I recently received an email from my mother:

Subject: Your Blog

Based on experience I chose to delete this email without reading it. I made this choice not out of disrespect but out of love. Love for my husband and daughter. I did not want to bring her words to life. Words that would undoubtedly prove to be hurtful. I did not want her anger to hurt me or my family.

Because of the attention that posts such as this one receive from my mother/siblings I began to explore my continual need to write about my experiences/perspectives towards my parents and siblings. During some very introspective moments I had begun to explore a certain developmental theory of childhood development.  The theory that:

If left with no choice between no attention or negative attention, children will seek out negative attention.

As I continued to ponder this theory as it may apply to me, a significant part of my rational mind responded ~ I don’t think this is true as it applies to me for the following reasons:

I have had several blogs over almost four years now where I have explored my complicated family history/present day events.

I have always been open (except for the period where I wrote under a pseudonym and had a ‘private’ blog) about what was once anger to what is now only sadness in regards to my complicated family dynamics.

I wrote my blogs and continue to write this blog, with the knowledge that my family may possibly read it.

Therefore, the words I write in regards to my non-relationship with family members, are not intended as cries for attention or character assassinations. I do regret that the words I write may anger some individuals. For this I apologize. I do not write to instigate or inflame. I write what I consider to be ‘my truths’, my experiences, my perspectives.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

My blog is my platform to explore and document past and current experiences and dreams for the future. Experiences and dreams as a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and ultimately a woman.

Again, I never mean any disrespect towards my readers, whether they are family or non-family. Although I may dislike many things about the actions/behaviors of others at particular points in time, this dislike does not define itself as hate. ‘Dislike’ is merely a word that best describes negative emotions towards negative behaviors. It does not mean that there is a lack of love. If there was a lack of love then there would be no feelings/reactions whatsoever in regards to the actions/behaviors.

I will continue to write, explore, and express myself through my blog.

It is the reader’s choice to read what I write or to disregard what I have to say and move on.

Not everyone dislikes their mother. But some of us do. There are times (when my rational self gives way to honesty and speaks the truth) ~ I dislike my mother. There is no other time that I feel this more than when I see her turn away from me in a parking lot or grab my father by the arm in a grocery store to turn in the opposite direction of where I am standing.

It is during these times that I find myself wondering how a mother can turn away from her child and not have deep regrets about it?

In recent days, as I began reading Betty Friedan’s book Life So Far, I suspiciously began to develop all the warning signs of panic attacks lurking for the opportune moment to strike. Symptoms that always overcome me anytime I explore my emotions in regards to my mother.

Some passages that had me practicing deep breathing exercises are:

My mother, to all of us, was the most important person in the house. If she was in a good mood, everything was fine. If she was in a bad mood, which, unaccountably, she was most often, we all shrank from her, were miserable, and tried to keep out of her way.

Mostly my mother made me feel bad about myself. Nothing I did was ever tight, ever satisfied her.

But I somehow sensed that if my mother had a profession that absorbed her, if she was really as strong and confident as she seemed, bullying us or the women’s committees, she wouldn’t make life so miserable for my father or us kids, she wouldn’t find everything we did, every present, so inadequate.

But I cannot remember ever being touched by her, in the kind of spontaneous hug I delighted in with my own children.

Though I was consumed with dread of her and, I suppose, hate, and even finally a kind of revulsion, there was a desperate yearning underneath for the love she couldn’t give me.

My mother was determined that I would get the good education – and the aspiration – that was denied to her.

And only now do I begin to understand the emptiness and fragility beneath her assumed superiority, perfectionism, and the constant unrelenting put-down of her husband, her children, her women friends. I was so repelled by her sugary sweetness on the telephone – “dear” this and “darling” that – and then the mean, vicious maligning of the caller after she hung up.

Tired, finally, of psychological deconstruction, I would say today, for good or ill, my mother’s frustrations…both strengthened me and scarred me.

Betty Friedan, Life So Far

As I read these passages I could not help but wonder how we could experience the same behaviors from two different women born a generation apart?

Another post for another time perhaps.

Every now and then there is a day that reminds me how my life was before therapy. A day when I surprise myself and say “Oh snap, remember when anger ruled your life and how you would have responded so differently to this particular event?” It is not a pleasant road to travel down. However, as the years go by I have begun to accept that the anger, which led my life down not so rosy paths, was not mine to own.

But, I am getting ahead of myself.

Recently I have been glancing through three of my personal diaries. Diaries dating from 1968 – 1970. Diaries that record the thoughts of a girl turning thirteen, fourteen, and then fifteen. Or rather they should be records of that young girl’s thoughts.

Perhaps the diaries is why I am contemplating how my life was before therapy. You see, my diaries are very superficial. They are entries of mundane comings and goings of an adolescence.

None of the angst, none of the insecurities, none of the teenage woes make their appearance in the written pages.

When I took them down from the attic I was hoping for some insight into the person I can’t remember. It was not to be. What I uncovered instead was the tip of an iceberg that can only be classified as my lifelong battle dealing with someone else’s anger.

My diary is mundane because to write anything else would have caused extreme personal battles in my life.

I knew my mother read my diaries.

I could not tell my truths.

I was horribly afraid of my mother.

This is where therapy helped me to begin to connect the dots. The fears that were perpetuated throughout my childhood ~ the anger that grew from these unresolved fears ~ was a legacy that was being handed down to me.

A legacy that was going to continue it’s cycle….if I let it.

Today I am grateful: For courage.

Well, I gave it my best shot.

I took pen to paper. It didn’t work out.

I took fingers to keyboard. It didn’t work out.

Yet, when I am driving down the road my mind goes ninety to nothing (kinda like my car) with thoughts and words and actually great pieces of “literary genius”.

So I have been pricing digital recorders.

 Everyone has the right

to tell the truth

about her own life.

Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

When I wrote Doubting the Writing Process I had no idea that I would end up, once again, scratching the project and opting for mental wellness instead. Every time I started from where I started previously I would, as mentioned in the post, become physically ill. I closed up my “writing project” (well actually tore it all up and threw the pages in the nearest trash can) and called it another lesson learned. Some stories just aren’t meant to be told or have new life breathed into them.

That was until I emailed Susan Bernard from Wellness Writer. I met Susan while I was writing The Bipolar Diaries (a previous blog documenting my menopausal mood swings). Later I realized that Susan was the author of The Mommy Guide, a book that was on my recommended reading list when I did workshops for New and First Time Moms. And so a cyberspace friendship began.

Susan identified some of the causes behind my struggle to write and graciously recommended the book Writing for Your Life by Deena Metzger. I have learned within five minutes of reading this book that I have been starting my story in the wrong place. I am uncertain where the right place to start would be. Yet, I am okay with that uncertainty. The exercises in Deena’s book will provide a jumping in point and where I start may not be where I end up.

Thanks Susan for being such an inspiration and providing me with a much needed tool when I was so certain my toolbox would remain empty.

Samantha’s Corner: This was on our refrigerator message board this morning when I woke up:

Sam: Can we go on a photo field trip today like you and Dad go on?

Mom: Sure.

Sam: Can we go where you took this shot of the “gangster chicken”?

Miss Sam and I will be spending the afternoon out in Ozello searching for more “gansta chickens” as soon as we eat lunch. Guess what we are having??? Enchiladas! (I’m such a good great mom).

Spent some time this weekend going through those memory boxes taken down from the attic and starting the first draft of my book.

The thing about a project like this is that once you get started the ideas begin multiplying like rabbits. I just wish the words multiplied just as easily.

As I began this project early on into the four day weekend – I began to get all the old telltale signs of why this has been a slow moving project (three years now)….anxiety and panic attacks. I began to doubt my ability to tell this story without comprising the progress I have made toward mental wellness.

However, after much praying I know that worrying about my ability to tell this story from a mentally healthy perspective would be to doubt my faith in God.

And so, I have the first draft of chapter one. Don’t get too excited. Each sentence needs to be revised half a dozen times and new ideas need to be interjected every third paragraph or so.

Ahh…the struggles of being a writer.

Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend and don’t forget why we have the freedom to do whatever it is you did today.

It wasn’t all awful, but as with all childhood sadness carried forward, the past puts a veil over adulthood…and while I don’t forget events altogether, the details have become murky, some disappearing altogether. That’s one of the comforts of getting older: the sharp edges wear away, and one is left with a practical view of things.

Adriana Trigiani from Home to Big Stone Gap

Yesterday found me up in the attic (thanks Tony for the warning about all that stuff knocked loose by having a new roof put on) searching for three boxes marked “memories/do not throw away”. Although there are many more up there, the three that made their way down into my home office are the ones that will provide a substantial outline for The New Whippoorwill Chronicles.

As I begin this task I find myself recalling a bible story that recently was brought to my attention.

The story is of Jonah and the whale. How often, during the years of therapy, did I feel like Jonah. God asking me to forgive, me replying forgiveness is not an option. Then, in recent years, once I let go and let God help me forgive, I still could not get past the hurt, the need for “emotional” revenge. That is until I began the journey of obedience with a willing spirit and sought to understand God’s mercy and patience as it applied to me. Then I began to understand judgment is not mine to make. God’s mercy and patience applies to everyone.

Therefore, relying heavily on the lessons taught through the story of Jonah and the whale I begin another journey. The journey of removing the veil and beginning the adventure of viewing the present through the lens of the past and the past through the lens of the present.

I am ready. As I continue forward on this journey I want to look back. Back at my first attempts to “sing my song”:

The Whippoorwill Chronicles/ September 14, 2008

I don’t want to write this because I am fearful. I want to write this because I am tired of being fearful.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are… we have so much we want to say and figure out. Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird

I started this journey of telling the truth back in January of 2006 with the original Whippoorwill Chronicles.   However, the emotional truths that I have written on this journey have not yet gone beyond the surface to the depths of where my sorrow and my fears lie. I am beginning to understand that I must move beyond the surface and dive deeper if I want to be free of the fear that paralyzes me.  Even though it makes me anxious. Even though it makes me physically ill. Even though I am afraid.

I am no longer going to make excuses for the individual who could not love her children unconditionally. I am going to speak my truths about the price I had to pay over and over again in an attempt to love the person who could not love me.

Many would interject here and lecture me about forgiveness. However, if I had not forgiven several years ago, I would not be able to write these truths uncolored. They would be colored by anger and hurt and yes, unforgiveness. This is not the case. I have forgiven. But forgiveness is a process. It is not something you do once and walk away. It is something that has to be done over and over again. As I move into forgiving yet again, I am understanding that I must forgive by not making excuses. I am forgiving by saying ‘this is what you did’ and I am acknowledging that it was a bad and damaging thing. That is my truth. That is my present state of forgiveness.

As I travel along the memories that have brought me to this point I find myself praying ~ Dear Lord, please help me to remember the good.

I was stunned by Mary Karr’s memoir, The Liars’ Club. Not just by its ferocity, its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by its totality – she is a woman who remembers everything about her early years….Mary Karr presents her childhood in an almost unbroken panorama. Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated trees…the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you. Stephen King from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

It is the same for me as it appears to have been for Stephen King. “A fogged-out landscape” where whatever good there was to remember was forgotten by the price that was paid.

As I begin to write through the lens of courage, I am hopeful that I will understand that:

• when I am sick ~ I deserve to be comforted
• when I am presented with a gift ~ I deserve it to be without a price
• when I give my opinion ~ I deserve to have that opinion respected
• when I am authentically me ~ I deserve not to fear that I will suffer a loss because of it

Now, as I return to writing and viewing events and emotions through different lenses, it must be kept in mind that this is my journey written from my perspective. This is my story, not yours. This is my perspective, not yours. I don’t have wrongs to right. I don’t have points to prove. I do however have my story to tell.

The memory boxes that have been stored in the attic for decades are ready to be unpacked.