Finding Your Y
When you're a XX and can't trace your Y, uncovering your roots and hacking off the rotten ones is a much harder task.
Last year, I started a website/podcast and did a couple of episodes test-run with a wonderful co-host who has newsanchor on her resume- and honestly, I was honored. The episodes were awesome I thought and we pieced together some theories about MK Ultra and what it does to a person in discovering who they are…
But I’ll be honest, at that time, I had a wall up. I didn’t know who my father was, I had been lied to for forty years. When I was told I was finally told the truth, I found out there were still lies wrapped in that.
In this journey of not knowing who my father is, it’s been a difficult topic to approach. I get various responses, often. Almost like there’s a playbook.
“Oh, you don’t act like an only child, but I guess with daddy issues, that makes up for it.” ugh… blame the child when the dad leaves…. priceless.
“Well, people have good reasons for lying sometimes.” - Lying to protect doesn’t need to include intense trauma and harmful statements in the lie. “He was a dangerous man, I don’t have more information,” is much different than “I wanted to keep you, and my husband of 11 years, that I loved so much left me when I decided to keep you because he never wanted children. I fell off a ladder with my first son and lost him (lie), and I chose to save your life. He left me, served divorce papers in the hospital, and when I came home, there was only a spoon in the drawer.” This was how I was answered when I pressed for “Who’s my dad, mom?” Under age 10, this lie began, at age 3 when I remember asking, she just gave his name, Joe… which wasn’t my father’s name, it was the name of this man she made up a lie about who was her husband for a year 10 years before I was born… I asked him. And his response, “I always wanted kids, I can’t have them. I wish you were mine, but I divorced your mom 11 years before you were born. You’ll have to ask her why she lied about that… you know your mom.”
That’s not lying to protect, that’s a lifelong narrative. I was told at 15, in the middle of the night during a vulnerable emotional talk, that I probably got my singing voice from their side of the family because his mom (I think) was a singer in the catholic church. I clung to these knowledge nuggets about my DNA …. and they were lies.
“She’s your only mom, she wanted what was best for you.” She called me a “whore” for being pregnant by someone I loved, because I wasn’t married and “at least she was married when she had me” (a lie… completely, and turns out probably projection and fear I was going to end up like her, and it was her way of wanting better for me? but…. really?) I was 20 and had a job and had already lived on my own… But I was a problem child and treated like it was a teen pregnancy trauma I gave her instead of a grandchild.
I see where my “mother” did things that proved she loved me. I do. I never, in fact, thought I had a bad childhood. I was lied to so much and always in survival mode that I learned to smile through the chaos. And … that was not healthy. I supported her in sucking the life out of me.
It taught me to not speak up for myself.
Not stand my ground.
Not trust my gut in not trusting someone I am supposed to.
It taught me loyal meant sacrificing yourself for the good of someone who doesn’t want good for themselves aside from greedy success.
It taught me the duality of aliases… and being on the run. And lying. And hiding.
I had to overcome all of what I was taught, in order to be a real mom… alone… while other traumatic things were happening consistently…
…that need to recover from being parented is why I can’t follow along on the “Forgive her and be nice to her, she’s your only mom.”
I was. I did. I gave her nearly 40 years of my life with love, care, compassion, guilt, and had to cut her off only for her safety from herself…. and I still get blamed for being a bad daughter. I get guilted for not “letting it go…”
Let what go… I am uncovering truths about myself daily that I could have used a lifetime ago to let it go and succeed. This seems strategic and I won’t let that go.
I took 40 years to learn to question who it was that was writing the dictionary I was reading. I can’t unlearn that…
And that’s why I help others tell their stories, anonymously or not, because using your voice is the only way to heal. And coming from someone who was programmed to use their voice strategically … not having the ability to think or speak for yourself or know that you don’t have that ability isn’t your normal “trauma wound.”
Do people with bad parents ever sit down and discuss life with people who had good parents… because the foundations are totally different and that’s where a lot of our perspective caverns come from. People with a good launch pad have zero idea what it means to struggle to get to the starting line. And when you hold them to your standards of racing because you were prepared with elecrtrolytes and rest and exercise and care and a hug before practice… they maybe got their own water from the fountain after getting screamed at on the way in. Let’s go!
I find it helps to not try to judge someone’s trauma and how quiuckly they should get through it… or how. Especially when they are uncovering it … That requires patience, not force. No amount of forgivemness I’ve already given can erase the pain I can’t forget.
Mother of Darkeness Programming…
Mother Dearest….