From the perspective of my children, I was an aloof, emotionally unavailable mother… I was a bad mother. I get how and why this is how they believe, feel, and think; when you’re a kid, all you know is what you need and do not receive. Things like histories, circumstances, and the realities of an adult being their own person just don’t enter the frame. Often, even after growing up, they never do. I know this because it’s how I felt, too.
My parents were horribly abusive, deeply broken humans. They were fractured in youth by their parents, who likely were treated the same by theirs. Generational trauma is real, is deep, and is documented to have decimated many humans and families over time. But like my kids, I knew nothing of this as a child. All I knew is what I needed and never received. To this day. So I’m not quite sure how it is I’ve managed to ‘close the circles’ well enough to see this at all; I’ve seen clearly enough to understand how and why I will never have my children as part of my life. It hurts, but I understand it.
Finally, I also understand that no matter how I try to explain what I see to them, all they can see in me is someone ‘trying to make excuses’. They cannot see that these are not excuses, they are reasons. But they’re still angry and hurt and I cannot seem to find the way to help them see that I know far better than they imagine how that feels. It’s just that I now have decades of additional hurt that I cannot repair because they have to have (at least) the time I’ve had to build perspective and insight. Educational choices and their insights notwithstanding, perhaps; but I find even education isn’t enough to shift one’s perspective if one is not interested in seeing that of others/another.
I’ve had to let them go, both of them. I need to have them understand that I did not actively harm them, and the ways in which I emotionally harmed them, I was not able to perceive or mitigate until roughly fifteen years ago, which, for them, is far too late, I suppose. There are no apologies they will hear, and in candor, I cannot give them legitimately. I did not understand enough to know I was harming them, and I had no one who might have told me or helped me see it.
It took decades for me to acquire the diagnoses, skills, and insights to see it clearly myself. And even so, I wouldn’t change my choices, nor can I traverse time to give myself the skills and insights to change my being. All I know is that the choices, to this day, they were the right ones to make. The emotional lacking and resultant behaviors, while not actively or intentionally abusive, still injured. It is not an injury I can repair, and neither of them will allow me closer or care to understand that it was not their fault. Just as it was not my fault. Generational trauma hurts us precisely because it instills behaviors that harm for generations. I am a different person today, just as they are, just as all humans change over time.
It was a far better thing I did to give one up and part from the other temporarily to keep them from having to travel through homelessness and life in a car for two years. They will never understand this, and that’s ok. They don’t have to understand if that’s what they need to feel individuated and whole in themselves. I understand, and I accept that I will never be part of their lives because they have no more choice of perspective than I did. Time and perspective is the only cure. And that cure is never available when needed, only thereafter, like flowers on a grave.
It is still hard, though. I miss both of them. I am alone in this world without them. I will never know my grandchildren. I will never have respite in my old age, either, though this is clearly the last/least of my cares. Lots of parents talk about sacrifice. I made the really hard ones for them rather than for myself. And I paid the price of being considered everything except what I actually am for it. I will never be seen as the mother who, knowing herself unable, assured what she could for her children. I will never be seen and acknowledged for being the mother who set aside her own emotional needs and attachments so that her children might have the best chance for their best futures. I will never be seen as the mother who broke the familial ties so that the generational trauma within them might be broken as well.
They will never understand this of me. I suppose I was naive to expect this outcome to be any different… the notion of redemption in my children is out of reach. By the time they have enough life to potentially understand any of this, I will most likely be long gone. Stubborn me, I attempt to write this so I might leave it behind, so I might have some slender remnant of me remaining, so I can tell them that I knew they would eventually understand, that I’m sorry I cannot be here for it, and that, as always, ever minute of my life, no matter how it may have looked, I have loved them with a depth and fidelity that only died when I myself did.
I have loved them both all my life. And always will. Enough to bear even this. Though it hurts. It hurts.