Looking For The Helpers
In an ideal world, we would all grow up with healthy and loving parents who’d equip us with the tools needed to become positive and effective parents ourselves. We would also be surrounded by kind neighbors and family members who’d offer additional guidance and modeling of what healthy adulting looks like.
Clearly, we don’t live in that idyllic place and many of us have long ago experienced some form of dysfunction at home. For most of us, whatever we grew up seeing modeled at home became our baseline for normal. That’s why history repeats itself and that’s why we hear so many people saying things like, “My parents did such and such [yelling, hitting, neglect] but I turned out just fine.” It’s another way of saying what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
But is it? Is it really alright? Are the kids okay?
Every single one of us is unique, and we all process our feelings differently. Sometimes a negative experience allows us to glean something very positive, and in the end we can be grateful for that particular lesson. Still, the possibility of learning a valuable lesson doesn’t mean we should perpetuate the unhealthy cycles we learned as children. We definitely don’t need to replay toxic beliefs and parenting for future generations.
See, I’m a person who didn’t have a great home life… basically ever. It’s tough to talk about it openly or clearly because I’m not trying to ridicule anyone, not trying to call anyone out, nor get people to feel bad for me. I understand that many unhealthy things which parents and grownups do only happen because those adults don’t know any better. Or because they’re stuck in a cycle they might know is toxic, but they don’t know how to actually quit.
Looking back on my youth, I knew our family was abnormal, but I didn’t know why, I didn’t understand how, and I sure didn’t know how to change it. The thing about having so much mental illness and dysfunction within one family is that at 35 I’m still unpacking how much it impacted me. It took becoming a parent to even begin to see the depth of the dysfunction and how ill-prepared I was for adulthood.
The truth is that I’m an unplanned parent — a single mom — and I only happened upon the idea of gentle, positive parenting when I was in the midst of my crisis pregnancy. Someone on Facebook mentioned attachment parenting to me as something I should read up on, and I did. Here I was unexpectedly pregnant, devastated to be abandoned, and wanting to die everyday… reading about attachment theory and the idea that my parenting could help my child grow up into a more secure adult? That kept me sane enough to survive. Even through a terribly rocky and painful adjustment to motherhood, attachment parenting was this tangible thing I could focus on. And I don’t mean that I did everything the books say to do. But I made my decisions according to whatever seemed to be the most emotionally healthy choice for my daughter.
So age 0–3 was attachment parenting, but toddlerhood and preschooling became The Daniel Tiger/Mister Rogers years. I’ve been able to keep my cool and learn about the power of positive parenting by taking Mister Rogers’ socio-emotional lessons to heart. Sometimes it seems like a miracle that I’m raising such a great kid given everything we’ve been through along with my own mental health battle. I am by no means a perfect mother — I’m not a Pinterest mom, I’m not a good housekeeper, and I never finish my to-do list. I’m seriously not the most “adulty” adult. I have a very long way to go personally, yet I’m genuinely proud of myself as a mom. It’s the only thing in my life that actually makes me feel proud of myself at all.
The philosophy and lessons of Fred Rogers have become so near and dear to my heart because I believe he was spot on. We’ve got to talk about our feelings honestly and productively for the mental health of ourselves and our kids. Mental illness has such a huge stigma that we don’t talk about it — which of course is the absolute worst thing to do.
This is what I’m passionate about. The idea that we can grow and do better, break toxic cycles, and raise up people who know what to do with the really big, often uncomfortable feelings. Mentally well people don’t have to lash out or put on a mask or coat of armor to survive. There’s a strength in being kind and gentle and positive, a strength Fred Rogers knew all about that society often overlooks.
When I sat down to write this, I meant to explore some of the tangible ways we can break the toxic cycles we learned growing up. But then it morphed into this long explanation of where I’m coming from and I realized that I have spent a good deal of my life looking for the helpers. My mental illness and my big challenges have significantly impaired my ability to have lasting, healthy relationships. As a result, I’m always looking for the helpers, but I’m also waiting for them to invite me in. I often think I haven’t found my place because I haven’t found the people who want me astound. As a result, I hold back and wish that people would come to me.
But I want to become one of the helpers. I want to do everything I can to help anyone who’s felt the kind of pain and loneliness I’ve felt. I feel compelled to create a space for families to talk about their mental health, and to heal. I don’t know how many people these thoughts will resonate with, if at all, but if they touch just one person for the better, they’ve done something I can be proud of.