What I’ve learned over the years is that I have a difficult time expressing my emotions. I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection lately, and that’s causing me to dig into the depths of who I am and confront some hard ugly truths about myself. One of those truths is that I am afraid of being misunderstood. As a result, I’m somewhat fixated on how I communicate with others.
Years ago when I was married (let’s refer to this as my situation), we attended a counseling session with this young, black therapist. He asked me a question, and I responded. It was probably passionately, because his response was that I had a harsh start-up. He pulled up what was called The Four Horsemen of Communication. I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s made me aware that I never want my message to be lost because of my tone or attitude.
So as a form of communication for my mental and emotional health, I lean heavily on writing as my form of creative expression. I heard a youth pastor at my church once say, “What God gifts you is not meant to stay with only you.” I’ve watched my daughter struggle with her identity over the years. I’ve watched her relationship with dude from “my situation” deteriorate, and how huge of a toll that’s taken on her. She’s such a smart, witty, creative little girl (and I’m not just saying that because she’s my daughter, she really is so much more than what I just described), and like her mother, she sometimes struggles to express herself emotionally. So, I’ve encouraged her to write her own blog about her relationship with her dad from “my situation” since our divorce. I was very intentional about not asking her to do this until after she’s had time to process all of the emotions from meeting her biological dad in person for the first time.
She sat beside me and typed her blog with tears in her eyes. I wish I could heal that hurt and erase that pain away from her. I wish she didn’t have to suffer her first heartbreak because of my decisions. A quote by Dr. Gabor Mate that settles at the core of who I am as a mother reads, “Anything that is ‘wrong’ with you began as a survival mechanism in childhood.” I wish my inability to know what true love was hadn’t caused my daughter to create a survival mechanism. I’ve decided to share her blog below because we often hear from the spouse or the adult children after a divorce, and not the babies. She doesn’t like to discuss her feelings around their relationship, but I need my daughter to know that nothing has or will happen to her that God can’t use to restore her. I need her to let this go. Letting go, as Sarah Jakes Roberts puts it, is “trusting that we can carry the lessons from our past in our hearts without constantly replaying the pain in our heads.” I want to teach her now, as a young adult, how to confront her hurts and let them go. As adults, I think we all know the importance behind learning how to do that at an early age. Her blog is below:
I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to do this. I don’t like sharing feelings especially about topics that I’m sensitive about, but today I’m talking about my relationship with my dad. In the beginning it was good, we had fun. Then one day it started to change, and next thing I know we don’t talk to each other.
I guess I should start from the beginning when I noticed the change. When my mom bought a new house, my dad didn’t move with us, and I guess you can say I found that suspicious. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t really talking to me. At the time we had a house phone, but it seemed like whenever he called, it was for my brother. If he came over it was for my brother. It started to feel like I was just this kid in the corner. Like I was some burden forced upon him. I knew he wasn’t my biological father, but did he have to treat me like an outsider?
Then for five years. Five whole years, those were the worse years of my life, ages 9-14. For five years I tried. To contact him, to build a relationship, to be the perfect daughter. But it was five years wasted. He didn’t care. He only distanced himself from me. I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Kelcie why do you think that? He probably loves you like your other siblings.” No. I watched him love my sister and brother. Laugh. Tickle. Play. Then all of a sudden when I come around the fun and laughter shuts down. I tried so hard to just get treated like a daughter. Like the daughter he seemed to love before the divorce. Everyone said don’t stress about it. You don’t owe him anything. You don’t have to have his approval. So, I quit. I wasn’t going to put in all this effort just for him to throw me in the corner again and again. To make me feel like a mistake.
But no. When I quit then its, “You need to see him. You should talk to him. Be a good daughter and talk to your dad.” But when I did, he denied access to his love and denied access to my father. And again, just like before, everyone said don’t worry about it.
Everyone thinks they know what’s best, what you should do about watching your father pull away and deny you. No one cares about what it did to you. How it messed you up in the head. How many nights you cried yourself to sleep because you knew deep down your dad, your own dad didn’t love you. How you feared to love or to be loved because of him. How you wished and prayed for a normal family with a dad who cared. A dad who loved you. But I guess everyone doesn’t get a happy ending. But you know that’s just life. It’s not fair. So, I built walls. You can’t hurt me, if I don’t let you in. But no one will know that. My mom always tells me that the bible says we have to guard our hearts, and unfortunately, sometimes we have to guard them with our parents.
People just think for some reason I don’t like my dad. They always say well why not, just forgive him, talk it out. But I said I was done and I meant it. Because no one cares about you. Your mental health. Because no matter what happens, it feels like the world is constantly and always will be against you, and the one person who is against you with the rest of the world was supposed to love me, support me, and protect me. How could the person who promised you that snatch it all away and never look back?
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