Tags
abandonment, anger, cerclage, child abuse, childhood, crazy mother, denial, diethylstilbestrol, disappointment, dissociation, Memories, miscarriage, mother issues, PTSD, rage, repressed memories, shame, tears, Therapy, transference
Well, it’s really more like I can’t handle the truth.
During a particularly meandering point in my session last week I remembered a family legend/myth that seemed pertinent but for a reason I couldn’t really pinpoint.
My mother miscarried several times before giving birth to me. The baby right before me was born alive and lived for several minutes, and was later buried with my grandfather’s mother. My mother was diagnosed with an “incompetent cervix”. She became pregnant with me. They gave her Diethylstilbestrol and a cerclage. When the pre-term labor continued they gave her alcohol IV’s for about four weeks. They said I had hiccups the whole time.
Anyway, somehow I survived all of this foolishness and after staying in the hospital for a few weeks for jaundice and an inability to regulate my body temperature I was allowed to go home with my mother (my grandparent’s house).
Well the story I’ve heard since forever is that it was like 11:00 am or noon and my grandmother being a nurse and all got anxious because my mother had not gotten up yet. She went into the bedroom and looked into the white, faux wicker bassinet. No baby. She shook my mom calling her repeatedly and pulled back the covers. No baby. Now frantic and crawling around on all fours looking for a new grandbaby under the bed. No baby. My mother finally roused herself with a disdainful tone and demanded to know why she was being woken up so rudely. “She is here in the bed with me!” she barked. My grandmother responded in a furious West Indian diatribe. My mother finally gets our of the bed and helps my grandmother rip all of the sheets and blankets off of the bed.
I was wedged at the foot of the bed in the very tightly tucked in corner. I was told all these years I had worked my way down there. In my mind I secretly held the belief that I’ve been trying to get away from my mother since shortly after birth. I tell Dr.K this with a rueful grin/grimace.
Dr. K looks doubtful. He finally says, “I find it interesting that you take responsibility for everything that happened to you, for instance you must have been trying to get away from your mother not maybe she kicked you to the bottom of the bed.” The statement just hung in the air as most of his statements do. I attempted to laugh it off even as I admitted it was a viable possibility.
When I relayed the story later to my husband I paused and he said “Well a baby that young can’t crawl she must have kicked you down.” Before I could even finish the story and I blurted out “That’s exactly what Dr.K said.” Suffice it to say I was fucked up for days. I come in several days later for another visit and I tell him about the miscarriages, the still birth, and how I kicked the stitches out of the cerclage so my mother had to stay on bed rest. Dr. K has an incredulous expression. “You mean to say, you were a fetus and you kicked out the stitches?!?” I have to sit there for a moment and think. I had TWO cerclages, perhaps they could be undone by very determined and unstoppable contractions, but a fetus could not kick them out. I had THREE children and none of them were ambulatory in any way, shape, or form at 5-8 weeks old.
The truth hurts, terribly and continually.
Anyway, I thought I had to skip a visit to get around my daughter’s graduation from Junior High and I was laying in bed with Pippo ( my stuffed hippo transitional object) I was listening to Sade and feeling sorry for myself and the phone rang. It was Dr. K and he said he had a cancellation and made a new appointment for me.
Sade was singing “Your daddy love come with a lifetime guarantee.” and I felt like I had a daddy that cared about me for that moment and it was wondrous.
Babyfather by Sade
We were waiting for the bus
No-one much around but us
Then I see this young boy cut a look at me
I’m stunned
In a daze
He had the whole street set ablaze
It’s only love they say
Makes you feel this way
She liked his eyes she wanted more
The baby gonna have your smile for sure
He saw a lovely girl
Smelling sweet and soapy like fresh air
She saw him looking acted like she didn’t care
That’s how we knew
And so love grew a flower
A flower that is you
Your daddy knows you’re a flame (x4)
Even to the angels it may sound like a lie
For you child
He was the troops and extra backup standing by
For you child
For you he’s the best he can be
For you child
For you he’s the best he can be
Oh child don’t you know
Your daddy love come with a lifetime guarantee
Your daddy knows you’re a flame (x2)
Yeah daddy love you child
Your daddy knows you’re a flame (x2)
Daddy love you yeah
It’s only you he’ll say
Made the young boy hungry for the man he is today
It’s only love, love, love, love
Can make you feel this way
Your daddy knows you’re a flame
Tears of a bennu 
Your experience is similar to my wife’s. It has become clear, through therapy, that her mother’s continual abuse and insults, blaming her for every little thing, blaming the fact she was even born for everything that was wrong in her mother’s life, caused my wife to take responsibility for all that, and to take her mother’s viewpoint. So she blamed herself for everything and never believed anyone could like her, that she had any worth, that it was all her fault. Now she is finally evicting her mother from her head, and learning that she is wonderful and beautiful and her mother’s feelings and opinions on that mean absolutely nothing and need to be thrown away. What I read is that you are learning this too. If you have to let go of some comforting myths to find your real and beautiful self, so be it. I wish you love upon this journey.
there was so much i wanted to say about this, but all i can meekly say right now is i’m really glad you have dr. k. and i can relate to a lot of the things you said.
i am finally feeling a bit better, and able to really give this blog a bit more of my own thoughts on this. Like you i tend to blame myself for impossible things, things that i couldn’t have possible controlled. Something one of my old therapist used to say. I would tell her something about my childhood and i would blame myself for it happening and she would look at me and say “Krystle that couldn’t have possible been your fault because your not God, and your not that powerful.” and i would be like what do you mean, and she’d be like can you make a tree, and i’d be like no, and she’d be like well then you’re not that powerful. And she’d explain to me how powerless children are, how they have no control over what happens to them, and how no matter what we think, it is normal to think that the world revolves around us, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t. sometimes bad things happen for no reason at all, and it has nothing to do with anything that we did. Dr. K is truly wise and telling you, how could you possibly have crawled away from your mother when you were just a few days old? it’s impossible. The thing that Shaps tells me is when i think that something that happened in my child hood was my fault, i take that logic and apply it to the Kamster, or one of the other kids i watch, i think about if something like that were to happen to them, and what i would think, would i think it was their fault or would i just know that it has nothing to do with them, and they were powerless? It doesn’t always work for me, because i think i’m such a horrible person, but everyone in awhile it does. Sorry i’ve written so much..and i’m sorry if it’s slightly incoherent, still in that fibro fog.
Hey Sweetie-face,
Thanks for tossing in your ten cents, it is much appreciated and well invested 😉
I am starting to realize I can’t keep recalling the myths, lies and legends the way I was coached too, or the way it was told to me. The only way to stop taking the blame and come out from under the shame is to tell the truth, the way it really happened, no excuses or interpretations, just the facts.
It is breaking my heart but I feel a little lighter, raw, but lighter.
(((smooches, high-fives, fist-bumps, hugs, butterfly and eskimo kisses)))
Hello precious Phoenix,
I could relate to much of your post. I was born with problems with my hands and legs that might be disabling. The umbilical cord had become wrapped around me and inhibited me as I grew. My mother’s story was that somehow I had done it myself. My fault. The truth was that she had physically abused me in the womb. I didn’t do anything, she did. Much like your mother and I’m sorry that we share this in common. Babies don’t do the kinds of things she blamed and shamed you for.
I too love that part of that song and find it very healing. I’m glad that you felt that and that he is there for you as you heal. Good and healing thoughts to you.
Kate
Hi Gentle Kate,
I didn’t even realize I had bought into it hook,line and sinker. I know better and have working/educational/and life experience and I still just spout these ridiculous stories without a second thought.
In the beginning I was doing it for them, now I think I did to spare my own feelings. I’m just going to have to build a bridge and get over it because they have to bare the blame for what they did, I won’t heal past this if I can’t lay the blame where it belongs.
Love, peace and hair grease (just kidding)
Phoenix
I think so too Robin, my family comes up with some doozies…
Phoenix…”In my mind I secretly held the belief that I’ve been trying to get away from my mother since shortly after birth.” I’ve been doing this my whole life, my aunt, (my mother’s sister)who I’m very close too, seems to insist on trying to have me mend fences with my mother. I have no use for her at this point in my life. {{HUGS}}
Ruby, Phoenix,
I have no relationship with my mother either and have no desire to have one. In fact, my mother’s side of the family has either all passed on or isolated themselves from one another and everyone else.
My stepmother and various other people in my life have encouraged me to reconcile with my mother, pressuring me with guilt, that she’s my mother, that I somehow owe her something for bringing me into the world, disregarding all the physical, verbal and emotional abuse.
I will not compromise myself because of someone else’s expectations.
When I try to explain to people that it is permanently over between my mother and me, they get so uncomfortable and shocked and all “clutch the pearls” on me but I just don’t give a shit anymore. It’s like Highlander, there can be only one. We can’t both exist in the same space so I removed myself from hers and she isn’t welcome in mine!
“I will not compromise myself because of someone else’s expectations.”
You said a mouthful sister!!!Amen to that!
Thank you for the support Ruby.
Why can’t people leave well enough alone, why do other family member’s contentment and peace of mind have to hinge upon who we have relationships with?
(((Hugsbackatcha))
Wow, heavy stuff.
I’m beginning to think that every family has a series of lies, that the elders know are lies, that they perpetuate to generations to follow.
My mother lost a baby, my older brother, a year and a day before I was born. There was a whole elaborate story about why he died, where he was buried, that she wasn’t ‘permitted’ to leave the hospital to be there when he was buried, etc.
As an adult, I did a little research and what a revelation it was, to learn that the horrible story wasn’t true.
Gentle Hugs oxox
Robin
Hi R.G,
“I’m beginning to think that every family has a series of lies, that the elders know are lies, that they perpetuate to generations to follow. ”
I’ve been trying to smash the lies all along, but the elder’s made it impossible, it was either go along with the party line and remain connected or tell the truth and be ostracized and labeled crazy.
Bear hugs 😉
‘Nix