Soul Mosaic

Summer, 1995 – The weekend of flashbacks

In 1993, Tears for Fears did a song called “Break It Down Again.” It was about recognizing that things are not what you thought, but are instead a time bomb building. And your only choice is to face it, and yet again, tear it down and start over….

The same was true for the cycles of Dad’s “promises.” Another family gathering. Another round of “seeming too familiar,” and too “in control of the situation.” Things that just seemed wrong.

On this trip, we were gathering to celebrate an uncle’s anniversary. Everyone was arriving and checking into their hotel rooms.

Stepping out of my room, I encountered him in the hallway. He was smiling, happy, and in a hurry. Commenting that he was going to arrange for a cot so that one of the kids could sleep in his room, he turned to rush down the hall.

“What?!” Fire flared through me. I had to have misunderstood him.

“What do you mean sleeping in YOUR room?!”

I wanted to leave a brief update about the piece I have been working on – Battling Dad. It is a piece that covers about a 12-year period during our kids’ childhood.

It is a period that was incredibly difficult, because it was such a painful layer of life, on top of all the things Ed and I were dealing with in our own lives. In dealing with and confronting Dad, it required wrestling with fear, pulling together courage, and living through the flashbacks and other trauma symptoms. It is the reason I call these years of my life the Warrior Years.

Just a momentary reflection as I write this book:

As I go through this process — writing my life story, then moving forward through the questions, answers, insights, and transformations — in the back of my mind, I ponder what the best structure should be going forward.

While it is not quite time for that yet — I need to finish this first draft — I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do.

But one question popped up today:

What is the first thing I want to say to the reader, at the very beginning, to let them know what this is all about?

And this showed up in my brain as an answer:

“It Happens”

Juggling who does what

Like many, we both needed to work. After all his “meat-grinder” jobs in Connecticut, his RTP software support job was much less stressful. So much so, in fact, that he was the one who covered all the daycare “sick calls.” Now, it was my job that was the problem.

I was working first at a university research lab that was supposed to be “mom-friendly.” For many reasons, that turned out to be a fallacy. After several months, it just kept getting worse, so I looked for another job.

Somehow, I landed a very good one at a pharmaceutical research company. Yes, it was high-stress and fast-paced, managing data review and validation for clinical research trials. It was stressful in a different way than the lab was, but at least I was better paid. I had the skills, so I took it even as it would turn out to be the wrong direction for me, and for what our son would need. But one step at a time.

At the same time that we were learning how to save our marriage, the pressures of parenthood and jobs continued.

Know that “We are THERE”

As children, both my husband and I lived in emotional abandonment. We didn’t know that it was called that, but we knew its pain. Only later, in therapy, would we understand what it was. While we had our physical needs provided for us, our parents were emotionally absent or damaging.

So we were both fiercely determined that our son would never experience that. He could grow up to be one of those teens rolling his eyes later on because we were too loving, involved, embarrassing, or whatever. And we would be fine with that. But he would never grow up feeling ALONE.