and betrayal of childhood wounds.
Even though Clarkson is a successful performer now in Hollywood who seems happy in her career, marriage and parenting, she was once a hurt child.
And hurt hurts no matter who you become and who you are today.
She had to beg for her father to love her and we can speculate that he didn’t until she was a successful adult.
She sang:
And all of your words, they fall flat
I made something of myself and now you want to come back
But your love it isn’t free
It has to be earned
Back then I didn’t have anything you needed
So I was worthless
Piece by piece you collected me
Up off the ground but you abandoned things
Piece by piece he filled the holes that you burned in me
At six years old.
Clarkson didn’t make light of the past or minimize the pain she felt as a child. She’s impacted by the past. We all are and that’s true whether the past is an upbeat tempo or a haunting ballad.
The past is the default song that plays inside of us until we get a new song playing instead.
Yet, we live in a culture where pretending the past doesn’t hurt or that we are over it is celebrated. People who can’t let go of being cut off in traffic pressure adult children to let go of hurt or anger about being abandoned, betrayed or decimated by a powerful parent as a dependent child.
It’s mind-boggling when study after study shows that toxic childhood stress shapes our physical and mental health for our entire lives. Those with numerous types of childhood adversity have double the rate of heart disease and die, on average, nineteen years earlier than those without adversity prior to the age of eighteen. The impact isn’t only on persnality or perspective but life span itself.
It’s not about dwelling in the past it’s about limiting the impact it has so we can be present and have a future.
Clarkson sang:
Piece by piece he filled the holes that you burned in me at six years old.
Wounds inflicted by parents can’t be erased from psyche, soul and cells. For a child, abuse and abandonment rip at the core. They hurt, bewilder, stung, sting, confuse and damage.
Adults know things such as “hurt people hurt people” and no one sane, heathy or well chooses violence, addiction and abandonment. Children who can’t yet walk, stand, do fractions or spell “cat” have no such ability to do adult reasoning.
Being real about and reckoning with early trauma is actually healthy, necessary and good for our health and our parenting.
We can’t learn what to do right until we are clear about what is wrong. We can’t create new traditions until we retire old ones even if they are learned in our family.
We have to reckon with what is wrong to make it right, which takes tools and skills and bravery. And it’s a relief to hear a pop song that “gets it” so deeply and intuitively.
Full article was published in Elephant Journal on 2/28/2016
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