A Letter to My Father

[Milarepa]

Dear Father,

We have three options for how to go forward, and the choice is up to you.

The first option is to have no further contact between us. I would prefer that you opt for one of the alternatives, but I am fully prepared to accept it if this is what you want.

The second option is a distant, cool relationship; seeing one another a few times a year, making perfunctory small talk, and going our separate ways without fuss.

The third option, which I hope you will consider, is to have as authentic and loving a relationship as possible. This scenario would require you to do a fair amount of work you probably won't want to do and make some changes you probably won't want to make; but I will want to be around you only to the extent that you do the work.

It's your choice.

The fact that you are here in the first place means that you are at least open to the notion of true reconciliation, or at least to the authentic, loving relationship that would result from it. But I am unsure of your willingness to look at yourself, your life, and your choices in the way that you would need to in order to make it work.

And so I will pause now and hold space for you to consider. If you opt for either of the first two alternatives, then there is no need to continue.

If you are still here, then you have chosen the third option and I am glad of it.This is going to be hard and it is going to suck, but I believe that you are smart and strong and brave enough.

Whenever we talk about my childhood, I invariably end up telling you many stories about individual times when you did something that hurt me. I think I do this because, for me, each story reverberates with many half-remembered incidents that made me feel the same way. It is as if I were describing a candle to you with the intensity normally reserved for forest fires, and you, hearing only about the candle, were becoming increasingly confused as to what all the fuss was about.

I cannot continue to do that. Not only does it not work the way I want it to, it actively disempowers me. I become so distressed that I cannot possibly advocate for myself in an adult way. So I won't be telling you any stories in this letter. Instead, I'll try to help you see the big picture, how it got us to where we are today, and what I need you to do now.

You say that your job as a father is to cheer your kids on as they live up to the potential that you see in them. You say that it is their mothers' job to tend to their emotional well-being.

Under the most uncomplicated of circumstances, your approach might result in reasonably healthy children; but life is very rarely free of complication, and our family was no exception. For the majority of my childhood, you and my mother shared neither a home nor a loving relationship. Two people who are as disconnected as you and she could not possibly have successfully struck, let alone executed well on such a bargain.

Gendered anachronisms and joint custody complications aside, your approach had at least two other major flaws, both related to our specific situation and the people involved:

The first was my mother. You were married to her. You knew how unstable, angry, mean, and bitter she could be. I have a hard time believing that a man of your intelligence would think that such a person was capable holding up her end of that bargain.

The second was me. You knew that I was an extremely sensitive and emotionally intense child, but you failed to notice the interplay between intellect and temperament that is typical of "gifted" children. Therefore, when you made your assessment of the potential you thought I ought to be living up to, you did not account for that interplay, nor compensate for it in your approach to cheering me on. That explains why I constantly felt pushed by you to engage with the world in ways that overwhelmed me and left me paralyzed with fear.

You were cheering for someone who didn't exist.

You and my mother told me that you were divorcing in June of 1991. In July of 1995, you and my stepmother welcomed my half-brother into the world. Four years might have been enough transition time for an easygoing kid with high self-esteem. It was not enough time for a sensitive, intense child who was being bullied at school, terrorized by her mother, and constantly shuttling between houses; all while still grieving the loss of her family.

With half-siblings came a set of assumptions about my obligations as your daughter; assumptions which I never agreed to. Chief among these was your expectation that I would fit naturally into your new family; an expectation that I could only disappoint because I was never able to find an approach that would satisfy you.

If I played with my half-siblings, I was making them too hyper. If I ignored them in favor of something that served my needs, I was uncaring. If I stayed at the library doing homework instead of coming home for dinner, you made sure that I felt guilty about not being with them, and by extension, you.

I literally could not win, but children are hard-wired to seek their parents' approval, and so I set out to be a perfect achiever and a perfect daughter. I have given up on that futile effort only by fits and starts before relapsing into old unhealthy patterns, only to collapse again under the burden of my own exhaustion and self-loathing.

According to Judith Herman, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is a psychological injury sustained through accumulated, ongoing traumatic events that occur during a developmentally vulnerable time in the sufferer's life, over which the sufferer had little or no control, and from which there was no real or perceived hope of escape.

I grew up with a father who put me in an impossible double bind, a mother who often exploded with anger when I took up space or made an inconvenient mistake, and a school full of bullies who loved to make me cry. If that didn't engender CPTSD, I don't know what would.

Pete Walker, the psychologist who is leading the field in the study of CPTSD, writes that "[unrelenting criticism and] emotional neglect make children feel worthless, unloveable, and excruciatingly empty. [They are] so injurious that [they] change the structure of the child's brain...Eventually, any inclination toward authentic or vulnerable self-expression activates internal neural networks of self-loathing...The ability to support himself or take his own side in any way is decimated."

For as long as I can remember, in my darkest moments, I have felt that I am a worthless, pathetic mistake, and that I was never supposed to be here. That sensation is the neurological echo of what my childhood felt like, and it can be evoked at a moment's notice. A seemingly minor violation of my boundaries, a voice even slightly raised in anger, or the sense that someone I love is displeased with me can all send me into a tizzy of frenetic activity or fawning attempts to secure favor and dispel the perceived threat. The day-to-day world is a minefield of such triggers, and I must brave it every day.

And if something truly awful, destabilizing, or scary happens; that sensation is amplified exponentially and reverberates so powerfully through me that I forget there ever was, or ever will be, any other emotion. I collapse, and must work to rebuild myself piece by piece.

If a child is well met by their parents, they are set up to claim for themselves a life which brings them contentment most of the time and joy often enough. Perhaps those people do owe some measure of contact to the parents who saw them for who they were and met them fully when they were young.

This is not the case here. For me, the search for a life of contentment and joy is a constant fight with my own brain. I am winning that fight day by day, little by little. You could not meet my emotional needs, and so I am learning, through painstaking work, how to get them met elsewhere.

Put another way, you raised me not to need you, so I don't need you. More importantly, I don't want you, because being around you re-activates the old, dysfunctional brain circuitry that I am working so hard to re-wire. You are, quite bluntly, bad for me.

If I thought you had changed, my approach to you might be different; but you're still operating from the same set of expectations and assumptions you always have. You are still pushing on me to prioritize your needs over my own well-being. You are still judging me for how fast I am cleaning up the mess that you made of my developing brain.

And so we come back to our three options:

One, no contact.

Two, a distant, chilly relationship.

Three, an authentic, loving relationship.

For us to get to a place where the third option is possible by any measure, you must respect the magnitude and gravity of the damage I sustained as a child. You must accept that, through your choices, you have waived any right you may have had to expect a relationship with me. You must respect the process I am going through to get and stay healthy.

If I cannot see you at any point, my answer of "no" must be respected as self-protective and sacrosanct. Your response to my "no" can never again be to badger, berate, shame, guilt trip, or otherwise bully or manipulate me into giving you what you want.

If I have to take a break from you, please wait patiently. I will return when I am able.

If "no" is not an acceptable option, a genuine "yes" will never be possible. Respect my "no." Get curious about the consequences of your actions. Accept that you blew it with me and start making real, proper amends.

If you can do that, maybe we can have that authentic, loving relationship we both want someday.

Love,
Mila

[schrödinger's cat]

Wow.    That's so calmly written, yet with so much conviction. Bravo.

I now have the very strong wish to wrap you in a warm blanket and make you some hot chocolate. What a life you had, Milarepa. But that letter is clearly written by a strong person who knows her own mind. Kudos to you.

[C.]

What a beautiful letter.  I feel like I want to copy and adapt it for each of my parents...I won't.  I respect that it's your letter.  but you have all of the elements laid out so succinctly, there is feeling and a setting of boundaries.  Whatever the outcome kudos to your awareness, verbal capacity, and compassion.

[Milarepa]

Thanks, guys! I've updated it some with additional personal work and coaching from my therapist: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=1306.0