Transform Wounds Into Wisdom
Late. Not Giving Up.
*This post is edited and published on my permanent blog shardsandwords.xyz
As a young mother, young wife, young woman, I genuinely never learned that my mental health should have come first. My “training” by my own mom, other women in my family, media, TV, this awful culture, showed me the rules were to: 1. Go along 2. Don’t speak up 3. Everyone comes before you 4. Give everything you have in work and to family until you’re spent and eventually burned out so bad you feel paralyzed or have completely disappeared 5. Above all, make yourself smaller in marriage.
Things have been pretty fucked up for a few years. I was silent in a family that put me last with their actions while confusing the fuck out of me with their words. I was silent in an 18 year marriage where physical abuse was excused and I was told on a daily basis my family and I were worthless and his was a perfect model of normalcy which of course was far from the truth. I believed him because I already knew my family was dysfunctional. I felt confused about my strength, I knew I was strong but had no support to help grow as a strong woman, only examples of and daily admonishments to make myself smaller. I left my family of origin for him because I hadn’t paid attention to all the red flags. I left family of origin pain to be bound to deeper more destructive pain from the man who vowed to love, cherish, protect and honor me. I was not protected in my family of origin, and I was not safe in a marriage I used as an escape. I spent the 21 years after getting divorced staying silent so not to hurt my children’s feelings. Except the rage that burned inside me rotted me to the point I had nothing left inside me to try to grow healthy from.
Anger grew into rage and I turned it in on myself.
At the end of 2014 with depression taking a firm root inside me right alongside hustling to keep a home and life going for my children, the team I built at an international company got laid off. I was devastated for the families my little company supported and became emotionally paralyzed without realizing it until years later. I grew more and more depressed and felt more than worthless. My two son’s kind support of me financially and overall kindness toward me through it all was life giving, but also not their responsibility. To compound things, I have had a chronic hip injury since 2010 that I did not take care of and from 2010 to 2017 was so painful it took everything I had to get up in the morning, do any work I could do but in the long run only contributed to being depressed, isolated and feeling worthless.
Three therapists later, I’m working to dig my way back to my old rebellious and strong self to find the ways to get myself out of the seemingly bottomless chasm I’d put myself in. The job loss combined with chronic severe pain meant I was in bad shape mentally, physically, emotionally. Without health insurance as an independent consultant, my options to take care of my body like I should have while making money were limited and compounded by the fact that I never learned money management skills and always assumed I’d be making money. I hadn’t set aside money to take care of or prioritize my health. We always think there’s more time than we really have for everything.
My mom passed away in 2019 and left me a small amount of money. I finally felt like I could do something to help myself, something I could choose that wasn’t tied to further burdening my children. So I did. I wrote myself a note the day the money was physically in my hands : “Cindi, this can be life changing money” and made a few small plans.
But it’s funny, not in a belly laugh way, how things seem to other people. My use of the money to get therapy both mentally and physically to heal my mind and body was the straw it took for my Daughter to publicly declare she was washing her hands of me, giving up on me. It didn’t shock me.
I’d gotten used to almost 6 years of her shunning me. Around the time my job was cut, she decided I wasn’t worth keeping a relationship with, I understood her being angry, she and her brothers supporting me financially while nothing at all was changing on my side of things would make me wonder what the hell was happening too. I had managed to get a couple of small jobs, one virtual assistant job and of course the latest go to default of driving for a ride share company. Each lasted from a couple months to just under a year but I did not stay with them. At some point during those 6 years, with fumbled attempts by both of us at trying to connect, I shared with her some of the abuse of my marriage to her dad. It was in a scenario where for years I’d been saying things like “you don’t understand” when she’d be shitty toward me about how her dad was fine with me but obviously I was not with him. So she finally got mad enough to tell me to tell her what happened. She was 30 then. I shared most of what I’m sharing with you in these posts, but with the details.
I do not want to be around the person who abused me for 18 years. I’m sure it was easy for him to convince my children he is just fine being around me and how silly it is that I do not to want to be around him. Daughter has told me he never talks about me. I believe that he does not directly use me by name in conversations. I know him well enough to know he refers to things that I value and will twist them into subtle lessons on how to hate a mother. He was expert at it during our marriage and with his own mother who he blamed fully on our failed marriage which of course is fiction. He chose every day to tell me I was worthless, hit me, try to shame me in front of my children, mock me. He chose to be an abuser. His mother and his father taught him how to be cruel, he chose to be cruel toward me.
I don’t want to be around the person who abused me for 18 years. It’s wrong for other people to insist I should be ok with it, get over it, forgive him. No matter how long ago it was.
The kids may really not get it because they didn’t stay in it after I divorced their dad. They were 15, 9 and 5 when I divorced their dad. His abuse was toward me and eventually toward my oldest son. Daughter was 9 when I left, she does not tell me if she recalls anything from those years but she was impacted by the chaos because she didn’t sleep more than a few nights through from the time she was born until her dad left the house when she was 9. In fact, right after she was born — like days after — he would kick she and I out of his and my bedroom because she cried so much and he needed his sleep he said. He needed his sleep after I birthed our daughter. I slept on the couch the first few months of her life, exhausted, sad, mad, and growing angrier but staying silent because I didn’t know how to back myself. My oldest son recalls some abuse. As the years went on he was steadily becoming a target of his dad’s to the point one day, because of literal spilled milk, his dad beat him with a cutting board so badly his full right buttock was bruised for almost 2 weeks.
I did not and do not want to be around him. What he’s comfortable with does not matter. I was not the person who dragged their dad off our bed onto the floor, climbed on top of him and choked him. I did not hit their dad in the face out of the blue every once in a while when I got pissed about some imaginary offense. I did not shove their dad on the stairs when he was pregnant. I did not scream, spit flying from my mouth, the first evening out after giving birth to our third child when he didn’t come home fast enough fot his time allotment to attend a godamned pta meeting. I did not tell him like a broken record he would cheat on me, then cheat on him in a fucking sad ironic twist. He did those things to me. So, no thanks to family get togethers with me being forced to share a room with my abuser.
I’m not going to say the pain was worth it because it did nothing but stifle me. I would have preferred a path of meeting and being mentored by strong women because my life would have been so much more of service to this world. I would have preferred to notice the red flags and skip the abusive marriage. So I choose that now.
Not being able to talk to Daughter means I stay confused about why he has been granted her grace and I don’t get a chance to work through this with her for a while.
Flash forward to today. Daughter and her husband have had my first grandson. I got to meet him one weekend where all three of my kids, their significant others and I were guests at Daughter’s in-law’s home. The in-laws are wonderful people. It was awkward. Daughter tossed a few barbs my way and of course I stayed silent. It feels terribly familiar.
Yet, something from this time of healing and beginnings of growth in myself, for myself, helps me know that there is a future relationship for she and I and a gramma Cindi relationship in the future with my grandson. Human growth and development is never done until you’re dead. I love stories like Joan MacDonald who at 70 transformed her body through body building which pulled her out of a life that she wasn’t happy in, she now lived in a way that makes her happy healthy and vigorous.
Vi Lyles, 69, retired as city manager and shortly afterward ran for city council then ran for and was elected Mayor of Charlotte.
Bettye LaVette, now 74, who has had a long career as a singer starting in 1962; it was in 2008 when she started to hit a stride that meant she was making it.
Ernestine Shepherd, an 84 year old body builder who avoided exercise for a long time; when her sister died who she’d started working out with, she came out of depression by continuing to work out and has won body building competitions and is the Guinness world record holder as the oldest woman body building competitor.
I love stories like Suzanne Watson of Cincinnati who got her medical degree at 57.
Patricia Forehand of Georgia who after a long teaching career is now a comedian.
These women give me a hope I had lost for years. I never had a career to speak of, I’ve had a go with whatever came my way and leverage it to make more money kind of work history. And it worked for a long time. Then I forgot who I am for too many years.
I’m starting to love my story while I reconnect to the confident, outspoken woman I let wilt all those years. Not the story where I’m held hostage by my rage, which has its moments. More accurately, I’m finally learning to love myself. I’m not going to say the pain was worth it because it did nothing but stifle me. I would have preferred a path of meeting and being mentored by strong women because my life would have been so much more of service to this world. I would have preferred to notice the red flags and skip the abusive marriage. So I choose that now. Send me all the messages about how I’d not have my specific kids, as if I don’t know that. Just don’t expect me to buy into that thinking.
I also don’t buy into think happy thoughts and you’ll live a happy life, though I am aware now of how to choose and make my thoughts work smart for my future. Too many people are perpetually in shame because they just can’t get happy enough to meet some invisible measure. Fuck that. Here’s to real life, which is hard, painted with moments of joy; my goal for a good life.
