Just Old Gray Tales

Siblings and The Patriarchy I was talking with my one of my sisters, Shara, the other day about familial relationships. I guess wondering about the effect of trauma on family dynamics isn't just a "me" thing. Certainly, ever family has their own system of politics and flavor of dysfunction. The generational trauma that my father experienced and then enacted within our family created quite a few unhealthy ideas of boundaries, expectations, relatedness among the siblings. The older siblings were parentified and received far more physical abuse than did the younger ones; I remember hearing pretty often that I (as one of the younger ones) had it so much easier than they did. All of us are ridiculously hard on ourselves. Now that we're all adults, we all get along pretty well most of the time, but I wonder at how happy we all are. I've noticed that during one-on-one conversations, we tend to make ourselves feel better by gossiping and comparing different aspects of our...

I've been avoiding writing this one. Maybe because I still haven't gotten to a solid position on my relationship with mothers, my mother in particular. The idea of them is so nice and warm and inviting, but that hasn't always been my reality. As I have grown and healed, so has my relationship with my mother; I now enjoy a richer friendship with her than I ever thought was possible. But I still have this gnawing question. Am I being too hard on her? This woman who protected and nurtured me with her body for 9 months. Why do I so harshly judge someone who would give up her life for me and did so to raise me and my siblings? "Perhaps", that cruel internal self whispers, "you're simply an ungrateful brat". I choose to believe that my journey is to accept the imperfection of her love for me and how that can heal my own quarrels with self-love. Mothers There have been many mother-like figures who crossed my path, most of whom I either tried to fit into my ...