more from mom

Heidi,

Thanks for writing back and sharing more. I, too, want to be closer to you and to know you in a deeper way. I, too, want to contribute to your healing.

If you re-read my last e-mail, I was literally answering the question that you asked ... or I was answering a portion of the question that you asked which was "how did I teach you to be healthy and kind to yourself".

"How did I teach you to be healthy and kind to yourself when I was in an abusive relationship" is your entire question.

But perhaps what you are wanting to know is how long does Heidi tolerate an abusive relationship and protect her son in that situation while still allowing her son to have a father/son relationship with a father who might be abusive in the future as a result of his mental illness. Perhaps want you want to know is how can you be "better" in the relationship.

Perhaps you are wondering what you can do to protect Luka from the uncertain conversations, from the impact of the conversations that come from someone who is manic depressive that you've had to adjust to.

Perhaps I showed up for your father as someone with a "mental" illness. I certainly showed up for him as someone who did not have enough "faith" in God, or someone who couldn't heal through prayer. And he constantly made me wrong for that.

He expected me to heal you children with prayer. Perhaps I was unrealistically expecting him to heal you all through prayer. I use to think in my younger days, well maybe this is the way healing happens. Maybe I just am not good enough to make it happen. Your father has been at this longer than I have, maybe he does know what is "best".

Then as I got older I stood my ground and said, "I'm not going to be a Christian Scientist any more because this doesn't work for me." I thought in that I could get at least freedom from his yelling at me about not going to church and not healing through prayer.

I have no doubt that his parents thought I should be a Christian Scientist. I went to live with them and studied the Bible and Science and Health the last two months of my pregnancy. I was suppose to have a home birth because his mother had a home birth. I also had my own fears about being in a hospital because my father died in a hospital just two years before that.

Nine months after Chris was born I went to a week long class to learn more about Christian Science.

Some times we say the things that we have heard other people say. If it occurs to you that no one is listening to you, then you would be looking for how people are not listening to you.

There is no "trying harder to listen".

Your father's ongoing complaint that he expressed to me over and over again was that I didn't listen to him. I listened to him yell at me all the time about how I wasn't good enough, that I didn't listen enough.

So I have gone and gotten myself trained in listening. I am acknowledged everywhere in my life for how I am a master listener, and I am a master in teaching people how to communicate, and I have a lot of people in my life who provide a listening for me when all I need to do is have someone to talk to.

Your father would come home from work and start to yell at me about some thing. It would start with one complaint. It could be some simple thing. Why hadn't I done the dishes. And I would listen to his complaint about the fact that I hadn't done the dishes. It didn't matter if I responded or not, the response was never "enough", because according to him "I wasn't listening".

Then while he had my undivided attention and while he was on a roll with his yelling, he would then go to complaining about something else. It could have been how fat I was, or it could have been how I didn't sell enough insurance, or it could have been how I didn't take care of the children, or it could have been how I didn't go to church. It could have been anything.

Your father's style of communicating while he had my undivided attention and while he had the floor of yelling and criticizing me, was to go into a littany of complaints. He would just go from one complaint or criticism to another. After I did the Landmark Forum, I finally would say to him, "Ralph, you have now gone from one complaint to five complaints. I have listened to you for 30 minutes express your complaint. I am now going to end this conversation and leave the room."

That was the way I ended up handling your father being in the state of mind that he was in. It was no less frustrating to him. I was not going to yell back at him. I was not going to try to answer his endless why questions. Because it didn't matter what my answer was, it was never the "right" answer.

And I would be upset after being yelled at. But that was how I tolerated his criticism.

Why did I tolerate it? Because I was committed to marriage "lasting for ever"? Was that a childish commitment? Was that an unrealistic expectation? Was that some thing I thought I "had" to do? Was that some religious expectation? Because I was afraid to leave? Because I had to meet up to some societal expectation that we were suppose to be man and wife, through sickness and health, till death do us part? Because I took a vow for life?

Perhaps he was just an unrealistic perfectionist, and he expected me to be perfect. And I kept trying to be perfect for him. Why was he driven to be perfect?

Could it be that your father was simply replicating what he witnessed in his parents? Your grandpa Kim said he left his wife, your Grandma Jeanne, because he couldn't take the criticism any longer, and that her mother had been that way.

I had learned that when your father was in this state of mind of yelling at me, that it was probably best to just let him yell. Because if I would have yelled back or talked back too much, I might end up getting pushed around or threatened. Or he might yell or spank you children. And I lived in constant fear of that.

Perhaps I showed up for your father as someone with a "mental" illness. I certainly showed up for him as someone who did have enough "faith" in God, or someone who couldn't heal through prayer. And he constantly made me wrong for that.

I use to think there was something wrong with me. I ongoingly thought there was something wrong with me. I kept trying to be this "good" wife, I kept trying to fix my communication style, I kept trying to be perfect in relation to whatever complaint or expectation he generated next.

I have no doubt that there was something in what I was saying or not saying that he was reacting to. In my Landmark courses I have realized that in conversations with people, they aren't responding to me, they are responding to the noise that is going on in their own head.

Your father was mentally triggered by something, and we, his family, were the cat that he got to kick when he came home.

We were all that for each other.

I would come home from work and be frustrated by the house being a mess, or too many children in the house, or worried about whether my children were safe or not, not knowing exactly where they were, feeling the pressure of needing to make money and wondering if I was taking care of my children sufficiently. Was I being a good enough mom or a good enough wife.

And what were the societal expectations of being a super mom that was having an impact on me? What was the ripple effect of that on your father?

As families and as individuals we are all like mobiles. We are in balance for a while, then something comes along and upsets the mobile and sets the mobile in motion. Then everyone in the mobile is in motion and/or upset. But after a while the mobile settles down again and gets back in balance.

Now you can listen to this as me being defensive. Or you can listen to this as my sharing my experiences and conversations with you as how they occurred for me, and the interpretations and stories that I put on them. And the ways of being that I took on that I thought would "fix the problem".

This is how I responded to the conversations.

This is only how life occurred for me. It is not how life occurred for others.

What was missing in your life? Perhaps I was suppose to be a stay-at-home Mom and be there when you guys came home from school and sit down quietly and patiently and listen to each one of you, how your days went.

When I was in elementary school, I was a latch key kid. Only they didn't have latch key programs. My mom was a single mom. She worked as a secretary. Laura and I would walk to and from school carrying our books. I even carried my glockenspiel to and from school on the days I had band practice.

My mom use to give me a nickel every morning so that I could go get some penny candy at the little store next to the elementary school I went to which was St. James the Less on Oakland Park Ave.

We would stay after school and help our teachers clean and decorate their classrooms. Because all we had to go home to was an empty house. I can remember in fifth grade helping Laura's sixth grade teacher decorate her classroom.

We had best friends in the neighborhood we played with. We hung out with them in their homes or outside depending on the weather.

As a general rule, my mother trusted us and didn't worry about us. She didn't usually yell at us. We pretty much came and went after school with our playmates.

But I remember the day that she yelled at me and slapped me because I didn't come home when she was expecting me to. It was very out of character for her. I knew she was upset about something and at that young age I knew it was probably about something else and that I was just the cat that was being kicked. So I forgave my mom and still loved her.

I wonder what it was like for her when my father came back into our lives and took us away from her every weekend or every other weekend. And what was it like for her when between 7th and 8th grade we chose to go live with our father and stepmother for good. I was just a child operating as a child. It wasn't until my children came along that I got a sense of what that must have been like for her.

And what was it like for me to be in a courtroom trying to describe to a room full of people how at the time when my stepmother was picking me up from my mother's house to go to move in with my father that my mother started to yell at Theresa. That Theresa was smoking a cigarrette and rather than listen to my mother yell at her, she rolled up the window of the car and threw the cigarrette out the window. That my mother thought Theresa was trying to burn her with cigarrette. That the two of them got into a fight. I don't remember today if my mother hit Theresa or not.

But I was on a witness stand trying to tell a court room of people what happened, because for some reason Theresa had filed charges against my mother. I'm trying to be calm and be a big girl and describe what happened. And I'm using the words Theresa and Dorothy. And the attorney asked me, "Do you always call your mother, Dorothy?" I was so ashamed and felt like I was turning agianst my mother. I just started to cry. Because Theresa had been a part of my weekends and my life. And I was a child appreciating her love and affection.

It was emotionally upsetting to me to be in that courtroom. It was emotionally upsetting me to constantly being asked to choose between living with my mother or my father. It was emotionally upsetting to me to leave all my friends in the neighborhood where my mother lived to going to the neighborhood where my father lived.

I didn't know when I made that decision that it would be so hard to make new friends at the new school. I didn't know what it was like to try and fit in. My life style changed dramatically when I lived with my father compared to when I lived with my mother.

I didn't know that when I made the decision to go live with my father that I wasn't going to get to see my mother any more. It was until later in my adult years that my mother told me that she didn't think she could continue to stay in touch with us, and that when she did call to talk to us, I would cry on the phone to her, and she thought that she shouldn't call because my father told her not to call us.

How was I as a child suppose to work through my grief for my mother? We didn't have counselors. My stepmother didn't want us to be in communication with our mother. When our father died she asked us not to tell our mother that he died. It wasn't until about a year later when I reconnected with my mother. At that time she told us that she had read it in the paper.

Do you think my mother didn't go through a time of grieving when we left her?

Do you think that wasn't a huge adjustment for her? How do you think she worked through that? Glen was a very quiet man, but when we reconnected with her after my father died he referred briefly to the fact that my mother worked through it, and he was concerned about the impact it would have on her with us coming back into her life.

Every time I thought about leaving your father, I was afraid that he would take my children away from me. And tolerating his behavior was easier than trying to figure out how we could both somehow be apart from each other and still have our children in our lives.

I have no doubt that your father operated out of similar fears and commitments above.

It is the isolation of the family, the fear of turning to our community for help, the geographical distance of families, the expectation that we are now an adult, and that we should know how to do this alone, etc. that stops us from learning how to make it work, that stops us from getting the community support we need.

Heidi, I acknowledge your courage to keep asking and your commitment to have these conversations. I have shed many tears while writing this.

Love,
Mom