Your storytelling is masterful. I’m agape at the man’s pathological cruelty. No healthy person is that selfish / self-centered. Thanks for the reminder of the Larkin poem. It’s alchemical. I forget which British comedian said this bit, but it goes like this: you Americans are always going on about “dysfunctional families,” and whenever I heard that, I would get so confused. What is a “dysfunctional family?” Finally someone explained it to me and I said, “Ah. Here, we just call them ‘families’.”
Thank you, Julie. You are very kind. I’ve been telling these stories privately for years, so I’ve had a bit of practice. I suspect the comedian you’re thinking of might be John Cleese? In my head it’s associated with him.
And I also think his at times questionable politics is more harmless nostalgia than some deep-seated cruelty in his soul. Or maybe I forgive all clowns in advance.
I was idly thinking of unsubscribing to several Substacks just to get my inbox more manageable, but I was drawn in by the first paragraph and read all the way to the end. What a rough thing to go through for you and all your siblings. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and life experiences with the world.
Nudism, or naturism, is a kind of "live wire" of human tolerance - I think. It requires so much evolved acceptance, etc. So instead we get porn, "adult" videos which are mostly rather adolescent in the worst or more obvious way,"erotica" which is not even sexy, much less erotic, and then in "R-Rated" movies, well, some real art, for sure, and maybe sometimes it's sexy, too. Without being "creepy," I mean.
But nudism, yeah, that's a real challenge. I don't think we have evolved to that level yet, dolphins and cats know better!
Oof. So so good. Sometimes it is not until you write this shit down that you realize how NUTS (and sad) it is. Your story reminds me a little of Jeanette Walls recounting, in her book, The Glass Castle, how her mom would hide and eat chocolate bars under a blanket on the couch while her kids were going without any food at all.
The horror of that story really stuck with me, as will yours. Thank you for writing and sharing it.
It also makes me think of random childhood traumas that I experienced and did not fully understand until I was an adult. Unraveling the whys behind them can be such tricky work.
Thank you, Pilar. I honestly think it was all this stuff that made me a writer. I had to write it down at the time (in poems, and journals) because it was indeed nuts and apparently no-one liked me telling the truth about it, but I couldn’t just live with it all inside me, so writing became like a sort of constant exorcism, keep the stuff coming out so it doesn’t build up inside you! Unravelling the whys is certainly tricky, but it helps so much in the healing process.
Exactly! I sometimes think about childhood trauma and talking to people who don't want to acknowledge it being akin to those scenes in Westworld where a robot with pioneer-days consciousness is confronted with something modern (like a lottery ticket or candy wrapper) and they are programmed to just look at it blankly and say "That doesn't look like anything to me."
Heartbreaking. I have so many questions, including about your Mom even marrying and staying with such a cruel guy: she must have had low self esteem also and felt trapped.
I am glad you’ve done better for your self and your kids and hope you realize YOU were not at fault.
Yes, my mum’s story was complex. When I was twenty I asked her to tell me the story of her early life by letter and she typed it out and sent it to me in chunks. In my thirties I spent some time getting her drunk (!) so I could ask her questions and try and understand her: why she left dad for this man who had made her children’s lives so miserable (without saying that, of course). I shall write a piece about her to unravel all that, too: good idea, thank you!
Thank you, Wendy. I hated going through it at the time but now I appreciate how important it was in creating (eventually) a life of greater meaning and usefulness. We never yearn for happiness so much as when we are deeply miserable and in my yearning I created a very powerful vortex of joy that I am now being sucked into.
I’m reading through some of your earlier posts and they’re full of wisdom. I agree tough childhood memories can spur you on. I feel fortunate, though, that in my family, though we only got one fifth of a Mars bar as a special treat, it was at least an equal share for all of us!
Ah, how I dreamed of such fairness! It’s time for humanity’s wisdom quotient to rise a little, I think, so it feels like the right time to share what I’ve learned in case it’s useful.
Sorry, I pressed the button before I’d finished. I asked my wife what was wrong, and eventually she said I left her to do too much. She’d had a difficult childhood and was determined her children - our children - would not just be loved, but also respected. And I wasn’t respecting her by doing less than my share. After which, I made sure I did. The lesson I learned was you have to be honest about what you want and expect from a relationship, whether it’s with your parents, your children, or your partner. Happiness involves honesty, which is hard.
I recall "The Means" from your brilliant book of poems, "Material," which I read some years ago now, and I am thankful that you've seen fit to provide the backstory, Ros. I had a fairly pleasant childhood (with the exception of an incident on my fifth birthday, that shaped who I have since become), but had friends who were considerably less fortunate, and while I can appreciate and sympathize with what you went through, I can never really know what it felt like. Thanks for sharing this part of your story.
As a biologist, I'm sure you've studied how male animals often mistreat or even kill the offspring of the previous male when they take over leadership of a group. This is almost literally that being played out in the human world. It's horrifying.
Ros, reading about your early life makes me realise how lucky I was . My parents were so caring, generous and always interested in me and very encouraging, and my friends' had much the same home experiences, so I thought that was the way for everyone. The longer I live, the more I realise that for many this near-perfect life was far from normal and I am truly sorry that you had to endure such a tough childhood. So glad that all this eventually changed for you - all good things do come to those who wait but that waiting time can seem endless. Take care and try to put the bad memories of the past behind you - Lauretta -
Wow, what a piece. And the term "food apartheid," I will never forget. Families do some weird shit with food. I have a deathly allergy and my brother and his family used to insist our extended family meals alway be at buffets with lots of shellfish, apparently not minding that I ate packaged crackers for dinner. My mother on her lifelong diet schemes when I was in her good graces would drop off not one but 3 or 5 specialty cake and pies for my kids -- enough to feed 20 people -- and them tsk-tsk if we ate them
Thank you for your ‘Wow’, Leah. I do love a wow :-). Good grief, yes, so many families do messed up stuff around food. Sounds like your mum’s “good graces” came at a price! And your brother? Hey, bro, show me all the ways my happiness doesn’t matter to you.
Ros, I loved this piece so much! And, I was jolted a bit when, upon you realizing it was about money, that your sympathy came forth for your mom. Brave and aware. So powerful in the retelling of the “ food apartheid”. The line in the poem about how “ food and love” smell the same…. Such a relatable piece on what affects our self worth. Amazing!
Thank you, Gayle. I’m so glad you enjoyed the piece and the poem. With mum, I got there in the end, re understanding and compassion (and it took some work!); my stepdad, I’m afraid, not so much (yet), but I do thank him for helping bend me so far out of shape that on the long journey back to alignment, I learned some powerful things.
I had a happy childhood. There were rows over stupid things - my father ordering me to help clear the table, me muttering he could help too, he snapping that he earned the money that paid for it all. He was a self-made man with progressive views and he didn’t want me to take things for granted. He was also a redhead with a temper and he once told me to tell him if he was shouting, and I did and he shouted so loudly I burst into tears. I didn’t think I was anything like him - I never shouted, I thought I did my share of the chores- but one day my wife burst into tears.
Wow! What powerful pieces!! I loved the essay and the poem and the moral of the story, and I'm so very sorry for your Food Apartheid experience.
I'm just beginning neurofeedback to deal with PTSD from a decade-long abusive relationship (apparently, 20 years of therapy still isn't doing the trick) rooted in a childhood trauma. What you wrote about calling into existence the thing you focus the most on rings true. When you buy a white car, suddenly all you see is white cars.
But once you realize that cars come in every color of the rainbow, you realize that the universe isn't shitting on you (although that's certainly how it feels and what that religion says you deserve)--now it's you shitting yourself. A firehose is just as effective at cleaning up that mess as it is as putting out the embers next door.
Also sorry that autocorrect misspelled your name after I very carefully spelt it correctly! I try to take care with people’s names because mine is mangled so often (Ross, Rose, Roz), but autocorrect wants to homogenise us.
Thank you, Gia. Ooh, neurofeedback is a really interesting therapy, let me know how that works for you. Yes, don’t we spend a lot of time shitting on ourselves (or at least I did, for quite a while). A good hosing all round! Lovely to see you here.
Thank you for this, Ros. While reading the work Christmas party anecdote, a saying came to mind: "hysterical often means historical".
I ascribe to the theory that in life, we are dealt what we can handle, but it's up to us to figure out what our burden is and do the work to resolve it. Your 'aha' moment with the crepes is similar to many I have had. My mother can't love; money is the substitute. She controls who gets it and what it can be used for. I played the game for a long time, always trying to please, though it was never enough and not the point. It was the game of control and the attention that mattered.
It's so good to work these things out about our parents and realise it is not us. Or it is now, but we can heal and move past it, and it came in fact from someone else's damage and consequent warped view of the world. Those hyper focused on money often had early trauma associated with it; I think my stepfather was traumatised by his wartime childhood and insecurity. Money bought him security and he was loathe to dish it out to those who weren't blood relatives. We grow past all this, and that is how humanity as a whole, by degrees, evolves.
Your storytelling is masterful. I’m agape at the man’s pathological cruelty. No healthy person is that selfish / self-centered. Thanks for the reminder of the Larkin poem. It’s alchemical. I forget which British comedian said this bit, but it goes like this: you Americans are always going on about “dysfunctional families,” and whenever I heard that, I would get so confused. What is a “dysfunctional family?” Finally someone explained it to me and I said, “Ah. Here, we just call them ‘families’.”
Thank you, Julie. You are very kind. I’ve been telling these stories privately for years, so I’ve had a bit of practice. I suspect the comedian you’re thinking of might be John Cleese? In my head it’s associated with him.
I’m sure you’re right. I’m also 100% certain he tells it better.
And I also think his at times questionable politics is more harmless nostalgia than some deep-seated cruelty in his soul. Or maybe I forgive all clowns in advance.
Clowns do have an edge and deserve forgiveness. They carry a lot for us.
I was idly thinking of unsubscribing to several Substacks just to get my inbox more manageable, but I was drawn in by the first paragraph and read all the way to the end. What a rough thing to go through for you and all your siblings. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and life experiences with the world.
Thanks, Libbie. I hope you’ll hang around a bit longer, because there is more. We haven’t even touched on the nudism yet!
Nudism, or naturism, is a kind of "live wire" of human tolerance - I think. It requires so much evolved acceptance, etc. So instead we get porn, "adult" videos which are mostly rather adolescent in the worst or more obvious way,"erotica" which is not even sexy, much less erotic, and then in "R-Rated" movies, well, some real art, for sure, and maybe sometimes it's sexy, too. Without being "creepy," I mean.
But nudism, yeah, that's a real challenge. I don't think we have evolved to that level yet, dolphins and cats know better!
I think it all depends on how it’s done. I shall enjoy telling you the reason why I can’t abide pate (the ground meat substance, not the scalp).
Well, now you've really got my attention! Lol.
Oof. So so good. Sometimes it is not until you write this shit down that you realize how NUTS (and sad) it is. Your story reminds me a little of Jeanette Walls recounting, in her book, The Glass Castle, how her mom would hide and eat chocolate bars under a blanket on the couch while her kids were going without any food at all.
The horror of that story really stuck with me, as will yours. Thank you for writing and sharing it.
It also makes me think of random childhood traumas that I experienced and did not fully understand until I was an adult. Unraveling the whys behind them can be such tricky work.
Thank you, Pilar. I honestly think it was all this stuff that made me a writer. I had to write it down at the time (in poems, and journals) because it was indeed nuts and apparently no-one liked me telling the truth about it, but I couldn’t just live with it all inside me, so writing became like a sort of constant exorcism, keep the stuff coming out so it doesn’t build up inside you! Unravelling the whys is certainly tricky, but it helps so much in the healing process.
Exactly! I sometimes think about childhood trauma and talking to people who don't want to acknowledge it being akin to those scenes in Westworld where a robot with pioneer-days consciousness is confronted with something modern (like a lottery ticket or candy wrapper) and they are programmed to just look at it blankly and say "That doesn't look like anything to me."
Haha, I like that analogy A LOT :-)
Thanks, Ros. I really like your writing a A LOT!
'Heart-wrenching' doesn't do it justice. How terribly sad. Excellent poem, though!
Thanks Garry.
Heartbreaking. I have so many questions, including about your Mom even marrying and staying with such a cruel guy: she must have had low self esteem also and felt trapped.
I am glad you’ve done better for your self and your kids and hope you realize YOU were not at fault.
Yes, my mum’s story was complex. When I was twenty I asked her to tell me the story of her early life by letter and she typed it out and sent it to me in chunks. In my thirties I spent some time getting her drunk (!) so I could ask her questions and try and understand her: why she left dad for this man who had made her children’s lives so miserable (without saying that, of course). I shall write a piece about her to unravel all that, too: good idea, thank you!
Really powerful writing, and heart-rending. Food apartheid is such a good description. So sorry you went through this.
Thank you, Wendy. I hated going through it at the time but now I appreciate how important it was in creating (eventually) a life of greater meaning and usefulness. We never yearn for happiness so much as when we are deeply miserable and in my yearning I created a very powerful vortex of joy that I am now being sucked into.
I’m reading through some of your earlier posts and they’re full of wisdom. I agree tough childhood memories can spur you on. I feel fortunate, though, that in my family, though we only got one fifth of a Mars bar as a special treat, it was at least an equal share for all of us!
Ah, how I dreamed of such fairness! It’s time for humanity’s wisdom quotient to rise a little, I think, so it feels like the right time to share what I’ve learned in case it’s useful.
Sorry, I pressed the button before I’d finished. I asked my wife what was wrong, and eventually she said I left her to do too much. She’d had a difficult childhood and was determined her children - our children - would not just be loved, but also respected. And I wasn’t respecting her by doing less than my share. After which, I made sure I did. The lesson I learned was you have to be honest about what you want and expect from a relationship, whether it’s with your parents, your children, or your partner. Happiness involves honesty, which is hard.
I recall "The Means" from your brilliant book of poems, "Material," which I read some years ago now, and I am thankful that you've seen fit to provide the backstory, Ros. I had a fairly pleasant childhood (with the exception of an incident on my fifth birthday, that shaped who I have since become), but had friends who were considerably less fortunate, and while I can appreciate and sympathize with what you went through, I can never really know what it felt like. Thanks for sharing this part of your story.
As a biologist, I'm sure you've studied how male animals often mistreat or even kill the offspring of the previous male when they take over leadership of a group. This is almost literally that being played out in the human world. It's horrifying.
Ros, reading about your early life makes me realise how lucky I was . My parents were so caring, generous and always interested in me and very encouraging, and my friends' had much the same home experiences, so I thought that was the way for everyone. The longer I live, the more I realise that for many this near-perfect life was far from normal and I am truly sorry that you had to endure such a tough childhood. So glad that all this eventually changed for you - all good things do come to those who wait but that waiting time can seem endless. Take care and try to put the bad memories of the past behind you - Lauretta -
Food is a love language all by itself. So I think it is natural to feel unloved when you grow up in such an unjust situation, related to food.
Wow, what a piece. And the term "food apartheid," I will never forget. Families do some weird shit with food. I have a deathly allergy and my brother and his family used to insist our extended family meals alway be at buffets with lots of shellfish, apparently not minding that I ate packaged crackers for dinner. My mother on her lifelong diet schemes when I was in her good graces would drop off not one but 3 or 5 specialty cake and pies for my kids -- enough to feed 20 people -- and them tsk-tsk if we ate them
Thank you for your ‘Wow’, Leah. I do love a wow :-). Good grief, yes, so many families do messed up stuff around food. Sounds like your mum’s “good graces” came at a price! And your brother? Hey, bro, show me all the ways my happiness doesn’t matter to you.
Ros, I loved this piece so much! And, I was jolted a bit when, upon you realizing it was about money, that your sympathy came forth for your mom. Brave and aware. So powerful in the retelling of the “ food apartheid”. The line in the poem about how “ food and love” smell the same…. Such a relatable piece on what affects our self worth. Amazing!
Thank you, Gayle. I’m so glad you enjoyed the piece and the poem. With mum, I got there in the end, re understanding and compassion (and it took some work!); my stepdad, I’m afraid, not so much (yet), but I do thank him for helping bend me so far out of shape that on the long journey back to alignment, I learned some powerful things.
I had a happy childhood. There were rows over stupid things - my father ordering me to help clear the table, me muttering he could help too, he snapping that he earned the money that paid for it all. He was a self-made man with progressive views and he didn’t want me to take things for granted. He was also a redhead with a temper and he once told me to tell him if he was shouting, and I did and he shouted so loudly I burst into tears. I didn’t think I was anything like him - I never shouted, I thought I did my share of the chores- but one day my wife burst into tears.
Wow! What powerful pieces!! I loved the essay and the poem and the moral of the story, and I'm so very sorry for your Food Apartheid experience.
I'm just beginning neurofeedback to deal with PTSD from a decade-long abusive relationship (apparently, 20 years of therapy still isn't doing the trick) rooted in a childhood trauma. What you wrote about calling into existence the thing you focus the most on rings true. When you buy a white car, suddenly all you see is white cars.
But once you realize that cars come in every color of the rainbow, you realize that the universe isn't shitting on you (although that's certainly how it feels and what that religion says you deserve)--now it's you shitting yourself. A firehose is just as effective at cleaning up that mess as it is as putting out the embers next door.
Good hosing to us all!
Also sorry that autocorrect misspelled your name after I very carefully spelt it correctly! I try to take care with people’s names because mine is mangled so often (Ross, Rose, Roz), but autocorrect wants to homogenise us.
Damn you, autocorrect!!!! :)
Thank you, Gia. Ooh, neurofeedback is a really interesting therapy, let me know how that works for you. Yes, don’t we spend a lot of time shitting on ourselves (or at least I did, for quite a while). A good hosing all round! Lovely to see you here.
I'll keep you posted on the hosing situation! Thank you for sharing your story!!
Thank you for this, Ros. While reading the work Christmas party anecdote, a saying came to mind: "hysterical often means historical".
I ascribe to the theory that in life, we are dealt what we can handle, but it's up to us to figure out what our burden is and do the work to resolve it. Your 'aha' moment with the crepes is similar to many I have had. My mother can't love; money is the substitute. She controls who gets it and what it can be used for. I played the game for a long time, always trying to please, though it was never enough and not the point. It was the game of control and the attention that mattered.
That's a good saying.
It's so good to work these things out about our parents and realise it is not us. Or it is now, but we can heal and move past it, and it came in fact from someone else's damage and consequent warped view of the world. Those hyper focused on money often had early trauma associated with it; I think my stepfather was traumatised by his wartime childhood and insecurity. Money bought him security and he was loathe to dish it out to those who weren't blood relatives. We grow past all this, and that is how humanity as a whole, by degrees, evolves.