Before I get into today’s segment, just a moment of gratitude and celebration. It is my husband’s and my 38th anniversary. It is always a day of joy for us. But I will simply add that through the months of writing this book draft, and seeing all the struggle and pain, I find it an especially wonderful thing that we are together and thriving. So, to my husband, my partner through it ALL, my soulmate, thank you, and I love you.
Tara’s permission
After the large break in the family, the next few years had their ups and downs. For a couple of years, I stayed away. That was hard, especially when my uncle, my mother’s last sibling and a favorite uncle, died from cancer. I just chose not to attend the funeral, which, in my family, was no small absence. But it was also a time when Ed’s parents were sick, and his mother was dying, so my excuse was that we were taking care of their needs.
In fact, her death came the very next year, and his father’s death 3 years after that. The awareness of life’s mortality for our parents slowly brought me back into contact with my extended family over the next couple of years. As it had helped me to stop hating God, Buddhism, as well as my work on a medical ethics board, provided me a path toward a reconciliation of sorts with the family.
The ethics board’s work constantly forced us to consider how best to protect subjects in research studies, without taking away their power to make their own choices about participating. That work was about constant wrestling – with the study guidelines and with everyone else on the panel – to reach the best solution. Often I would go to the meeting with one decision, but after much discussion I’d sometimes change my mind. Our discussions and consensus-building taught me that the best answers were not achieved quickly, but with much thought and struggle.
Buddhism, too, was about taking each situation, individually, looking for the most ethical solution, and avoiding extremes if at all possible. It was about remaining flexible and caring, even when you had to be firm. And it was about holding two truths at the same time. You could love someone, even as you had to be a force against them. That was reinforced by my understanding of that Goddess, Tara, and seeing her as a force for love, but also for protecting when necessary.
Finally, my parents and I agreed to meet at a hotel in Virginia and have a conversation about the past couple of years. This time at least, I felt somewhat empowered to do this.
The meeting
We sat across the table from each other in the hotel lobby, Dad and I. Mom sat off to the side, silent as usual. This was the first time we’d seen each other in a few years, since I’d written the article about not trusting him. And it was difficult, especially sitting right across the table from him. But it had to be done.
I am by nature a person who doesn’t like to cause hurt feelings, even if it’s justified. I just want to get along. It’s my nature to want to spare another discomfort. I know pain. Why would I want to inflict it on someone else?
Also, for me, it takes so much energy to have to stand my ground against another, even if the situation requires it. After a lifetime of Dad always denigrating my opinions or even my right to have them, I had to fight decades of old programming and fear to sit across from him and tell him how it’s going to be. In person.
Normally, I prefer situations where things can be worked out collaboratively. Put things on the table, and find a solution. I just want to get along, not fight. Since there are very few things in life I am black-and-white about, I can be flexible about answers. It’s always amazed me when someone else is so rigid and intractable that there can be no way to resolve the problem. On the one hand, I wish I could be that way – it would be easier. Yet it’s not me, and at times I’ve even felt like a failure because of it.
But there are times where there IS only one, non-negotiable answer. Like in this meeting. And even though it was hard for me to be strong enough to insist on that outcome, I also wasn’t going to run from my responsibility. Especially when it was critical — like the kids in the family.
So, it was that “compassion goddess” who sat across from him at the table
“Our kids were at stake.” However nervous I was, I was not budging on this.
My father looked at me, his face an emotionless mask.
“You raised me to always take care of my siblings. You said it was my responsibility.” My voice stayed firm even as my gut was twisting.
“Well. If I had to protect my siblings, I will absolutely protect our kids. I love you…I want you to know that. I always have. You are my father….but the kids come first.”
I knew that was one thing my father would “get.” That was the family ethic going back generations. His father gave him hell one time for not looking after his brothers when they got into a fist fight with others. And he gave me hell if I didn’t look after my siblings. So I played his card — take care of the younger kids. And I wanted it clear that this was not negotiable. For the kids, I would fight him, always, even if I hadn’t fought for myself.
My mother said absolutely nothing. Registered nothing. But my father heard me. I had no idea if it would alter his future behavior. Or if he believed me when I said I loved him. But I sensed he grasped that I would never stop watching him where the kids were concerned.
He was also a master of assessing “relative power in situations” and of trying to manipulate someone to his side if he saw an opening. So in that moment, I made sure no chink in my armor showed, even as a part of me…that young child inside, still wanted his love and approval.
As an aside, that part never goes away. It is the ache, the hunger of all those years of not being loved for yourself. Of desperately reaching for any crumbs of his attention, something he would always leverage to his advantage. But still, you hunger for it.
Daria Burke, in her memoir, Of My Own Making, summed up kids looking for love when it isn’t possible in an abusive situation: “…we are hardwired to seek out and trust the familiar, even when the familiar isn’t safe or good for us…We are hardwired for hope.”
On some level, I kept hoping that he might yet change or be changed. Or just stop being interested in any kind of abuse opportunity. It takes a lot of years of therapy to come to grips with understanding the emotional hold an abuser, especially a parent, has on you.
But at least we managed a sort of “detente” after that.
The calm years
The next few years were actually calm by comparison to the past. The kids in the family were all getting older now, which meant they were probably safer than in the past. Also, my parents moved to Pennsylvania to a retirement community, which put more distance between him and the kids. So I was relieved.
For a couple of years, our own family things were going pretty well. We had opportunities for vacations, both with extended family members and on our own. Our son was working hard in school, and while he had some areas of struggle, he also had other places where he just thrived.
There was a period during this time, though, that he became deeply quiet and sad. Almost despondent. And while a small part had to do with school, the bigger part was about a secret he’d kept to himself. Afraid to tell us. In fact, later he would share that he almost thought about suicide. Those middle school years are the hardest.
Finally, in his second year of high school, he opened up and shared that he was gay. I was actually relieved just to know what had been causing him such emotional agony. I will admit it gave me pause, not because he was gay, but because I feared what the world might do to him. There is so much hate out there. I was only sad that this would make his life harder.
But the wonderful thing was that once he opened up to us and saw our love had not changed, he just blossomed. Years of hiding his truth had taken its toll. So, finally able to be himself and be loved for who he was, he began to approach life with an enthusiasm and joy that had been missing for several years.
Also, through these years, I had not needed to work with a therapist. It was a wonderful stretch of feeling “settled” and calm. I actually found myself thinking: Maybe I am finally cured? Maybe this is all over?
All through my adulthood, through all the years of therapy and marriage classes, I had this idea that it was just a matter of toughness and determination. That if I worked hard enough, fast enough, and often enough, I could “beat this emotional burden.” Then, I would be all better, and this nightmare would finally be “over and done with.” After all, I truly hadn’t felt the need to see a therapist. So I started to consider life on the other side of needing therapy.
Until one weekday afternoon, when a wave of intense anxiety and panic showed up…
Soul Mosaic 
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