Last weekend, we went on a family getaway with our framily (friends like family) to Branson, Missouri. It’s a trip we’ve taken all together now four or five times over the lifetime of our friendship. The nine kids between us are very close – more like cousins than friends – and the grownups have been doing life together for 25 plus years. It’s quite something, and we are so grateful to have each other.

We spent all day Saturday at Silver Dollar City – an amusement park that harkens back to the 1800s with a Wild West theme in all the shows and rides. It’s a pretty great place to spend a day – especially in the fall when the Ozark Mountains are at their finest.

Over the years, the number of rides I’ve been able to ride has diminished to almost none. It’s been quite the loss to this thrill-seeker, and I’ve still pushed the limits of what my body can/should do by riding the smoother coasters and really anything that looks to be less bumpy and jolting than your average state fair ride.

Yes, I completely ignore and blow past the signs that warn those with back conditions to stay off the ride.

#eyeroll

Life is short, ya’ll, and my children have grown up too fast. #fomo

Silver Dollar City has been the last remaining park to have rides that my body could handle, with the exception of It’s a Small World at Disney World. #blarg

One ride, in particular, has been a favorite of the family/framily over the years – The Great Barn Swing. It’s a giant, mechanized swing that swings you seven stories high at speeds of up to 45mph. You are very tightly locked in, so it’s never caused me any physical pain. In fact, I rode it this summer when we visited the park with my brother and his family, and I had a blast. I loved the thrill; I loved the screaming; I loved laughing at my people as they experienced pure terror; I loved everything about it.

But this weekend, when I rode it again with our framily, I had a wholly different experience.

I sat next to Matt, who is like a brother to me, and was looking forward to screaming my head off with him. But as the ride began I was immediately overcome with overwhelming and irrational fear.

Ya’ll, it swallowed me whole.

I became convinced that my massive metal waist harness wasn’t secured adequately, and I JUST KNEW I was going to be hurtled into the atmosphere.

You know the phrase, “It scared the shit out of me!”?

Yeah.

No, I did not empty my bowels. But I will be grateful for the remainder of my days for the bit of self-control remaining to me in that moment that allowed me to hold everything in there.

My outward expression of fear, however, could not be controlled. I screamed alongside Matt – but his screams were about thrill, joy and laughter, while my screams were wrapped in abject terror over my impending death.

I decided that Matt was my best chance for survival, so I linked my arm into his and held on for dear life. I figured if my VERY SECURE harness gave way, I could just hold on to his arm to keep from dying…like somehow I would have the strength to keep my currently (and likely permanently 🙄) too-heavy body from being flung out across the amusement park.

Don’t laugh. This plan had substance.

When the Giant Barn Swing finally came to a stop, I could have cried real, actual tears of relief. I shakily made my way out of the ride area and gratefully collapsed onto my motorized scooter – a support I have previously accepted with a great deal of resistance, but in that moment I was completely content to stay there for the remainder of the day.

And, embracing the fullness of my fear in that moment, I resolved to never EVER ride that ride EVER again for the rest of my life.

My, how time changes us.

I’ve never considered myself to be a fearful person. In fact, I have actively spent my life pursuing and engaging in activities that most people avoid because of fear…and I have felt (too) much pride in being “fearless.”

Growing up, I was often referred to as the fearless tomboy in the family, and that identity felt comfortable to me.

Fear didn’t.

Fear doesn’t.

So my modus operandi has been to not just push past fear, but to push down fear and move on as if it isn’t even there.

It worked pretty well for me for close to 50 years.

But it doesn’t work so well for me now.

As I’ve moved into the latter part of the middle ages of my life, my ability to contain any significant (or even some seemingly insignificant) fear has all but disappeared.

What I mean by this is that now when fear arises, those typical fear responses in my body – shaking and clammy hands, threatening bowels, and tightness in the chest, to name a few – are magnified to a disabling level.

My body literally shuts down.

It’s just the worst.

It’s as if I’ve lost the capacity to be afraid.

But I don’t think that’s true. I think what I’ve actually lost is the capacity to repress my fear.

I think what’s most disconcerting about this change is my discovery that more often than not, my fear is induced by other emotions rather than the potential of actual physical harm.

My therapist once told me, “You are afraid of fear.”

This induced #alltheeyerolls.

And yet, she isn’t wrong.

This is not to say I’m immune to the fear of physical harm. But at one time I think I was. Sort of. Or…I was comfortable with pushing the limits of my body’s fear responses. I mean, for crying out loud, I spent years of my childhood risking life and limb by jumping off the roofs of houses, pulling crazy bike stunts, and climbing to the highest points of trees so I could measure my courage by jumping to the ground below.

It felt comfortable to be in danger.

It doesn’t feel that way now.

All this new insight hasn’t made it easier overall to embrace fear. No, resistance is still most often my first response. There’s a sense of shame that threatens to overtake me at the first hint of fear and my body’s responses to it. I think I’ve spent a lifetime conditioning myself to push down fear because I’ve convinced myself that fear is paralyzing and counter-productive.

And, true, it can be.

But it can also inform me.

I’m learning to be more accepting and kind to myself and to fear when it comes up in various circumstances. This shift is allowing me to begin to notice what actually triggers the fear response.

Is it fear of physical danger and/or a terrifying death like the aforementioned Giant Barn Swing induced?

Not usually.

Is it fear of the rapid decline that is taking place in my body and the limitations that come with this as the years go by?

Sometimes.

Is it fear of unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotions that arise when a childhood memory is triggered?

Often.

Is it fear of loss or fear of rejection and betrayal that comes up when engaging with the people I love?

Oh, for sure.

Now instead of resisting the fear that comes up, I’m learning to embrace it just like I did on the Giant Barn Swing – screaming like a banshee and holding onto my safe enough people for dear life, and then letting it guide me in my responses to the given situation.

Like swearing off thrill rides for the remainder of my days.

It’s difficult to embrace my responses to fear, for sure.

But it’s not nearly as difficult as Fear told me it would be.

As a child, I learned faith and theology through service, community and a big, long list of dos and don’ts.

And through the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board’s State Bible Drill.

I was good at all the Baptist things: choir, puppet ministry, hand bells, flannel board storytelling, children’s church and taking notes during “big church,” just to name a few. But Bible drill was an area of expertise for me. I could memorize just about anything put in front of me, so the long list of memory word that included the books of the Bible (in order), dozens of Bible verses and long passages of scripture pertaining to topics such as The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Commandment, The Beatitudes and the Love Chapter… these were not a big deal for me.

The other drillers and I met early every Sunday evening in order to practice with our coordinator. Standing in a straight line facing her, we ran drills on finding books of the Bible by responding to each prompt she called out.

“Philippians,” she’d say.

Then came the commands required for us to begin the drill.

“Attention. Present Bibles. Start.”

The moment we heard “Start” our hands whipped open our Bibles with barely restrained intensity, searching feverishly for the book of the Bible or verse called out. As soon as a driller found the correct book or verse, she put a finger on the Bible opened up to that spot, and then stepped forward… with barely veiled disdain for those drillers still sweating over their Bibles behind her.

The first driller to find the book and step out was then required to call out a response such as, “Philippians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.”

For those unfamiliar with the sequence, this means I named the book I found; next I named the book before it; then I had to name the book I found again; and finally the book that followed it in the order of the books of the Bible.

Like I said, I rocked at this.

You had to complete the entire sequence in order to win the round.

But that was just the Books of the Bible section.

The real memory work lay in the lists and lists of memory verses and key passages we were required to know.

I knew them all. In fact, I was so good that I ended up State Perfect in the Tennessee statewide competition.

Not one mistake.

And, yes, I was proud of myself… just in case you weren’t sure.

Points were deducted for a variety of reasons:

• If you needed more than ten seconds to step out after a call
• If you gave an incorrect response when called upon
• If you failed to stand up straight or to keep your eyes on the drill caller until the command “Start” was given
• If you stepped out before your index finger was placed on the correct response
• If you mishandled or misused the Bible during the drill

Speaking of handling the bible, there were very specific guidelines for this: where you placed your hands and which way the Bible faced could cost you precious points if not done exactly as the drill required.

It was no joke.

I know it sounds intense, but I actually remember loving it. I felt motivated.

Driven.

Focused on making sure I was perfect in every category.

And, yes, competitive. I guess since I still laugh at my opponents (who are usually my sons or daughter) when I hand them their asses over a game of cards, I’m still a bit competitive.

My Sunday School teacher saw an opportunity to harness this scripture-memorizing gift I had and challenged me to memorize an entire chapter of the Bible, saying it would help me in my relationship with God. He was probably on to something with the initial idea, but I think he was misguided when it came to his particular selection.

He assigned me Romans 6. A chapter of the Bible that can be summed up in two words:

Don’t sin.

I mean, this guy had the opportunity to use my weird little splinter skill to teach me all manner of things: God’s love for me, God’s father heart for me, God’s hope for relationship with me. Instead he chose to drill the rules.

And the thing is, I was comfortable with this drill. I was comfortable with the drill approach to my faith as a whole. Since I spent so much of my time and energy trying to please a father who was unreliable and inconsistent with me, it was soothing to have a list of behaviors that I believed would ensure God’s favor and connection with me.

That said, it was confusing then when I rarely felt anything akin to a relationship with God through the programs I participated in at church. Bible Drill, Sunday School, Mission Friends, Girls in Action – all of these programs created by the church to “train up a child” did little to help me experience God as a loving father whose primary goal was to be in relationship with me. In fact, it felt more like God was a distant, all-powerful Force – just another being I worked my ass off to try to please… but never actually did. The lists of dos and don’ts, the points deducted for every little mistake, the care required in order to show respect, well, I wasn’t going to be “state perfect” here. These were impossible standards.

Without awareness of the futility of my efforts, though, I bought into the whole system, working with all of my self to achieve the standards that I hoped would please God.

It’s very difficult to reconcile God’s grace with the striving that is born out of a rule-driven culture. We’ll never experience the embrace of love we so desperately long for when consumed with our attempts to meet impossible standards for that love.

Even now, with this awareness, I battle the tendency to work for perfection in order to please God and my significant others. This way of living is hard-wired into my brain, so learning new pathways is my current work. But, thankfully, it’s a work tethered to grace and compassion.

I’m spending a lot of time these days as a 50-year old woman trying to help my child self understand that she is okay. That she is loved without condition. That her life isn’t meant to be a drill with the goal of perfection. That her desire to achieve perfection was misguided by the adults in her life and so she has misunderstood what it means to be loved with holy grace that is freely given.

More than a year ago, my therapist helped me create what she calls a “safe place.” It’s basically a visualization exercise where I go to a place in my imagination that calms me. Some people visualize a beach or a cabin in the woods. It can really be anything you want it to be as long as you can access your sense while there. You need to be able to hear, smell, see and feel as you experience the environment you’ve created.

My safe place is in the mountains. There’s a mountain stream with cool water flowing around submerged boulders. I can hear the rush of water as it runs by me. I’ve placed a perfectly situated fire pit in the midst of a small clearing near the stream and surrounded it with wooden Adirondack chairs (since those are the only outdoor chairs my broken body will allow me to sit in pain free for any length of time).

I also took the liberty of moving the kudzu-covered woods I explored as a child to this place in the mountains. I know that you won’t find kudzu in the mountains in the real world, but this is a work of my imagination. I can do what I want. I even included the tree bridge I ran to as a frightened kid who needed to jump from its heights in order to test my courage.

I know. It’s strange. But the safe place can be anything I want it to be as long as it calms me and helps me bring my body and emotions to regulation when distressed.

The problem was, though, that after months of using my calm space as directed by my therapist, I wasn’t experiencing the help from it that it was supposed to give. It’s hard to do this, you guys. It takes a trust in myself and in my therapist that I don’t easily access. I drilled the exercise for a long time, but it felt full of pretense and totally ineffective.

So I quit.

Because as a Tennessee Baptist Mission Board State Perfect Bible Drill participant, if I can’t do it right, then I’m not going to do it.

#eyeroll

Thankfully, my therapist isn’t keen on letting me walk away from things just because they are hard, and I don’t get it right the first time. She insisted I keep at it. She can be pretty bossy.

One day, as I restarted the practice, but still struggled with my safe space, I let myself get curious what might be missing. It was an idyllic setting, so that wasn’t the problem. It hit all the marks when it came to my senses. I was technically doing everything right. So what then?

And then it came to me.

I’m not meant to be there alone.

What was missing was the One whose very nature compels Him to embrace me with love and compassion despite my condition, despite my mistakes, despite imperfections.

I need God with skin on. I need Jesus. And more specifically, I need Him sitting on the tree bridge 20 feet above the safety of the ground below, holding me in my anxious state of fear and disgrace and letting me know that there is no height from which I can jump that will make me as I long to be – perfectly whole and perfectly loved.

No, only He can do that.

A year after my mom passed away, my brother and I sat down to do the laborious work of going through the boxes of things she had kept over the years. There were four large boxes full of keepsakes: letters, photographs, newspaper articles, notes written on scraps of paper and works of childhood art created by Patton and me. We quickly found ourselves immersed in memories attached to feelings of joy, admiration, grief, dismay and even anger.

These boxes opened up both the wonders and the wounds of our childhood. For us, like so many, these two are in an inextricable knot.

We found our father’s license to minister and sat in silence over the absurdity.

We found elementary school report cards, noting the teacher’s observations that we were not okay.

We found dozens and dozens of letters from our maternal grandmother and aunt expressing veiled concern for our well-being in their attempts to skirt under the ever-watchful eyes of our father.

We found at least 20 Valentine’s Day cards our father gave to our mother, expressing love and devotion that surely meant nothing to her in the face of all the pain and suffering he caused.

And we found our own notes and letters – written to one or both of our parents from early childhood into adulthood.

It was uncomfortable for me to read these letters and see more clearly than ever before the work I was committed to as a child and young adult – the work of holding my parents up when they were down.

And they were almost always down.

There were hastily written notes of love and encouragement from my teenage years attached to gifts of money from me to my father. Even though I presented them as such, they weren’t really gifts. My father expected me to hand over to him much of what I earned through odd jobs, babysitting and house cleaning with my mom.

Mom even kept a note I wrote late one night in high school…hastily on a scrap piece of paper apologizing to my father for getting angry with him when he wrecked the car and didn’t have the means to fix it.

As we sifted through Mom’s boxes, I came across a letter I’d written to my parents when I was 11 and in sixth grade. This was the year that my father’s money-making schemes truly failed him, as the women’s clothing store he’d opened the year before (named Kaysie’s…for the love) was upside-down financially before it even began, and dad’s work ethic wasn’t such that he could or would ever turn it right-side up.

And the creditors came calling.

They’d had enough.

I can’t say that I blame them. My father accrued massive amounts of debt throughout his life and then ran away from the consequences… dragging his family with him as he ran. This instance of bankruptcy was the first of three for our family.

Why people continued to loan him money is beyond me.

Of course, with bankruptcy comes repossession, and the bank repossessed our house.

Our beloved Archwood house.

Here’s the letter I wrote:

I actually don’t remember writing this. I don’t remember thinking that everything would be okay. I don’t remember feeling grateful for all the things my parents had done for me, and I certainly don’t remember thinking they were moving us for my own good. I don’t remember telling my parents that “I can take it if you can.” Instead, I remember feeling afraid and angry.

Reflecting on it now, I realize it wasn’t so much the loss of the house that broke me. It was the loss of the neighborhood. It was the loss of belonging somewhere. But mostly it was the lie my parents told me in their attempt to soothe my pain – this was happening for my good and God was in control of these events that so clearly were the fault of my father.

Once we left Archwood, we never gained a true sense of belonging again, and their lie made me believe that God was responsible for that. We were displaced emotionally as well as physically for the rest of my childhood – moving no less than ten times over the following six years. We finally landed in Colorado my senior year of high school, and it was there that I felt the sense of belonging I’d been searching for ever since the loss of the kudzu-covered green belt I’d spent so much of my elementary years exploring and running to for my sense of calm. Living in rental houses, apartments, the empty houses of strangers who were traveling, and a random one-bedroom cottage for a month in California – shuffling our ever-diminishing stash of possessions with us as we moved – doesn’t exactly cultivate a sense of belonging. We were received with love and kindness almost everywhere we went, which I know is more than many in similar circumstances ever get, but when we lost Archwood, I lost the sense of who I was in the world and struggled to find it again for the next 15 years.

At least.

Also, with this letter I embraced a lie of my own that I’ve struggled to disentangle myself from ever since.

The best version of me is the only acceptable version of me.

I took it upon myself to present to my family a strong front. I kept my emotions in check, I stuffed the pain of loss, displacement, neglect and loneliness, and I turned instead to positivity, chronic busy-ness, levity and false hope in order to protect my parents – and worse, to protect God – from the “bigness” of my true feelings.

And I chose to believe my parents had my best interests in mind.

But they didn’t.

They had survival in mind.

I knew this deep within my core and so reasoned that I needed to be one less thing. It became my mission to be small for the sake of my parents.

Only I’m not small. In fact, I can swallow a room with my essence if I’m not careful.

At the age of 49, as I read the letter I’d written as an eleven-year old girl, I was no longer able to hold back the bigness of my true self – the despair, fear, panic and rage I’d really felt when I wrote it.

And these emotions swallowed me.

This has been happening a lot lately.

In therapy, I was finally given a term for this experience of overwhelm from the big feelings associated with the pain of my childhood – emotional flashback. These flashbacks are different from what others describe experiencing when dealing with PTSD. There isn’t a visual component for me. I’m not reliving a particular moment in my memory. The reel isn’t replaying in my head. Instead, a tidal wave of emotions I can’t associate with a particular instance washes over me. Being unable to connect these feelings with a moment in my past makes me feel out of control. Not my favorite feeling. Then there are the times when something painful in the present triggers an emotional flashback, and I find myself caught in the tension between the present and the past. This is the worst of it because then I feel I’ve lost control over both.

My therapist is slowly and very patiently showing me that the path to healing is to embrace the eleven-year old I left behind when I wrote that letter… with all of her big, painful emotions and her sense of loss over the necessary move. And to embrace the three-year old who felt responsible for easing her mom’s constant state of overwhelm. And the eight-year old who felt it necessary to watch over her little brother and fill in the nurturing holes in his life our parents could not or would not fill. And the six-year old who thought it was her job to stop her father’s drinking, to stay vigilant in his presence and ever-watchful for signs of danger, and to motivate him to make something of his life.

To nurture the child in me is to let go of my attempts to continue to control the state of my being and to present more than the parts of me that feel safe enough and together enough for others to see.

It is my work in therapy and my work with God – trusting in the end that He is with me, was with me (in the pain He did not create) and loves whatever version of me I make available for Him to love.

This work is so very hard to do.

But as I do it, I find that my hold on the lie I have believed is loosening. I don’t have to always present my best self. Or maybe I’m learning to redefine what my best self is. God has been kind to place safe-enough people in my world that love me despite my big-ness, despite my brokenness. In fact, I’m beginning to see that they love me because of those things. When I let them love me, I let God love me. And that is my best self.

I have a friend named Lucy.

Lucy is witty, thoughtful, passionate, committed to her people, a fashionista in the truest sense and maybe a little bossy.

She also happens to be eight years old.

Every summer Lucy and her mom, my best friend Keek, come to Oklahoma to stay for a week. We swim, watch movies, play in the park and go shopping. It’s a highlight of the summer for Davy and me, but for Lucy it turns out it’s her favorite week of the year. Somehow Auntie K’s house in Tulsa, Oklahoma has become her go-to vacation destination. In fact, she is so taken with the wonder that is my house that she announced to her mom her wish to have her ashes sprinkled in my backyard when she dies.

I try not to let it go to my head.

The truth is I have an amazing collection of Littlest Pet Shop toys I held on to when my daughter outgrew them, and I’m pretty sure they are the real attraction.

Whatever.

I’ll take any love she has to throw my way.

During our week together this summer, we made a special trip to a favorite store of mine. I was in the market for a new stone for my Qudo ring and thought Lucy would be the perfect shopping partner. We made our way to the counter, and Lucy chatted up the attendant while she pulled various stones out of the glass cabinet and laid them on a cloth on the counter. She observed the sizes and qualities of the stones, making her observations known to pretty much everyone in the store.

She’s enchanting, to say the least.

We were having a grand time until it became clear that her bold and colorful fashion preferences and my generally muted style choices were going to clash. Everyone in the store was clear on the fact that Lucy’s tastes were by far superior to mine, so I indulged her and her audience by taking the time to “try on” each stone, screwing it into my ring one-by-one. Not an easy task for someone whose hands shake constantly from the impact of pain, depression and anxiety on my body. Nevertheless, I persisted, and about 25 stones later, Lucy and I were at an impasse as to whether I should choose the large, fuchsia stone with rose gold encasing she preferred or the much smaller deep gray, gold encased one more to my liking.

I gotta tell you, it was hard to look into her beautiful Asian brown eyes and tell her the hard truth… I was going to buy the gray stone.

Lucy is a resilient young woman, and she took the news well despite her disappointment. But I guess I was struggling to release myself from some misperceived eight-year old judgment, so as we were driving home I said, “Lucy, I’m sorry I didn’t choose the pink stone, Gray is my signature color, and I really wanted a gray option to go with my mostly muted wardrobe.”

Lucy, all solemn and serene while staring at the passing cars, responded with the wisdom of a woman who has lived out the fullness of a long and complicated life, “It’s okay, Auntie K, you have to be true to your shadow self.”

Have you ever had a moment with a child when such innocent insight and clarity is thrown at you that you can only respond with wondrous – and maybe a little bit of uncomfortable – laughter?

I felt as though this eight-year old princess of China had reached into my soul and seen the essence of my struggle with self.

And then gave me permission to embrace it.

Depression and anxiety accompany me through most of my days. I can’t remember a time in my life without at least one of the two by my side. They present themselves a bit differently in different seasons, but they’re always there.

I haven’t made their presence welcome. I’ve resisted. I’ve suppressed. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve done the work recommended in the best books… all in an attempt to leave both depression and anxiety in the dust.

Several years ago a therapist described their presence in my life as my “early warning system” – my self’s way of letting me know it needed my attention. He recommended I choose a position of gratitude towards them, noting that many who struggle with this sort of melancholy are often caught in the wave of it unaware that it is coming. Yet my unwanted friends have a way of showing me trouble is on the rise.

At the time I couldn’t embrace his way of thinking because the idea of welcoming their presence felt wrong when compared to my ideal that the end goal in the work of therapy should be to rid myself of depression and anxiety altogether.

That was many years ago. And like you might with a neighbor who never brings in his trash cans, has a dog that barks late into the night EVERY NIGHT, walks out to his mailbox wearing nothing but his robe and a pair of boxers… and wants to chat, but also keeps an eye out for possible hazards or intruders because your safety is a genuine concern to him, I’m developing an unexpected appreciation for my companions.

I mean, we’re not going to snuggle up together on the couch, but there’s a growing embracing that is happening that allows me to more readily relax my posture toward the presence of both depression and anxiety in my life.

And I guess with that change is coming some much-needed kindness towards my shadow self Lucy so astutely discerned.

Two weeks ago I celebrated my fiftieth birthday.

I’m fifty years old.

FIFTY.

Is it odd that I cannot say that the age that I am is equal to the age that I feel?

I look in the mirror and see an aging woman. I feel my body aging much faster than I would like. I have the gray hair, the progressive lenses, the cane in my car – granted, my body is much older than the average 50-year old.

I have four children – three of them grown.

I have a grandbaby.

I’ve been married for 25 years.

The evidence of my age is all there.

I’m fifty; and yet, I thought this milestone would come with an inner sense of grown … one that I’ve never been able to grasp, but hoped would come with the passing of each decade.

Maybe at 30.

Or when I hit 40.

Now that I’m 50.

But instead, in contrast to the aging happening on the outside, I still often feel very much like a child on the inside.

Oh, I can adult up, if you will. I can parent; I can wife; I can friend; I can counsel. I can do the things for the people.

Until I can’t.

Because the thing is, when you spend your life as a child being the adult in the room, it’s hard to be the adult in the room feeling like a child.

So, in honor of my 50th birthday, and as part of my ongoing effort to let my child self know I see her and am trying to make peace with her, I made a couple of “unique to me” grownup decisions for myself.

First, I did this.

This is probably the most not-at-all me and yet the most totally me thing I’ve ever done. I absolutely love it and appreciate the daily reminder it is to me of this journey I’m on toward healing and wholeness, and the growing hope that I have that there will be something redemptive birthed from it in the end.

I have to admit that I love the badassness of it quite a bit, too.

Second, I did this.

I have had one ear double-pierced since I was 18-years old. I desperately wanted to double pierce my ears as a teen, but my father vehemently forbade it. When I turned 18, however, my grownup friend, Cheryl, offered to do it for me because … EIGHTEEN.

Right? I mean, what was dad going to do? I was an independent woman at 18 years of age. It was time to exert myself and live my own life, dammit.

YES.

Pierce. My. Ears.

So, Cheryl proceeded to ice my left ear, needled it and put the earring in. I loved it! The problem was, she had to get to work after we finished the first ear. I don’t know, maybe it hurt more than I thought it was going to hurt and so it took longer than we thought it was going to take. It was a long time ago, okay? I really don’t remember. Anyhoo, she had to go to work, so I had to go home with one ear double pierced. We planned to finish up later.

You can guess where we’re heading with this story, right?

My father, whose awareness level as to the needs of his family was somewhere close to nil, somehow was immediately aware of the single gold post in my left ear.

And he lost his ever-loving mind.

It wasn’t a good day for me. It’s way worse to think you’re your own person and then realize you’re not, than to never think you were at all. It’s like getting a gulp of fresh air before the window is slammed shut to a suffocatingly hot room where the air barely moves. That gulp of fresh air is just not enough. How could it be?

I never got the other ear pierced. I considered doing it a hundred different times over the years, but I think I just wasn’t able to make peace with the 18-year old who couldn’t stand up to her drunk, deadbeat father who needed her to help make the mortgage payments, but wouldn’t let her get her ears pierced.

Lately, though, I’ve been trying to come to terms with this girl. It’s not my favorite work, I’ll be honest. I’m not loving the process. There’s a lot about her that makes me uncomfortable, but I’m getting some new perspective as I do this, and I know it’s important that I learn to see her with new insight and understanding.

Besides, my therapist is making me do it.

So on the day I turned 50, I went to Claire’s with my grown daughter and my 9-month old grandson, sat on that stool like a brave girl (though I was trembling on the inside, tbh), and let the crabby store clerk pierce my right ear.

And then silently vowed to never willingly pay another person to cause me pain unless she can do it with a blasted smile on her face.

I am now evenly pierced; balanced, if you will. And not just in my ears.

I feel like I closed a loop.

Maybe it’s in the closing of the loops and in making peace with the child in me that I’ll finally be able to know myself as a real grownup.

My father never allowed my brother and me to leave the dinner table without first offering our mother the requisite “I enjoyed it” statement of gratitude and respect. This didn’t feel like too big of a deal to me since even if the meal consisted of black-eyed peas, cornbread and milk, mom always seemed to find a way to make the meal enjoyable. She often even scraped together the simple ingredients to make a chocolate pudding that was worthy of plating at any five-star restaurant. So we almost always did enjoy dinner.

What was maddening to me about dinner was the presence of my father at the head of the table, watching him enjoy the meal with some twisted sense of pride and accomplishment and knowing he’d done little to provide the resources necessary for the meal. I dreaded the end of the meal the most, knowing what was coming as dad would inevitably, in a satiated state that sparked a magnanimous spirit so contrary to his true self, end the meal by ceremoniously offering to help with cleaning the kitchen. Mom always feigned delighted surprise, joining the charade by replying, “That would be wonderful, Billy,” while I white-knuckled the chair under the table knowing full well what was coming next.

“Kaysie, help your mother clean the kitchen.”

He then promptly propped up his feet, popped open another Pabst and lit a cigarette.

That was his way. He regularly swept in and took credit for the work that others were doing – usually the others were my mother, my brother and me.

The lawn our little house on Archwood sat on was my father’s pride and joy, and he took great care to make sure I attended to all the details of keeping it manicured to his satisfaction.

I learned how to push a mower around the age of eight, with Dad either standing over me with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth or sitting off to the side in a lawn chair with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth – but either way, he did plenty of pointing, yelling and criticizing when I let that heavy mower veer to the side and missed a sliver of grass.

When Mark and I were raising our older three children, and our oldest (and only daughter) hit ten, I began to nag Mark about teaching her to mow the lawn. He looked at me like I was a crazy person.

This pissed me off.

What?

She was ten! Isn’t that the age you learn to mow? In fact, isn’t that LATE?! Weren’t all the other kids who were ten already mowing? When our sons came of mowing age a couple of years later, I about lost my mind. Are you freaking kidding me?!! A ten-year old boy isn’t old enough to take over the mowing responsibilities?!!!

My poor husband. Thankfully, he held his ground and protected our children from my ignorance about such things. Not that it’s inappropriate to begin to teach and bring your own children into the family process of working TOGETHER to take care of the lawn. Yes, of course that’s completely appropriate. But that’s not what was happening in my childhood home. So it took some reframing on my part since I thought it was very normal to be responsible for the lawn by the age of eight or nine.

Of course, I also thought it was normal to be responsible for the emotional stability of my family at the age of eight.

So there’s that.

My brother has been doing some writing of his own as of late (copycat) and recently sent me an essay reflecting on his experiences with dad and the lawn that really prompted all this musing on mowing. In fact, his writing threw me into a spiral of sorts because he has a way of writing that really places the reader in the moment with him – living it, if you will.

Or RE-living it if you’re me.

Not fun if you don’t care to relive those moments.

I do not.

My therapist, though, is quite pleased it’s happening, insisting it’s a necessary part of my healing journey.

Journey, shmerny.

Since reading that lawn mowing essay of his, though, I’ve been doing a helluva lot of lawn mowing. Not literally. In my dreams. While awake I close my eyes and see the rows of cut grass – but then there’s that one line I missed, and my stomach drops. Or while actually sleeping, I push the damn mower back and forth over and over across that giant lawn in the heat and humidity of summer in Tennessee. Or I finally finish and go inside the house so glad to be done and so ready to cool off, only to be ordered back outside by my father because I didn’t rake up all the grass and bag it.

And I’m tired. Like, deep in my bones tired. In the present, not in my dreams.

While reading my brother’s essay, I discovered that my mom was watching the mowing shit storm from inside the house, and I didn’t know. My baby brother wrote about his memory because even as a preschooler he was insightful enough to know something was wrong with what was happening, and the memory cemented itself in his brain… and then connected it to his own mowing woes with dad later on.

Yeah.

The revelation of her awareness has been a sucker punch to me. I know it must be obvious to most that of course she was aware of what was happening to us and should have done something to stop it. But it is a new way of thinking for me to see my mom in this light when I have always placed her as just another victim in our family, or even as someone I needed to look after.

But, no, mom was watching, mom was aware, mom was participating in the charade at the dinner table, and mom needed to step in and tell my father to get off his ass and mow his own damn lawn.