Category: Recent History

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Yes I have cancer. No the outlook is not good. Here’s what I want.

Yesterday I got a text from my oldest brother.  (The first text ever, actually.)

At first I assumed someone had died, and he was letting me know.  Turns out, they found out that I have metastatic triple negative breast cancer.  I’ve chosen to keep it from them for almost two years, for several reasons, and it turns out that was the right decision.

He said the way they found out was “almost totally random” but it was actually pretty deliberate.  Brother #3’s second wife, whom I have never met, apparently did a search for me and found me on Facebook, where there was a public post I wrote about it last summer, when a few high school people that I wasn’t FB friends with were pinging me, because I guess the news had gotten around among them.  I got a few really nice messages from some of them, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with each of them, so I just wrote a public post.  I assumed no relatives were looking for me any more (and I was right:  my actual siblings aren’t looking for me.  A stranger was, because a complete stranger cares more about finding out about me than any of my siblings).

I interpret what my brother meant by “random” here is something like, “we weren’t expecting her to find out something like this, where we might have to do something.”

His use of “random” to describe this could also suggest that the wife “doesn’t know the history”, to quote that long-ago revealing statement from Brother #2.  In other words, she doesn’t know that I’m not supposed to be treated like an actual family member.  I wonder just how that unwritten rule is going to be explained to her.

My brother started off using a very old childhood nickname, which was oddly touching.  I now wonder if that was a deliberate way to fake closeness or induce me to be more open, as he hasn’t used that name for me literally in decades.  And the rest of the conversation was fairly formal.

And with a little hindsight, I now see that it was indeed, as could have been predicted, all about him/them.

He didn’t ask how I was.  He didn’t ask what he could do for me, or us.  He didn’t even ask exactly what I have, or what my prognosis might be (although that information might have come from the FB post, but he said he hasn’t been on FB for years, so I doubt it).

He did ask, oddly, if he should ask what last name I’m using now.  I still don’t know what that was about. **  Do they think that my husband of 26 years would now leave me in sickness?  In fact he has been fantastically loving & supportive through everything.

(He reacted to this contact with far more anger than I had, over what they’ve done to me, which is a sign of love:

“Look, just so we’re clear,” he says, “if somebody asks something or says something about my sister that I don’t like, understand that I will break a bottle over their head.” Few words express love clearer than these.)

** ETA:  I probably figured it out.  Due to issues with FB Biz Manager, I had to close down my original account and start a new one, around April 2021. I christened that one “Morgan McDonald” so I could keep the two accounts straight, and then over a few months, I migrated friends from one to the other.  Once I had everyone transferred, I deleted the old one, and changed the name on the new one back to my real name.

BUT — if they are aware of “Morgan McDonald”, that means they’ve been spying on my account for at least a year and a half, and probably longer than that.  Way to “respect my privacy”, assholes.

If this is what they are doing, I’m pretty sure they spin it to themselves and each other  as, “We’re just being good people, looking out for our pathetic sister.”

They just canNOT stand that someone utterly rejects them, and especially someone they see as “lesser”.

Knowing that I’ve been dealing with this for almost 2 years, my brother made an offer for me to come and stay with them if I wanted different medical care.  Lymphoma was mentioned as a local specialty — which is not what I have.

What I have is quite aggressive:  it’s at the far end of the charts on every measure there is.  In fact, I initially had 2 kinds of carcinoma:  both HER2+ and triple negative.  I’m on my seventh therapy in total, including radiation and surgery:  I had chemo & immunotherapy for the HER2+, which looks like it did not metastasize; and chemo, immunotherapy and now another chemo for the triple negative, which did.

If I hadn’t been getting stellar medical care for the past 2 years, I’d probably be dead already.  As it is, a Residual Cancer Burden of III after surgery predicts:

    • 10-year recurrence/death rate = 40% for HER2+ BC
    • 10-year recurrence/death rate = 75% for triple-negative BC

And I’ve already had the recurrence.

Not great odds.

Anyway, it’s clear to me in retrospect that the offer wasn’t meant to be actually useful.  Once I explained that I am not in want of adequate medical care, the tone of the convo became that of someone who wants to end it as soon as possible.  I believe this texting was his way of “doing something” so he can stave off guilt and feel like he did something.  And he can report that back to everyone else, who can then say, “well she says she doesn’t need any help” and that’s that.  Go back to uselessly praying to that same god who GAVE me the cancer, if that’s what you believe in.  And keep pretending to yourself that you care about me, all the while maintaining your long-held beliefs & anger at me for things that were not my fault.

I’m willing to bet a decent amount of money that a few of them are actually glad I might soon be gone for good.

In other words, even though now they know I have aggressive cancer and am likely to die far too soon — I don’t believe they will change a thing.

Because that’s far more comfortable.  It’s easier.  And it’s especially a better option than facing up to the possibility that MY FAMILY gave me this cancer.

I can hear the eye-rolling from here, but it’s a scientific fact:  “The more Adverse Childhood Events a person experiences (such as …neglect…[or] Having a family member attempt or die by suicide [or] …Growing up in a family with mental health… problems), the more likely they are to suffer from cancer…”

From the University of Chicago:

“Local chemical signals released by fat cells in the mammary gland appear to provide a crucial link between exposure to unrelenting social stressors early in life and to the subsequent development of breast cancer”

There’s not much else that can explain how I went from a healthy 52YO who routinely got mistaken for being 10 years younger, to having a super-aggressive, treatment-resistant form of breast cancer.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink to excess, I’m not overweight, I eat relatively healthily.  I have no other health issues.  I got all my preventive care checkups. I have no genetic markers.

Early studies explored ways that children who faced adversity such as… neglect at home were at higher lifelong risk for a range of problems including cancer…
…chronic, toxic stress in childhood can affect a person over the course of their life… the trauma of having one or both parents die does impact breast density, risk for breast cancer, and risk for especially aggressive types of breast cancer.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that having your mother disappear for a month at a time, twice, during your first year could have a similar effect on an infant as if she had died.

I’ve given up on any possibility that I might get what I actually want (apologies, respect, acceptance, love — in other words, CHANGE) from my siblings.  And now that they know about the cancer, anything they might do will more probably be out of self-preservation from guilt, and not because they love me, miss me, or care about me.

But – in the unlikely event that anyone actually wants to do something useful for me, here’s the only thing I’m asking for now:

I want to know EXACTLY what happened to me.

I want to know what Mom did that night that made Dad pack Mom off to the doctor, and made the doctor immediately pack her off to the hospital for a month, keeping her away from her infant daughter.  I want to know why & what happened the second time she was hospitalized, too.  I want to know about Mom’s medical history, any actual records, and anything known about her mental health, or why she received electroshock therapy.  I want to know everything my sister knows, because I suspect that’s at least part of what made her try to commit suicide that year.  I want to know what they themselves did to me, or didn’t do for me, when they were put in charge of me and the younger boys.  I want to know how long I sat around in wet diapers and had such horrible diaper rash, and why 40 years later the same brother threw at me the words, “WE CHANGED YOUR DIAPERS”.

I’ve been trying to get any information I could for years.  I had to trick them into giving me a good chunk of what I do know, but they put a one-hour time limit on that one discussion session, and I’m certain there’s more.  And I have a right to my own goddamned history.

Here are the terms I will offer:  any information I get will be kept confidential.  I won’t blog about it, and I won’t rat out anyone who tells me anything to the rest of the family.  I was able to keep knowledge of my cancer from everyone for 2 years, and they only found out by accident — so that proves I can keep that promise.

My time is limited, and there’s a decent chance it’s because of what happened to me as an infant and a child.  Now that they know about the cancer, I’m asking – one last time – for the one thing I can only get from them.  My sister is likely to get what she’s always wanted:  a world without my existence in it.  So the way I see it, it’s only fair that I also get what I want before I’m dead:  and I want the truth.

I hope someone finally has the courage to give me at least part of what I want.  I know no one has the courage to love me in spite of dictates from my sister, and probably Susan — but I have a little hope that someone will have the guts & the decency to finally give me information.

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Familiar Ground

The impeachment hearings continue the theme of politics reminding me of my FOO situation.

Calling out what is clearly bad behavior on the part of a Member of the Club results in yelling, lies, spin, misdirection — anything to defend the indefensible.  To shift blame from the person who did the bad behavior to the person who called it out, because that’s much easier and more comfortable than confronting the real problem.

Nothing makes that more clear than the R’s rabid desire to out the whistleblower.  In their minds, THAT is where the problem occurred. No one’s sorry for anything wrong that was done.  They’re just mad that it got caught, that someone had the NERVE to pass negative judgement on the Charismatic Leader.

And, it’s clear that the conservatives won’t listen to any kind of reason or logic.  They won’t be swayed by facts or evidence.  They will persist in believing that “their guy” is being persecuted, rather than simply being held to account. They will yell and wave their stupid signs and perform all kinds of hysterical theatrics, rather than admit one simple thing:  THEY WERE WRONG.

All that is pretty damned familiar.

And whatever is driving the GOP to this extreme, toxic behavior clearly runs deep.  I assume it’s kompromat of some kind, but is it money laundering? human trafficking?  compromising sex?  Who knows?

In the case of my FOO, I think it’s a refusal to face the reality that the excuses and rationales they were taught for 30 years, and have clung to for 20 more, aren’t actually true.

“If only SHE hadn’t been born, none of this would have happened.”

That phrase, or something close to it, sums up how I think my sister in particular feels about me, and to a lesser extent the other two members of The Triumvirate.  “If only you hadn’t been born!”

It is where the thinking stops, and the anger takes over.

That phrase allows you to be mad as shit at the reality you are living, but it makes a serious error.  It allows you to throw all your (justified) anger and emotions and psychological garbage about what is going on, onto an easy target (not justified).  It’s a way to cope, but not a fair or healthy one.

But when all you know is how to blame — and the idea of blaming Mom, or god, or Dad (on whom they were suddenly entirely dependent, after having scapegoated him for so long) is too terrifying to contemplate — well, you gotta put it SOMEWHERE.  And a baby is a pretty safe place to put it, from your own selfish viewpoint.  No repercussions to yourself.

There might be some for the baby.

Unfortunately, the damage that is done by blame-shifting doesn’t come back to the blamer.  The blamer will just shift THAT blame, too.

And now you don’t have to think about how Mom was mentally ill.

(Actually I don’t understand the resistance to this idea AT ALL.  Mom being mentally ill explains a shit-ton of stuff that otherwise you have to jump through a lot of hoops to explain. To me, the idea is a relief, that finally everything makes sense.  It’s truly never made any sense to me to deny it.)

The reality is different.  Even if I had not been born, “it” still would have happened, in some form or fashion. Perhaps there would not have been a Divorce.  But damage would still have been done, just like Trump would have been impeached sooner or later — because our mother was not a healthy person, and toxic people keep on doing toxic things.

I spent the first few years of my life watching my parents yell at each other. It’s one of my earliest memories of them together.  Would it have been preferable to them if Dad and Mom had stayed together, angry and unhappy, forcing my two youngest brothers to grow up in that environment?

Because that’s some of the damage that happened, until The Divorce.

Of course, by that time, the Triumvirate were all escaping out of the house to go to college, so what happened at home wasn’t of too much concern to them.  And that’s fair enough.  What college freshman should be involved in their parents’ marital problems?

But there were still a couple of little kids left in that toxic environment.

So was it better in their eyes for there not to be a Divorce — as long as they didn’t have to live in the mess themselves? Because Catholicism, presumably.  And this is the major reason I gave up on Catholicism:  because it always puts ideology ahead of actual people.  I have only ever met exactly one Catholic priest in my life who put people ahead of ideology, and I’ve met an awful lot more who didn’t.

The Church brainwashed our mother to do the same thing:  if she hadn’t been Catholic, she would probably have had the medically recommended hysterectomy after her fourth child, and presumably my sister would have her wish:  a family that doesn’t include me.

Well, she more-or-less has that now, and I hope she is happy about it, and also that she chokes on it.

Mom chose ideology over what was better for her and her family.  And it eventually helped to destroy that family. My sister has chosen to cling to her grudge against my existence — rather than as an adult, re-examine the situation, work through the unresolved trauma and pain, and recognize the lies for what they were:  a way to scapegoat me, and protect Mom, and later Susan, from having to take responsibility for their own actions.

I wonder if she ever wonders how it feels to have someone begrudge the fact that you even exist.

How it feels to be deliberately not included in your own family.

What does all that have to do with the impeachment? Not a lot, necessarily, other than the shape of the current situation.

Oh, and that the continued and unwavering support for Trump & the GOP that we see in the polls tells me that about 1/3 of our population has some degree of mental health issues or unresolved trauma.

Anyone who can look at the mess that is Trump & the GOP and think, “That’s fine, that’s normal” and cheer them on — rather than recoiling at the unhealthy performances being put on in order to protect a man who is clearly a narcissist — has some issues of their own.

But mainly, it’s the sight of hysterical, toxic behavior to cover up and excuse previous toxic behavior.  And no hope of anyone ever changing.

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Parallels

Dear Polly,

I have a very severe allergy to mushrooms. I carry an EpiPen, and I have been hospitalized multiple times because of exposure to this food. One time, I began convulsing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My husband politely explained this to his parents when we started dating, and I was invited to family meals.

Since then, most meals we have shared at my in-laws’ house have had very limited options for me. Somehow, they manage to find a way to add mushrooms to almost everything. One time, they made a point to make a special plate of mushrooms and pass it around. My mother-in-law said, very rudely, “I would’ve liked to add mushrooms directly to the salad, but SOMEBODY has problems with it!” They even added mushroom powder to the mashed potatoes at one holiday dinner. My mother-in-law claimed it was a new recipe she’d found…

[So, she’s asked them to do something, because it’s a problem for her, and they’ve refused to do anything about it, and it’s clearly all her fault. Check.]

This has caused a huge wedge between my husband’s family and us. We no longer spend holidays with them and rarely speak. They don’t get to see their grandkids, even though they live very close by. His sister stopped talking to us. He has a brother who still reaches out and is kind to us, but he acts as though his parents are just set in their ways and we should forgive them and move on.

My husband supports me 100 percent, and he is very angry and hurt by their actions. But at times I feel terrible that I am the cause of this rift, and I just want a happy family.

HELP!

Disrespected Daughter-in-Law

Dear DDIL,

You’re not the cause of this rift. The cause of this rift is TRULY TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS.

Every now and then, a group of people assumes the traits and behaviors of sociopaths. Maybe one person in the group completely and permanently lost their doughnuts several decades prior, and slowly, each member of the group learns that playing along with this singular menace is the only way to survive. Eventually, the members of the group are so utterly confused and gaslit by each other that they enforce the will of the group and nod along with bizarre opinions …

Because these people are confused and weak and angry — and because they’re rendered increasingly more confused, weak, and angry by their exposure to each other — they tend to have less and less contact with those outside the group. And when they do encounter someone who’s not in the fold, they recoil and attack. Anyone who questions the group is attacked with words and actions. Anyone who questions the group is bad, and the group is good.

This rift has nothing to do with you. You could be the purest, most perfect, most lovable human alive, and these resoundingly toxic humans would find a reason to take issue with you. They are unwell, full stop.

But have these humans ever indicated that they’re open to new information …? Have you seen any signs that they’re heartbroken over this turn of events and they want to find a way to mend fences? If not, it’s hard to see why they’d suddenly wake up and look for understanding now.

Even so, I would get a doctor’s letter. I would send the letter. But I might also solicit a letter from a therapist, explaining that no matter what mitigating circumstances they might ascribe to their behavior, they’ve done a lot of damage to their relationship with their son and with you, and a large effort, either individually or as a group, will be necessary to fix that damage.

I guess that, personally, I’d want to be crystal clear with them before I disappeared for good. But honestly, that’s one of my flaws. Even when the writing’s on the wall, I want to explain everything. I want to believe that people can change… and all of the confusion and bewilderment that stands in the way of those connections needs to be cleared away or at least tolerated, even when that takes a lot of hard work and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of deep breathing on everyone’s parts.

Your situation challenges this view. Your situation points to the fact that some people are at once so ignorant and so disordered that they cannot understand or navigate reality without hurting other people in the process.

Sometimes people are just unwell. There’s nothing you can do but pity them and keep your distance. It’s pretty awful when you’re related to them. But these motherfuckers are unrepentant. They’re angry, and they want to punish SOMEONE. God only knows what brought them to this, but your only recourse is to stay the fuck away.

And honestly, I’m sure that once you two are officially given up for dead, they’ll find another easy scapegoat and that member of the family will defect, too. That seems inevitable. That’s just what happens in the Upside Down.

It’s very sad. Mourn it. Go see a therapist and encourage your husband to see one, too. This is a hard thing to accept. It’s going to take time.

But don’t ever be tempted to believe that you’re doing something wrong here. This is not on you. This is their abject madness, and it’s up to them to grapple with it. It has nothing to do with you. Let go of this and move forward.

We don’t all get the families we want… If they were abusive or violent, it would be simpler. They’re the worst because they still get to think that this [family rift] is just your little hang-up. They’re the worst because they think it’s completely normal to rage at you for [calling out their bad behavior] … They’re the worst because they get to walk around acting like they’re regular, good-hearted people most of the time…

…put them behind you and don’t look back.

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Journaling

Some more evidence that this blog was the right thing to do.

“It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.”

Labeling emotions and acknowledging traumatic events — both natural outcomes of journaling — have a known positive effect on people, Dr. Pennebaker said, and are often incorporated into traditional talk therapy.

At the same time, writing is fundamentally an organizational system. Keeping a journal, according to Dr. Pennebaker, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience, and we sleep better.

This in turn improves our immune system and our moods; we go to work feeling refreshed, perform better and socialize more. “There’s no single magic moment,” Dr. Pennebaker said. “But we know it works.”

On the other hand, Dr. Pennebaker’s research has found that journaling about traumatic or disturbing experiences specifically has the most measurable impact on our overall well-being.

In his landmark 1988 study, outlined in his book “Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion,” students were randomly assigned to write about either traumatic experiences or superficial topics for four days in a row. Six weeks after the writing sessions, those that had delved into traumatic experiences reported more positive moods and fewer illnesses than those writing about everyday experiences.

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Rule of Law vs Charismatic Leader

Politics continues to reveal to me interesting things about people in general, but especially about my FOO.

For about the past decade, I’ve been truly mystified by the number of people who really, really WANT to run their lives and make decisions according to something other than facts and data.

Religion, astrology, tarot cards and palm reading, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop thing. Mysticism. The Power of the Ancients. The Secret.

It’s all the same snake oil, and it’s all bullshit, but it keeps selling.

This post by Teri Kanefield discusses the difference between those who want Rule of Law (a rational system) in our country, and those who want a Charismatic Leader, and boy does it shed some light on that whole conundrum.

One way to understand U.S. politics is a clash between two kinds of authority:

  • Rule of Law
  • Charismatic Leader

The American right wing wants a charismatic leader…  Most of us want Rule of Law (rational-law model).  The “Rule of Law” and “Charismatic Leader” models are mutually exclusive.  To exist, each must destroy the other.

  • Rule of Law requires facts.
  • Charismatic leader requires myth.

AND

  • The way to undermine the Charismatic Leader is to prove the myth false.
  • The way to kill Rule of Law is to undermine factuality.

The Charismatic Leader needs to undermine facts and law…
(note:  This is the same as the form of abuse known as “gaslighting”.)

If the myth that props him up is shattered, the leader loses support.
(It’s okay if he lies. It’s not okay if the myth is shattered.)

Clearly this was my big sin, as seen by my FOO:  destroying the myth.

Prof. Timothy Snyder explains that in the past, the ones who didn’t want to live under Rule of Law went west to the frontier, where there they could do as they pleased and create myth. In Europe, during the period of empire, they went to the colonies.  Snyder says that our current crisis —liberal democracy in trouble worldwide— resulted from the fact that we ran out of places for them to go.

In my FOO, the timing was such that when the Rule of Law (Dad) showed back up to live at home full-time, the Triumvirate was on the way out the door to go to college anyway.  Thus they were able to preserve their myth of our mother as a rational, loving parent, and our father as the source of all the problems.

One idea underlying liberal democracy is the “social contract,” which forms rule of law. The way to save the Constitution is for an overwhelming majority of people to reaffirm the social contract.

In my case, the obvious social contract that was broken is the one that says a family is a family, no matter what; that these are the people you can always count on.

But another one was also broken, the social contract between a mother and her children:  the cultural idea that a mother is engaged and loving, and sacrifices willingly for her family.

The seduction of believing in myths is that they are glamorous and shiny.

The problem with believing in myths is that sooner or later, they run up against the Real World.

One example of how belief in a “harmless” myth affected my mother, and our family, is that she sincerely believed what she was told in her teens by a fortune teller at some fair:  that she would give up a glamorous “stage career” that she could have had. In my mother’s head, this was a career as a concert pianist.  Instead she became a non-glamorous wife and mother.

(I never heard my mother play one single note on a piano, ever. I have no idea if she was really that good, but I have my doubts.)

I heard this story dozens of times through my childhood.  And plenty of mothers probably have similar stories about “what might have been”.  But with my mother, she never followed it up with anything like, “But I have you, and that’s better than anything else I could have had!” and a hug.

No, my mother’s repeated telling of this story was an expression of how dissatisfied she was with her life choices.

If that’s the choice my mother wished she had made, she had no one but herself to blame for it – or possibly she could have blamed a competing myth, the Catholic Church.

But a career as a concert pianist takes a lot of fucking work and practice and grit, and a certain amount of luck.  It isn’t glamorous except for maybe the 2 hours you’re on the stage. I imagine there are plenty of people who did try to make it as a pianist and failed. It’s not quite the same as the failure of not even trying, but it’s still a failure of the myth.

So what happens when the myth fails to deliver?

The believers look around for someone else to blame.

My mother chose to act the martyr and victim, and shift the blame instead, usually to my dad.

Just one small example of how belief in a harmless, entertaining myth can fuck up a decent reality.

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Family Estrangement

I’ve been coming across lots of pertinent things lately.  These are some interesting notes from this article that a friend sent to me about family estrangement.

“For me, as for most people, it took an exchange so toxic, so far outside the boundaries of what’s acceptable, that something snapped inside me.

“…my only regret is that I didn’t do it earlier. Much, much earlier.

“The cultural narrative around estrangement is that it’s a problem that needs to be solved. We see and feel the supremacy of the genetically connected family in a thousand ways throughout childhood. By the time we’re adults it literally goes without saying…

“For us, estrangement isn’t a problem; it’s a solution to a problem, a response to an otherwise unsolvable dilemma. It’s a last resort when you’ve tried everything else over and over, when you no longer trust the relationship. When — as Ann Landers once wrote — you’re better off without the other person in your life.

“I’ve interviewed more than 50 people who have estranged themselves from family members, and I have yet to meet a single one who regrets it. They regret whatever situation made it necessary. They regret not having a parent/sibling/family member they could come to terms with. They regret that their problems were severe enough to make estrangement look good. But they don’t regret doing it.

“More than three-quarters of the participants in one study felt estrangement had made a positive difference in their lives. One woman I talked to who initiated an estrangement said her main feeling was relief, even liberation. Another told me it was as though she’d lived under a cloak of silence that had suddenly been lifted. A third said, “There really are cases where estrangement is the better course. It’s horrific, it’s sad, it’s tragic, and it’s better than the alternative.”

“It’s also a lot more common than you might think…The most recent research suggests that up to 10 percent of mothers are estranged from at least one adult child…

Fascinating side notes from this paper: some suggestion that the lack of a loving relationship between my mother and me was far outside the norm, and probably caused or at least exacerbated by factors outside my control.

  • the mother–daughter tie has generally been found to be the closest, most enduring, and mutually supportive of all parent–child gender combinations.
  • mothers report being most emotionally close to last-born children.
  • parent–child relations tend to be more stable when both parents are present
  • maternal depression has been shown to interfere with parent–child relationships
  • mothers who have a larger number of children may be more likely to have an estranged child simply because the risk of having a child become estranged is greater as the size of the group increases.

“…and that about 40 percent of people experience family estrangement at some point. Most people, though, fall somewhere less definitive on the estrangement continuum, a term coined by Scharp, one of the few researchers who studies the phenomenon…“I find that people are just more or less estranged.”

Some families talk by phone but never visit. Some email but never talk. Some see each other once or twice a year but keep their relationships superficial. Many sustain long periods of silence punctuated by brief reconciliations.

In my case, what I did was put words to a situation that already existed, and eventually I escalated and formalized the estrangement when they refused to deal with it or even admit it.

I forced them to make a choice, and admit to an unpleasant reality:
Prove to me that I’m really a member of this family. Listen to me and defend me against this unacceptable behavior — the way you defend everyone else who’s really included in this group — or not.

Clearly, they chose not to.

They literally could not do otherwise.  They could not show me respect, love, or support against an in-law’s disrespectful behavior, and then a brother’s.
Not even the level you might extend to a stranger.  To them, I am less worthy of those things than a stranger.

It was far easier to judge me, instead of judging one of their own.
Instead they chose to scapegoat me again, to say it was my fault for putting the choice out there — when it was the actions of others against me that brought it out in the open — and then my fault for no longer accepting my scapegoat role.

What makes my situation different from those described here, though, is that I didn’t choose the estrangement.  I was estranged by them from the very beginning.  Thus the difficulty I had, the pain and the loss I dealt with, in grappling with the fact that I wasn’t a “member of the tribe”, and never had been.

What I am guilty of is wanting a family, wanting my birthright — when that “family” made it clear so many times and so many little ways over so many years, such that when the big thing happened, I was supposed to have known better than to even ask.

“In my experience, estrangement makes people deeply uncomfortable. They wonder what’s wrong with you when you can’t get along with your family. They worry that if you can estrange yourself, maybe their parents/children/siblings could do that to them. Estrangement seems to threaten the primal order of things and opens the door to a lot of questions most of us would rather not think about…

“Imagine for a moment that these people have good reasons” to be estranged, says Scharp.”

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Hindsight

Happy 2019. Do less work on being friends with people who are doing zero work on being good to you.

Captain Awkward

I recently ran across this post online and found it surprisingly validating. While the whole thing has parallels to The Susan Incident, this paragraph really caught my attention:

“You are not overreacting, and FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK [Susan] for this behavior and fuck family members for enabling it by acting like your reactions to bad stuff [are out of line].”

All I could think was, wow, I wish I’d had this advice and the ability to respond like this 6+ years ago. For example, I wish I’d been able to say this:

Hey, I don’t want this to be forever, but until I can trust that this won’t ever happen again, until I trust that y’all understand how serious this is, and until y’all stop treating me like I’m the one doing something wrong, this is how it’s going to be.” 

“Until you get a real apology and whatever else you need to put this behind you, as long as other family members keep pressuring you on her behalf, Keep. Naming. What. She. Did.”

(Well, I kind of did do that, after I found out that Joe & Susan lied about it all to everyone else. It’s just that no one wanted to listen.)

For her: “Susan, do you understand why I am mad? It’s not just for having a conversation. It’s because when I simply asked you to go elsewhere to have it, and it was clear that it was upsetting to me, you refused to do that one thing. It’s ’cause you could have said you were sorry but you didn’t. It’s ’cause you raged at me when I brought it up to Joe. It’s because you both lied about that rage attack to everyone else, and told them it was all my fault, that I picked that fight. It’s because your fauxpology came with a side of blame, like me being pissed off and upset about this is “overreacting”.” 

For other family members: “She stood there laughing and chatting with the hospice nurse, while I was trying to cope with my beloved father’s death. When I politely asked them to take their conversation somewhere else, she refused to do so and continued her behavior. The next day she flew into a rage, literally yelling in my face when I tried to talk to Joe about it. They both lied to everyone else about who started that fight. When I got understandably upset, they tried to blame me for “overreacting”.

If you want to work on someone about this, go talk to Susan about her behaviors instead of trying to police my feelings.” 

For everyone/both: “You want me to come back and visit, and put this all behind us? I’d like that, too, someday, so, show me that I can trust this won’t happen again by taking the time it did happen seriously. Show me that you’ve learned from this.

At minimum, going forward, you can’t continue to treat me like the problem person all the time. You can’t treat my opinions or feelings or life choices as though they are WRONG or inconvenient for you or a sign that I’m irrational.

You don’t have to agree with me or understand it in order to do it. Not negotiable. ” 

Not that it would have made any difference to the outcome — I highly doubt anyone would have listened any more than they did(n’t).

I just wish *I* had had the ability, the groundedness to see it that clearly, and communicate it that succinctly. I wish I’d realized sooner that I had spent my whole life fighting a losing battle whose outcome had been decided probably even before I was born. I wish I’d been able to understand that that boundary was needed — even though these people were supposed to be my “family” — and to set it a long time ago. It would have saved me a lot of time, pain, and work.

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Fractured Family

Q.  A sibling’s family has been so torn apart by personal and business disputes that one son no longer talks to his brother or his father and refuses to attend family celebrations. He also refuses to participate in counseling. His perspective on what has caused all this is very deeply felt but not necessarily accurate or realistic, particularly because he refuses to accept any responsibility. Is there any way to break through this impasse? — Concerned Aunt

A.  Only if the father and sons want to.

I have seen families in similar situations decide that they want to heal enough to be able to spend holidays together, or for their kids (the cousins) to have good relationships. In these cases, they have found a family mediator who has helped them work through the business and personal disputes — often in pairs first, to work through issues specific to their relationship. I’ve seen (and helped) people do it, and it’s awe-inspiring. They learn a huge amount about their capacity for forgiveness and about being compassionate with themselves and one another. And they teach these things as family values to future generations. It’s an invaluable gift they pass down.

But it is a lot of work, it’s not an easy road, emotionally, and it takes quite a bit of time. There is rarely one breakthrough moment or one conversation that changes everything.

So as the concerned aunt, you can suggest it, you can even ask permission to look for someone to help who might “click” with them. Most major cities have community mediation groups or associations of family mediators. Family mediators usually do primarily divorce work, but many do other kinds of work with families and family businesses too. Some mediators are also therapists, or work closely with therapists, so have strong background in working with families to understand and promote reconciliation. Not everyone has the resources to take advantage of resources like this, of course, but if they do and they are committed to it, progress can often be made.

It’s important to note (as a number of readers commented last week) that there are situations – particularly when mental illness, addiction, abuse, or deep dysfunction is involved – where the boundaries that family members draw are a healthy and necessary response. As a bystander, it’s tempting to think that the answer is always reconnection. But separation – temporary or long term — is often crucial for self-protection and healing.

At the end of the day, it is their road to walk. Your job is to cheer them on from the roadside, whichever road they choose.

Few things are as emotionally upsetting as having a family member who has severed ties with you (or with the whole family). Most of us work especially hard not to cut off ties with family, precisely because they are family. And so when someone does, it is often experienced by those cut off as being cavalier, petty, or the result of a failure to try hard enough.

In short, he or she is holding a grudge. A grudge, by definition, is a thing that should not be held. It’s not a legitimate or healthy reaction and the resulting choices are bad ones. A more stable person would not have taken offense in the first place and a bigger person would surely have let go of it by now.

But that’s not how it’s experienced by the people holding the grudge. They know that what they are doing is protecting themselves, drawing essential boundaries, doing the only thing left to them to do. When we cut ties with others it’s not because we don’t care; it’s because the friction or pain or dysfunction have finally overpowered even the special pull of family.

None of this tells us whether those who withdraw from families are right or wrong, justified or not. It only says that that their reasons make sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us.

…Here’s what not to do.

Don’t write them a long letter or email explaining your perspective. Even if you do a beautiful and skillful job of it, even if you apologize, it is unlikely to achieve your purposes. Why? Because inevitably some aspect of what you describe will feel “off” to them (“That’s not what happened!”) or will leave out parts that they feel are most important. And their interpretation of your motives for writing the letter is colored by emotion. Your desire to reconnect is seen as a desire to absolve yourself of guilt, to manipulate, or to appear to be righteously taking the high road.

So they finish reading your lovely letter and feel even more upset with you. Now they have even less incentive to reach out and talk because they’ve heard what you wanted to say (and it was wrong). Remember that email and letters aren’t dialogue. They’re monologue. And they’re the channel of communication that can escalate conflict most quickly.

A special note to those who have curtailed family contact

If you are going to cut off ties or establish a boundary — and this can sometimes be a healthy reaction to unrelenting criticism or destructive hurt — here are two things to remember.

First, tell others why you are doing it. You think they already know; after all, your reasons are obvious or should be obvious to anyone who cares. But they really might not know. And if they don’t know, they are free to think the worst. When you inform them, don’t focus on others’ character (“I can’t be with the family because you are all so toxic and hateful.”) Instead, focus on how you’re feeling (“The last three times we’ve had big family get-togethers, my anxiety has just gone through the roof. I leave feeling judged and rejected. It’s too much for me to deal with, so I’m going to stay away this year.”). And if there are conditions under which you would increase contact, let them know (“If you can refrain from commenting on my weight or my spouse, we’ll come.”).

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Fruitcake and Memories

Modified from a FB post:

Here’s a Christmas memory, rediscovered this weekend at Fred Meyer.

Grandma’s fruit and nut cake. Made by one of the bakeries my dad used to be in charge of, in Beatrice, NE. I’ve been there a time or two in my childhood, when Dad would take us along on business trips.

Dad and I were the only two in the family who liked the fruitcake. He’d always get one at the holidays. He’d pack two of the little pre-wrapped slices in my school lunch.

Being the VP of production, he had explained to me how high the quality was, how a lot of commercial fruitcake was made with cheaper ingredients, or skimped on the expensive ones like the fruit and nuts – and thus were dry or tasteless.

This one is moist, chock full of nuts and candied fruit and a hint of booze. It actually falls apart because there isn’t that much flour holding it all together. The candied cherries were always my favorite, and I knew my dad was right because every single slice ALWAYS has a cherry in it. I can’t remember ever in my life getting a slice that didn’t contain a piece of bright red cherry.

In 2000, we had moved from Texas, which was within a days’ driving distance of Dad, clear out to Oregon. And Dad had been diagnosed with cancer.  Husband and I both had new jobs and not much vacation time, so we stayed in Oregon that Christmas, in our rented house.

On the phone with Dad late that year, we must have been talking about the fruitcake and I said how much I missed it. Dad said he’d get one for me. (This was long before e-commerce caught on, and you could just order one online.)

But I didn’t get my fruitcake. Dad died just a couple of months after Christmas, at the beginning of March. It was one of the few times I could remember him letting me down, but of course he was fighting cancer – I couldn’t expect him to care about a fruitcake for me.

When Dad died, my husband and I were staying in his room, as Dad had been moved to a hospital bed in the living room.  I took the opportunity to go through his things, his closet and dresser drawers:  retrieving such items as the “Czech Hockey” sweatshirt my husband had given him (which I still wear to hockey games); the pajama pants I had sewn for him ages ago, which I then wore until they were threadbare; the “Maid Rite” tee shirt that we had gotten him; the sweater I had knitted for him, at his request.

One thing I didn’t find was a Sacajawea dollar.  Dad had really liked those coins, and he had sent one to me.  I used to carry it with my pocket change, along with a small piece of CFM hardware my husband had given me from when we first met, and occasionally a small ingot that had come from my grandfather’s job at a foundry — although that talisman was a little heavy to carry every day.

One day at work, I had dropped a handful of change, and the Sacajawea dollar my dad had given me had rolled far, far under a vending machine where I couldn’t retrieve it.  (Side note:  a couple of my co-workers, mechanical engineers on the maintenance side of things, spent weeks figuring out how to get it back for me.  Eventually they managed it by using a pallet jack to lift up the entire machine.  Thanks Steve and Brett.)

Three months later, in June, Mom died. Once again, most of us were staying in Dad’s house, and my oldest brother decided to clean out the chest freezer in the basement. He came back upstairs headed for the garbage can, laughing about the fruitcake he’d found in there.

I don’t remember exactly what I did: I think I shouted and ran for the kitchen, to rescue MY FRUITCAKE THAT MY DAD HAD GOTTEN FOR ME AFTER ALL.

Also, once again, while staying in his room, I went through my Dad’s stuff — more out of not knowing what else to do than anything.  I had been pretty thorough the first time, two months earlier, of course not knowing I’d be back so soon:  but this time, I found a bank envelope in a top dresser drawer.  To this day I would swear that envelope hadn’t been in that drawer two months before.

AND IT WAS FULL OF SACAJAWEA DOLLARS.

Not just one; over a DOZEN, probably 20.  (Well maybe 19, after he had sent me the one.)  It was like Dad had given me a whole envelope full of them, so I’d never, ever run out.

Along with these two occurrences, there was a third thing that happened, along these same lines.  I can no longer remember exactly what it was, nor what order the three things happened in.  But there was a third thing that happened or turned up, a third thing that would not have meant anything to anyone else except my father and me.  I was the only one who would understand those specific things, their significance.  And in my memory at least, these three things also all happened within like 30 minutes:  boom, Boom, BOOM.

I felt like the first one was a coincidence; the second was a little freaky.  But when the third thing happened, it left no room for doubt in my mind, and it made me feel like my Dad hadn’t left me completely alone just yet.

Maybe Dad couldn’t save me from The Susan Incident, could no longer hold anyone to account for how they treated me.  But he was sending me a message, that he wasn’t completely gone, and he still loved me.

It comforted me to think so.

And foolishly, whenever that third thing happened, I spontaneously spoke about those things, and how I interpreted them.  As it happens, I spoke about it to Joe.  (It was stupid on my part, but back then I didn’t understand everything the way I understand it now.)

And what did my formerly favorite brother do?  He took that one small bit of comfort I had found, and he had to tear it down.

He said something mocking my experience, dismissing it as insignificant, something like, “You do realize that all those things happened months ago, and those things are just coincidences?”

What. An. Ass.

What kind of person says something like that to someone who is grieving, and has just found a bit of relief?

One who is completely lacking in empathy.  An angry person.  A hateful, hurtful person.  A person looking to crush another person’s hope.

A person who is out to deliberately cause that other person pain.

Also, probably, an unhealthy, wounded person.

…if you empathize with your child, you want your child to be fulfilled in life, to be a happy person. And if you are an unhappy, unfulfilled person yourself, you are not going to want other people to be happier than you are.  (George Lakoff)

I remember the first time I read this quote, I immediately thought of my mother.  And she probably passed that way of thinking on to most of her kids.

I did understand that, with Mom’s death, they were all now grieving too. But even if you are grieving yourself, what kind of person would turn on an also-grieving little sister like that?

But this wasn’t an isolated thing.  There was another incident, similar in shape to that.  When I was in my first year of college, I was kind of excited to find that guys were interested in me, that I was noticed for something other than my brains.  I had always been “the smart girl”; suddenly, on a campus where everyone was smart, I was also “pretty”.  I had related a story of how a guy had stopped to hold a door open for me when I was much further away than politeness would have dictated.

Joe’s response was this:

“You may be one of the best-looking things on campus, but remember, there’s not a whole lot on campus.”

I still remember it word for painful word, 30 years later.

I was 18.  He was 32.

(Incidentally, that is how old I was when our parents died.  And I was supposed to hold it together, not “over-react” etc.  When at that age he was being petty AF to me.)

Again, those words were meant to tear me down, to destroy my pleasure at something that made me happy.  From a 30-something to an 18YO in her first year of college.

And I can see now that his own unhappiness, maybe because of jealousy, is probably the source of this deliberately mean behavior.

Recently I had a flash of insight:  maybe they treat me the way that they do, react to me the way that they do, because they are jealous and angry that I UNFAIRLY managed to come out of this dysfunctional family relatively unscathed  — it’s unfair, you see, if you are in the habit of thinking that I, my birth, my existence, is the root cause of all the dysfunction.

How dare I not be affected, when I’m the very thing that fucked everything up?

Sure, I had it better than they did.

I don’t deny it — but I also didn’t cause it.

Jealousy of a younger sibling probably isn’t wholly unusual, in itself.  I have a dear friend whose FOO includes her and a brother of similar age, and a sister who is several years younger.  Their FOO included a whole lot of dysfunction also:  a molesting father who eventually committed suicide.

And my friend has told me how for a long time she was jealous of her little sister, for growing up with more money, in a nicer house.  After several years though, she came to realize that that was just a fact of being born later:  families usually become wealthier over time, and younger children often live in better financial situations than older children.

It certainly wasn’t anything to do with the sister herself, and my friend realized that to be jealous of her for it was inappropriate.

Similarly, if my siblings are angry and jealous of me for having had it “better”, emotionally as well as financially — what does that have to do with me?  Fuck all, that’s what.

And to be angry or jealous of me for it is also entirely inappropriate.

(Also, there’s a few disadvantages that I’m sure they never thought about.  Like that part where I was only 32 when our parents died.  And none of my 30-something friends even knew what the hell to say to me, so they just didn’t say anything. 

In contrast, while experiencing my husband’s double bereavement 2 years ago at the age of 49, I have seen practically everyone he knows offer sympathy, support, and their own similar experiences.  So I am guessing that’s what my siblings got from their extended circle also — whereas I got nothing from mine, because I and my friends and co-workers were so much younger.)

If my friend can manage to come up with that on her own, after her own horrible childhood, I see no reason for my siblings to not be able to do so as well.  They’re supposed to be smart people.

That is, if they were interested in improving the relationship with their little sister, as my friend was.

However there’s one other little problem with that idea, unique to our family, and that is — if you’re jealous of me for having had it so much better, then you will have to admit that The Divorce was A GOOD THING.

I’ve never denied that their experiences were horrible.  I know — intellectually at least — that they were subject to years of manipulation, dysfunction, and they were so unhappy and depressed that suicide was in the cards for at least one of them.

Then there’s me, with my completely different (better) experiences.  Too young to understand, too un-indoctrinated to be angry over the fact of The Divorce, and it all turned out OKAY FOR ME.

How unfair.  How dare I.  How dare I not go through the pain that they did, because I was only an infant.  How dare I benefit from what my Dad did, once he understood what was really happening…

…Seventeen years later, the fruitcake I picked up at Fred Meyer this weekend tastes just like it always has. It’s chock full of nuts and a hint of booze, and has candied cherries in every slice.

Love you and miss you, Dad.  Thanks for the fruitcake, and everything else.