I was thinking today about the fact that 16 years ago on this day, my labor began. Sometimes when I tell people that story, they look at me incredulously – I know, it sounds unbelievable, right? I wish I had the tape from the machine to show them the contraction lines…but then again, no. There’s my need to verify my story, to prove that I’m right, when my word should be enough. The truth is the truth. I really did have strong contractions – not so strong that I was dying, but strong, consistent contractions for seven days straight. On the 8th day, we moved to Pitocin, and an epidural, and 23 hours after I started all of that, and three hours of really intense pushing, Brenna was finally born, and we learned the reason behind the arduous labor – her head was stuck awkwardly in the birth canal, and the contractions were not doing the job they were intended to do. I always worried that the beginning set the tone for us. Not that I resented her, but that I had gotten it all wrong from the start. Me. As if I were the one who positioned her in that way. Not that she did it either, but ultimately, being the mother, I blamed myself for not being able to just easily pop her out. I mean, it couldn’t have been a picnic for her either, right? I watched her heart rate dip, I knew it wasn’t easy. And then when breastfeeding was so difficult too – no, this was not how motherhood was supposed to be. I blamed myself completely.
As I thought about all of this today, I thought maybe I should share – maybe it was time – to share why it is so easy to blame myself. Because it is such an important part of who I am, even though I would like so much for it not to be, and maybe by talking about it just a bit, it will lose a bit of its importance.
I spent a good deal of my childhood trying to stay out of the way. Many of my siblings might disagree, but they were there for the early childhood part. I will admit, I was a totally different child while they were still at home, but there is a huge fracture between those times in my life. Once the last sibling was out of the house and it was just me on my own at home, at around age 10, my life completely changed. From that point on, the bulk of the house maintenance fell to me, and I was tasked with the bulk of the household chores, and to make dinner for my dad every night. This is kind of getting off the subject, but suffice to say, from that point on, I just wanted to not make trouble. I didn’t want to bother anyone – it seemed like both of my parents had so much on their plates, I didn’t want to trouble them with anything of my own.
But something happened to me a few years later. I was abused by someone we knew – not once, but several times. At first, I tried to convince myself it wasn’t what I thought it was. But after several more incidents, I finally had to tell someone what was happening. When my mom found out, she was angry. But she wasn’t angry at the person who did this to me – she was angry at me. She told me I had to have done something to make this happen. Why was I being so dramatic? I must have been confused. I needed to get my head on straight. And no, we weren’t going to breathe a word of this to my father. We weren’t going to go and get him all upset over nothing.
So nothing happened. But it did happen. Everything changed for me. It wasn’t long before I left home for good, and just a few weeks after I turned 18, I left for California. Just a year before she died, she admitted to me that she believed me all along, but that it was easier not to. She figured I could handle it – I was a strong girl, a smart girl. I would be okay. I didn’t know what to say to that. At the time, I thanked her for her honesty, but on the inside, I was screaming – I was your child! But that’s a pretty common theme now, and one that I think directly stems from that incident. There are many times when I know that I am being disrespected, or something’s happening to me that I absolutely don’t want to have happening, and I just put my head down and let it wash over without standing up for myself, all the while on the inside, I am screaming my head off. As soon as I walk away from whatever it is, be it an encounter with a salesperson, a disagreement with someone, even when someone asks me to do something and I really don’t want to do it, but I do it whatever it is, I berate myself repeatedly for not standing up for myself, and yet somehow, I just go into this lockdown mode. So I kind of treat myself like my mom did – rather than go back and fight for whatever it was I needed, I just kick myself for not standing up in the first place. I do this – a lot. A lot. I’ve been through therapy about this – paid several professionals to analyze this little dynamic of mine. And yet I can’t seem to shake the pattern.
The funny thing is, when it comes to my girls, all bets are off. I am Mama Bear, capital M capital B. Don’t mess with my cubs. The moment I realized Brenna had been beaten at her placement in Texas, I flew out there to file a complaint, take pictures, do everything I could within the limits of our situation to make it right. I told her over and over again that this was not her fault, that she did not deserve it. When the review process was finished and I realized that the person who beat her would not be fired, I immediately demanded that both girls be moved from their placement. I’m not writing this to say yay me – I am writing it to say that unfortunately, bad things do happen to kids sometimes. It’s awful, and yet, my point is that it’s not so much what matters the first time around, what really matters is how the adults in that child’s life react to what happens. That’s what really matters. If they spring to protect that child, they will notice. They will realize that they are a person worth protecting, and that will mean everything to them. Maybe it doesn’t mean a whole lot to the people around them, but I can tell you, more than two decades later, it means a whole lot to the child involved.
