It's Time For Puppies
How to actively forgive ourselves
My husband and I lived in the same town for a period of time as kids. It’s how we met ages ago when we knew each other as teenagers. As we travelled back to our hometown for Thanksgiving, I found myself travelling back in my mind as well. Back to the moment of choosing the wrong person to marry the first time around when I was all of twenty years old.
There I was sitting at my in-law’s table, surrounded by family, thinking about how ironic it was that my in-law’s house sits just one street over from the house my ex grew up in. I was just one street away from making a better decision. The decision I did make ended up setting in motion my present day fate where two seats sit empty now for most family gatherings. I couldn’t help but sit there soaking in my regret as everyone passed the gravy. And as we all know, nothing good ever comes from regret.
As I continued to pull myself out of this spiral again and again during our five day visit, I started catapulting myself into the future. I began to grieve things that haven’t even happened yet. Fearing all I might miss out on with my older children because they have moved away. In just four years, my daughter will be going off to college. A decision I will most likely not be a part of.
There will be no college campus tours with her, no setting up her dorm room. Another woman will be standing in for me. I will most likely not even be at her high school graduation. All that I felt I was entitled to as her parent I could feel was being erased away. Which left me to wonder, is this why I signed up to be a parent in the first place? A list of entitled events I would get to witness with my own eyes? Is this really the meat of parenting for me?
As an adoptive parent, I have always prided myself in not saddling my first two children with genetic expectations. Ones like, your grandfather was an excellent pianist, so maybe you could be too. Maybe it is in your blood. I tried to raise my kids with the freedom to become who they were without ever knowing what hidden talent may be coursing through their veins. Not matching what they like or excelled at with any particular person’s achievement from their past looming over them that they don’t even know. And yet here I was, feeling robbed to an entitled future because I am their parent. I had no idea I had filled in all these blanks for us already.
Society and social media would like us to believe that parenting is all about milestones. If we do not witness and document these milestones thoroughly then haven’t we failed as parents? After a lot of spiralling and soul searching I know that at its basic root, parenting is not about these date stamps in the future. Simply put, parenting is about unconditional love for your child. This seems easy enough to do, it's wired into each of us to love our babies from the start. Whether you physically bring them into the world or not, this biological drive to love them appears as if out of nowhere. Like a thread that will carry us through all of our parenting duties until they probably won’t need us anymore. And even then, we cannot help but love them.
My particular parenting situation continues to put this theory to the test as I watch my kids live from afar. My daughter thrives despite my lack of involvement. I know logically that this is my daughter doing a great job of surviving in a house full of narcissists. She has told me again and again that all is not as it appears. That thriving mostly equates to pretending. But similar to the effect that all media has upon us, I find watching her pretend warping to my reality.
Like looking at a photoshopped magazine cover and immediately hating my own body for not measuring up. Or ingesting too many Instagram posts which then leaves me feeling like my life isn’t enough in comparison. Parenting from afar has left me feeling like a total loser failure of a parent. My heart is broken again and again as the images of what I thought I would experience as a parent don’t stack up to reality.
And the job of parenting them is getting harder to do well. I find myself sometimes unable to muster the energy to love unconditionally as my heart is crushed by a combination of separation and continued gaslighting. Video calls where all players are forced to smile and nod. No reality to go on until the next visit where everything is revealed in fits and starts. Things I cannot do anything about dumped on my lap with radio silence for months in between. Knowing the system has failed us, where would I even go to fight such an injustice?
The mere fact that my kids can be interpreted as doing better living with their dad is a thought I try not to linger on for more than a few minutes at a time. This thriving with dad is in direct contrast to when the kids lived with me and their other parents were purposefully stirring the pot, meddling and causing disruption in our household for this exact end. Them living there. Part of what looks like a neatly solved problem is just the simple fact that I would never do all the things they did to disrupt my kids' stability. It does not mean that it doesn’t eat at my soul 24/7.
I have been stripped of all responsibility for the things we have bought into as being most important in our role as parents. Overseer of homework, carpool driver, game (and practice) attendee, photographer of all milestones. Caretaker when they are sick, safe haven from life’s scary internet predators. All that remains for me is the root. Unconditional love is now my only job. And I find myself late to work almost every day.
At the tail end of our Thanksgiving trip, I caught my youngest son’s virus. I found myself night after night waking up aching and writhing in pain followed by a crash back into sleep plunging me into fever filled dreams, only to wake up in sweat soaked clothes.
With these fever filled nights came clarity when one morning I woke up with one single thought out of nowhere. Just one word. Forgiveness. What the hell was all I could think when I dragged my soggy self out of bed to change my clothes. Leaving my sweat soaked clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor to be cleaned up by a future version of myself who had the energy to bend down, I was trying to make sense of why this word forgiveness? Forgiveness of whom? My ex? Not possible. His wife? Even less so. My children for all they do to survive? Not needed, I never blame them. Myself? That was it.
I have never forgiven myself. In fact I am still pretty fucking peeved at who I have become. What twisted path I have walked only to end up here at 48 feeling completely stuck. If I went back to work, I wouldn’t see my kids when they do come home for the summer. I might be delightfully distracted but I wouldn’t be here helping my youngest navigate his grief. There’s also a pretty good chance I would be headed right down a path of bitterness while I continued to do all I do now but on top of it add a FT job. I fear adding to the mountain of already established loss for everyone involved. So here I sit, feeling “stuck”. Even worse, judging myself for feeling stuck. Adding to my pile of labels, whiney privileged woman.
So what now? My fever haze has brought me the answer. Should we all punish ourselves forever for all the bad choices we have made? Especially the ones that have lasting consequences? How much suffering is required as payment to prove our repentance? I say we have all suffered enough. We must forgive ourselves for whatever we have done or not done to end up where we are. And provide unconditional love for those who show up to celebrate beside us.
Heading into the holidays I wonder, is there just too much nostalgia? Sometimes I fear there is not enough to glue my family back together in time for Christmas. This year the tree doesn’t look quite right. The ornaments feel tacky hanging from the branches of the tree. It feels like a cheesy play where there aren’t enough actors to play all the parts that were written. Something feels off about this season of celebration, even with Christmas lights strung up everywhere and added this morning, a fresh blanket of snow.
Nostalgia is a tricky emotion. It suggests comfort will be had if we could just get back to tasting this old memory. If everything and everyone did the exact thing we used to do. Then poof, all the good gushy feelings would return. I have had to wake up daily the last fifteen months to remind myself that this is a fool's errand. In fact nostalgia might just be the one thing keeping me down. Trying to recreate the feeling of us being a family of five before the split is never going to be possible. Isn’t this so similar to why the holidays can sometimes put us into such a funk?
Just because our traditions once brought us joy does not mean we can forever recreate that same feeling again. Twisting ourselves to fit our memories. Without taking into account all the change that has happened along the way. I’m sure this is why so many of us anticipate the holidays with joy then find ourselves nursing a heavy sorrow once they are upon us.
To challenge the idea that my bad decision making from the past means that I am incapable of making better ones, I am going to attempt to forgive myself actively. By testing these beliefs about myself. For as long as I continue to beat myself up for all that has transpired, I am doing the narcissist’s work for them. So adding to forgiveness for myself and unconditional love for those around me, there is one more thing I need to do. Stir the pot.
I mean to stir the pot in a good way. To treat myself like an unknown being. My own adopted child. No expectations from genetics, or society, or nostalgia, or even past mistakes to figure out what I should do next to make my way forward in this family. No more clinging to all of our old traditions that I’m not sure anyone even cares about because I never bothered to ask them.
What things can be done or added to life right where we are? What attempts can be made to make a life for the three of us and not just stand here holding a place for the other two people who are missing? When they return, I will fold them into that joy and love them unconditionally. Not expecting them to show up as they were and not expecting us to do so either. I now know that none of us can be who we were. But there may be something magical in releasing us from all the expectations and milestones. We all get to be something else.
I have decided I can’t be paralyzed by my bad decisions forever. I have been very cautious and haven't’ done anything to rock the boat since they left. We have stayed frozen in place like a still painting of grief and regret. This is not a life. So I got to thinking, what can I dip my toe into to teach myself that I can be forgiven? To prove to myself that maybe I am not a terrible person after all. How can I practice decision making with low stakes? How can we celebrate the holidays without expecting the past to return and save us? And where can we add joy? Because like Ben and Jerry used to say, “If it isn’t fun then why are we doing it?
So I signed us up to be a foster dog family. For puppies. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Someone loses a shoe. The puppy pees or poops on the rug? The best thing that can happen is that our dog gets to play with another dog. I get to see my son’s face light up like it did when he visited the shelter for our interview last weekend and they brought in a puppy for him to visit with. Maybe I get a little bit of distraction, but distraction that fits into the parameters of my new life of not juggling the schedules of three different children but still being available to them. And on Christmas morning there will be a puppy in the mix when everyone is home visiting in whatever new ways we come up with.
I’m stepping outside of nostalgia and actively forgiving myself by stirring the pot this year with puppies. I’ll bet it’s just the beginning. Let me know how you have forgiven yourself or what you will do to stir the pot of your own life.
Until then,
Stay Strong, Lift Dumbbells.