Member-only story
Life has a way of shaping us. There are joys and traumas, love and grief — all wrapped up in the mundane day-to-day of our existence. Those moments define us. And even if we heal from the trauma and grief, even if we revel in joy and love — we are changed.
I was shy as a child. Ever a rule-follower and a complete good-two-shoes, I feared my father would send me away if I didn’t do everything just right. The loss of my mother formed the bedrock of my abandonment issues.
Abuse at the hands of a teenage neighbor triggered my nearly life-long battle with anxiety. And became the go-to emotion whenever any of those abandonment issues surfaced. I was terrified of love.
I kept my family of origin at arm’s length. It was simple enough, my father was emotionally absent and my sisters lived out of state taking care of families of their own. My aunt and cousins, strangers for the most part, did the best they could but all suffered from demons of their own. I can recognize that now and understand — it wasn’t me. It was the collective pain of generations of trauma that we all stood on.
And yet, somewhere down in the middle of all this mess, I found a place I could shed my hurt. The summer after my mother died, my aunt and cousin started having me out to the farm…
