Parenting | Life Lessons
My “Copy, Paste Girl”
Our choices don’t always lead to what we expect
Today, I made a choice. Before I tell you the choice I made, I want to tell you what led to it.
I have four children, all of them grown, and one granddaughter. When I was young and reeling from the pain of my childhood, there was only one thing I wanted. To belong. Since I couldn’t belong in my family as they had rejected me, I decided to create my own.
The decision, although I’m sure I didn’t know I had made one at the time, caused a ripple effect that culminated in my decision today. We make choices in our lives, usually without any idea of the long-term outcome. I have always prided myself on having long-range vision. I call it my superpower. Whenever I make a choice, it’s like I’m plugged into some future vision, and I can see the eventual results of that decision.
What do they say? Pride goes before a fall? It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s close enough. Just because we have strength in an area doesn’t make us infallible. I thought creating my own family would mean I was never alone again. What it did, in fact, was create many more opportunities for pain.
It may sound like I’m being pessimistic and thinking that all families cause pain. But it’s true, they do. I’m not saying it isn’t worth it because, of course, it is. I’m talking about my naive feelings that creating a new family would mean I would have people who would always love me. Children are who they are. They, unfortunately, take on too much of our pain, even if we raise them in a loving environment. It’s because we can hide from a lot of people, even ourselves, but we can’t hide from our kids.
I won’t tell my whole story here. I’ll be writing my memoir pretty soon. I have two sons and two daughters. One of them is, like a friend recently said, “Copy, paste.” I haven’t seen my daughter in years. Life happened along with a lot of bad shit. And a lot of it I didn’t understand. I was afraid, for good reason, but I’m not any longer.
Life and circumstances have given us a new chance, and we are making the best of it. We have cried and gotten goosebumps at the way life has brought us back together. When we make choices, even if we think we know, we never actually know where they are leading us. My choices led to a family, yes, but because I chose to be a mom before I was healed, I brought a lot of pain to my kids. I’m not saying I was a bad mom. My kids would say I was a wonderful mom. But I said to my daughter today that I taught them many good things, but some things can’t be taught; they can only be modeled. One of those things is what romantic love looks like. Their father mistreated me, so they grew up with the wrong idea of love, which has played out in their lives.
My husband wasn’t physically abusive, but he was dismissive. He treated me like a second-class citizen like my feelings didn’t matter, and he spoke down to me. I’m sad because I took it from him, which taught my children what I never wanted them to learn. I don’t blame myself because I did my best, and I was only living what I’d been taught. Thankfully, my kids did learn some other good things from me. They learned how to learn and grow. And my “Copy, Paste” girl has come so far.
The decision I made today was to trust. I decided to trust my girl and be her mom. She has hurt me, and I her, none of it intentional. But there are reasons, some I had no clue about, and it makes sense. Her journey makes sense. Mine does, too. At one time, they separated, but today, they came together again. She’s so much smarter than me. She learned faster, but then she had me as a Mom.
Read more about pain and how to deal with it in this insightful post by medium author, Sheri Jacobs
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