Blaming Your Past is Okay
It’s shaped who you are. And you push past it anyway.
So recently I’ve been reading a book on happiness (yep, that’s probably my first mistake, right there). Anyhoo, the author makes a big deal of readers not blaming their past for things that have happened.
I say that’s a crock of crap!
And it’s one perpetrated by those with no real scars in the past to speak of.
What kinds of scars am I talking about?
Things that leave deep, deep wounds on your psyche. Alcoholic parents, abuse, violence, death of loved ones, mental health issues, abandonment as a child. These are things that affect you forever. As my friend, Roo Benjamin, says, “your childhood lasts a lifetime”. It most certainly does.
People who say these things don’t or shouldn’t hold you back and brush them off, clearly haven’t been there. They look on at us deeply scarred folks and wonder if it could have been as bad as we make it out to be. But let’s face it, usually, what we share is a profoundly sanitised, much milder version of what really happened, if we share at all. Ever. I know I didn’t say a thing for about 30 years.
A tale of two childhoods
I remember being with two friends one afternoon and we were discussing our lives as you do. One woman had horrific life scars thanks to abusive parents that she parented from the age of four. (She’d also endured the more recent brutal death of her husband, the love of her life, to brain cancer when her children were all under 6).
She and I had similar upbringings in that I also endured a parent with mental health issues (whom I had to parent from the age of two), a biological father who abandoned me before I turned two, and a stepfather that spent my tween/teenage years sexually assaulting me (for an entire decade).
He then stole furniture from me at age 30 which alerted the police something else was going on there. Cue: criminal trial for said sexual assault — that lasted 4 loooong years of my life!!!
The other woman in the room was slightly younger than us. She looked confused at all we’d said. She didn’t quite understand how life could be like that. It was like we were telling her she was really on Mars or some parallel universe. To be honest, she looked at us like we were blue aliens.
Her childhood was very different. The very first time anything truly awful happened to her was in her 30s. Until then, her dad, her champion and protector, had been able to fix all her ‘hurties’ and make the bad go away. So, it was brutally shocking for her to find out that when her five-year-old son got cancer, her dad couldn’t fix it.*
That was her moment of reckoning — when she understood for the first time that life isn’t fair and bad things happen to good people. In. Her. 30’s!
The first woman and I just couldn’t understand either. How, wait, what? — in your 30’s? She spoke of a world we just didn’t and couldn’t comprehend. A family that adored you, cared for and sheltered you, protected you — whaaaat? You mean 80’s TV families truly exist? Mind blown! We just kept looking at each other, completely shocked. 30s! Huh!
‘Perfect life’ people do not understand enduring scars that shape you
And they, my friends, are the people that think you shouldn’t blame your past — because they (like us in looking at Ms. Almost Perfect Life) DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
To those that don’t understand, the bad things can be brushed off, like dirt off a minor graze. We know better. The things we experienced that scarred our souls and our psyches are there forever. They can’t be brushed off or even scrubbed off, despite our trying.
In many cases, they are the very essence of our beings. They are the things that forged who we became.
Our scars made us who we are.
My desire to never be reliant on a man just in case I needed to save my children from an abusive situation drove me, right from the get-go. I worked harder and longer than almost every other person I knew.
For me, a man was never a financial plan. I was my own financial plan, thank you very much. Judged by others for that, I didn’t care. Rather, I was on a mission driven by my childhood scars.
I met and married a beautiful man (still married to him), but that didn’t mean I didn’t watch every. single. move. he made with our children until I was completely satisfied he wouldn’t hurt them (it took, well, 20 years). That’s not on him — he’s an awesome dad (and hubby). That’s on me.
The always-watching thing? That’s an enduring hangover from my crap childhood. Survivors can pick other survivors a mile off.
These are the things people with great childhoods haven’t a clue about. They’re busy sort of watching for the mystery man in the van, rather than the ‘lovely’ neighbour, church friend, school teacher, relative, or partner right under their noses that they welcome into their homes and are shocked when they didn’t see it. Well, that wasn’t happening on my watch!
My husband is also a member of ‘the almost perfect life’ set. The first truly ‘bad thing’ that happened to him was at 45 when his beloved mother died. 45!!!!!!! Imagine if you got that far in life with life mostly going according to plan. Oh my. How different things would have been. 45!!! I know right?!
Am I jealous of those people? You bet. I would love to have had a childhood of fun, happiness, games, and regular trials and tribulations.
Do I regret what my childhood turned me into? Nope. I mostly like who I am.
The Upside Side of a Brutal Past
Leah Welborn asked me yesterday what was one thing I loved about myself. And without a second thought, I said my ability to keep going regardless of how bad the setback was.
You can hit me with a car — I’ll keep going. Oh wait, the universe did! Postnatal depression (a known side effect of childhood sexual assault) — yep kicked its arse! You can pile incredible workloads on me and I’ll shine — doubling your turnover; making you your first profit ever; stemming the 130% staff loss turnover (different companies).
The universe can take away my most beloved friend ever and I’ll soldier on, even though, I’m still devastated by her loss.
And that bastard that assaulted me? Sent him to jail for good measure! Just to make sure he knew that I knew what he did was wrong and to ensure he’d never darken my doorstep ever again. My children were safer that way.
Hell, the universe can almost kill me (several times) and I’ll keep making it out the other side.
Why is that? Because all that crap, the stuff that held me back in my past, forged an unbreakable spirit. It made me so very much stronger than your average bear. I know how to put up a good fight.
And if you’ve been deeply scarred by childhood stuff, you do too.
When ‘almost perfect life’ people face their first hurdles in their 30s, 40s, or 50s they often crumble. They’re lost. Life doesn’t make sense anymore. Their world turns upside down. This stuff doesn’t happen to them. It goes against their laws of nature. As a result, they have so much less of an idea of how to handle life’s brutality — they’ve not learned how to handle it. They expect everything to continue on tickety-boo until it doesn’t.
It’s shocking for them when real life inevitably happens.
The takeaway? You do you — the best way you know how.
Those of us with childhood battle scars, we know what can hit us; what we might face and even though we don’t know the particulars, we know we can deal with it.
We can and will endure whatever comes our way (even though sometimes, we might in fact stagger under its incredible weight). But we know, we’ve got this.
*In case you’re wondering, the almost-perfect-life woman’s son is fine now BTW, though scarred forever by his cancer medications. He has turned into one of the finest young men I know. But he’s so much stronger because of the scars of his own childhood experience.
Kristin Austin — Writer always! Mother forever. Wife until death parts us — altho some days that might be sooner rather than later ;) Lover of food, friends & cocktails. Recovering from a life-changing injury. Still learning. Hire me to build your business and/or revenue. Kristinaustin.com