Hi all,
In case you were wondering if you missed it, last week I did not do my weekly article. I decided, somewhat at the last minute. to travel to my hometown in Ohio to visit with family and some college friends. One reason was to celebrate my college roommates’ 60th birthday and the other was to see my two brothers who still live in my hometown.
So, whilst I had the best intentions to write last weekend during the trip, I just did not have the time.
Usually, when I visit my hometown, it is because there is some big event. Last year, it was for my nephew’s wedding. And we know how weddings go – you get to see everyone but have a hard time seeing anyone. This time, I wanted to go when there was no big event happening. A bunch of old college friends went out to dinner for my old roommate’s birthday, but the rest of the weekend was unplanned.
It was lovely. I had real time with everyone I wanted to have time with, in surprising ways.
In the past, I have liked having my time with family be busy, be filled with whatever event I was there to attend. I would go, do the things and then get the hell outta there. Why? Because I always felt like the black sheep in my family and I did not want to have extra time for hanging out. There was a real fear of being scapegoated by my mother when my mother was alive, because that is what happened. But now that she has passed to her next adventure, this is not really an issue.
So, black sheep. To be clear, I am going to work with the idea of black sheep not in the way of the one-person-in-the-family-who-did-terrible-things type of black sheep. [I think of people like Prince Andrews and his connection with child-trafficking. That is a specific kind of black sheep about someone being a horrible person.]
Instead, I want to explore the idea of a person being labeled black sheep because of being the one who didn’t do what the family expected or wanted.
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In my family, I definitely played the part of the black sheep in a few ways – I spoke some truth about the difficulties in the family, even against statements like, “that’s just mom being mom” when she was being verbally abusive or “why do you have to be so sensitive” when I spoke about any places where I felt tender or hurt. And statements like, “we don’t air our dirty laundry.”
I was also considered the black sheep when I stepped out of relationship with my mom for several years both as protection for me and for my kiddo, Sam. Most of my brothers stayed in relationship with her even when she vented her anger at them and their kids.
So, I was the black sheep for speaking my truth, for being protective of my family. For not being a “good daughter” based on some old cultural definitions.
Really what I was doing was breaking family trauma survival patterns. Really what I was doing was breaking generational survival patterns not just for me, but for the next generation.
The narrative of the black sheep of the family is often about the one who does not stay in alignment with trauma survival skills that have been handed down for generations.
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One of the things that has changed with a few of my brothers over the years is that there has been a shift around speaking about the difficulties we experienced. I mean, we were raised by an Italian father, so there is still not aloooot of talking about feelings amongst us, but there is some now.
One of my brothers and I spoke about my father this past visit in a new way. We talked about how hard it was for my dad to stay in touch with us, to be in relationship with us after my parents divorced and he moved to Florida. We spoke about it not out of anger but just as fact. My brother just said, “Something just broke in him when we were in high school and he never came back from that. He was just a broken man.”
It was the first time any of the siblings, besides me, had spoken about my dad in this way – and he was absolutely right.
And the great thing is that he spoke about it at dinner with one of his own kids there. About the mental health issues in our family. Without judgment or shame. Just tenderness.
There was no shushing of me and the truth. Just acknowledgement. Simple.
| I can’t emphasize the power of this – this kind of simple acknowledgement of another’s experience, including a shared experience Having this conversation and others like it with some of my brothers has been incredibly healing for me. And I hope for them. It also means I am not entirely the black sheep anymore. What was once taboo and even a little dangerous is now just a fact we can share before we move on to talk of other things like our kids, our hopes for the future or about the great pizza we ordered for dinner. [Sidenote – if you ever go to Cincinnati, LaRosa’s pizza is pretty damn good. Also, get Grater’s ice cream, any flavor. You won’t be disappointed.] ~~~~~~~~ I do hope and believe that some of the black sheep narrative I carried in my birth family has been part of what has helped changed the larger family narrative with some of my brothers. I do know that the way my brothers and I are raising our kids is very different – oh so very different – than the way we were raised. I know my brothers who had kids wanted them to know they were loved in ways we didn’t. And they have done that. So have I. I also know that I am lucky that my brothers never scapegoated me for being the black sheep, something that does happen in some families. Scapegoated by being blamed, shamed and even shunned for being the one who spoke and was different. My mother did this, but my brothers never really did. For me, part of my healing has been about actually embracing being the black sheep because it has meant I stepped away from just falling in line with the old survival ways of my mom, my dad – and all the generations before them. Changing the narrative of being a black sheep to being one who breaks patterns and generational trauma. So, maybe, by doing so, there won’t be a need for any black sheeps in the coming generations. |