Entitled To Your Own Experience

I read somewhere, "if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've treated you better." There is much truth to that. It is not up to you to keep the secrets of other people's poor behavior. Nor is it up to you to keep your feelings hidden in order to preserve the feelings of another.

Sometimes, we remain quiet in the telling of our full story because we fear it may make others uncomfortable. I'm not talking about you're at a nice Sunday brunch with the girls and you inappropriately blurt out your deepest child hood trauma in the midst of laughing and merry-making, uncomfortable. I'm talking about the need to keep quiet because telling your story involves other people, the way they treated you and their perceptions of the same events.

Keeping quiet to prevent the hurt of others is sometimes admirable, but never at your own expense. You have a right to your experience and you have a right to express that experience. Don't let anyone shame you or silence you. You're entitled to tell the same story from your perspective without feeling concern that your perspective will cause discomfort to another in its telling.

In all my self-awareness work and spiritual growth, I often find stones yet unturned. This was one of them for me. The notion that its not only ok for me to have experienced an event differently than others who shared that event...but that it is ok for me to express that outloud, even if it might make others uncomfortable.

For only the second time, I outloud acknowledged my birth father this year for father's day. I have always acknowledged my Dad (my adopted father), but the subject of Daddy was always clouded. He died when I was three and by all accounts a wonderful man who loved me and my mother dearly and died way too soon. While I have a few vague memories of him before that, the day of his death is every bit as vivid to me now at 50 as it was when I was 3. See, he didn't just die when I was three...I found his body lying on the floor.

My mother remarried a year later and I was adopted by him (which changed my name, of course, removing yet another piece of Daddy from my life). Although we kept in touch with Daddy's family, talking about Daddy in our home was guarded. I was told shortly after the wedding to call my mother's new husband "daddy" right off the bat. Discussions about Daddy were held only with my mother and were abruptly halted when my new dad would come within earshot. It was clear to me that talking about Daddy was not ok. Did that stem from my new father? I doubt it. My guess is that it was my mother's projection, but it became my reality. I got the clear impression that to love one meant no longer loving the first...and that to continue loving the first was disrespectful to the second.

Daddy gave me all he had for three years. It wasn't his choice to leave. He didn't walk out on us. He died. He shouldn't have been put away in a box, in the basement, with stolen moments peeking through it and hushed conversations. He should've remained a part of the household. Everyone should've been included in the family.

It was, after all, a family of spare parts.

There was my mother (the only girl of three who didn't go into the convent) now a young widow. My grandmother, a widow too, who raised five of her six children (3 of which entered into the religious life and one who died at age 4), whom Daddy had promised, on Grandpa's deathbed, to care for and give a home to. And me, the broken-hearted fatherless four year old girl. The bachelor, who took a wife and inherited a family on the same day. And a year later, my adopted sister.

Literally, everyone was an outsider.

So, this brings us to 'why now, Judy?' Why now choose to broach this subject?

On Father's Day I had an unexpected reaction pop up in response to my sister's Father's Day post. She wrote "From the beginning, we (she and Dad) were the outsiders..but we always had each other..." It struck me, because I always felt like the outsider. I felt like it was Gramma and me, and 'the new family'. Then when Gramma went into the nursing home when I was 11, I really just felt 'leftover'. When I read my sister's words, I thought "how could everyone in that house have felt like an outsider?" And in my astonishment I wrote something about feeling like 'someone else's leftovers', to which she replied 'yikes'.

I ended up deleting that comment, feeling like I shouldn't have written it because it made people uncomfortable...but, I'm entitled to my experiences too, and I am also entitled to express them. My sister was brave enough to write that she felt like an outsider, why didn't I have the same right? The answer was that I do. I just hadn't given myself that permission yet. My mother has been gone 9 years and I was still operating under the old rules. Still feeling that if I acknowledged my pain or my affection for Daddy that I was somehow going to hurt Dad.

After Daddy died, while playing with the neighborhood kids, some would taunt me and say that I didn't have a dad. That my dad was in "a deep dark hole". After Mom remarried, I was able to respond to them that I actually had two dads, one in heaven and one in my house. I had forgotten that along the way. So, now that part of my voice is back.

I have two fathers. Daddy gave me life, and Dad gave me a life. Without one or the other, my experiences would've been very very different.

My husband and I are both on marriage number two. He has a wonderful relationship with his adult son's mother and her family. No one is an outsider...not even me. This is how it should be. Love should be inclusive, not exclusive. My daughter knows who Grandpa Gene (Daddy) is, just like she knows who Granny Emma (Gramma) is, though they both died long before she was born.

Families are not neat and tidy Hallmark or Norman Rockwell images. They are complicated, messy, intertwined, intermingled, co-ops. Because of this not everything we experience within those families is all sugar and spice either. While it is important to be respectful of other's feelings, it is not ok to deny your own. You are entitled to express the experiences you had, even if they differ from those of others who shared the same event. It doesn't make your experience less valid.