I realized that my mother was not the parent that I thought she was.
This is for everyone who suffered trauma from molestation and domestic violence as a child. As children, we have very little power to change the circumstances of our surroundings. Parents do not always realize how their poor choices can influence your sense of self-worth into adulthood.
As I reflected upon my defining moment, I realized that I had not one but two defining, intertwined moments in which my need to be resilient wended into my psyche and found its forever home.
At nine years old, I was molested by my stepfather. This was the first spark of my resilience. I knew he resented that he had to watch me while my mother was at work. To that end, he would often drag me with him to sit in the car in front of her place of work for hours to watch the foot traffic because he was sure she was cheating on him. When she came out after her shift ended, he would confront her with all types of accusations, and the fighting would begin.
He was an extremely jealous and violent man. This was only exacerbated by his penchant to drink a case of beer daily. On this particular summer day, my mother was at work, and I was alone in our apartment with him. After he molested me, he wanted me to hug him and told me not to tell my mother about it. I was scared to death. I did not realize the importance of what had happened, but I was sure that I had done something bad. As soon as I could, I ran into my bedroom and pushed the bureau in front of the door. In that particular apartment, my mother suffered a massive hematoma from being thrown into the footboard of the bed. She kept that until she was in her 60’s. A few broken ribs later, and it was off to a new house in the hood.
The sexual predator came out in my stepfather in a variety of ways. After moving into the new house, he tried different approaches. One was to crack my bedroom door open when I was getting dressed so he could watch me. Yep, the bureau came in handy as a doorstop again. He was also fond of busting through the locked bathroom door while I was taking a shower and ripping back the shower curtain so he could see me nude. He would turn off the water and scream that I was using too much water. That was his excuse for breaking the door in so he could see me nude with shampoo in my hair that I was not allowed to rinse out.
There were so many episodes of violence, me calling the police, her bailing him out, me having to defend her; my mantra was, “Normal people do not live like this.” I would rock back and forth on my bed, repeating it to myself. There was no one coming to save me from the situation, so my mantra helped me to live through the broken windows, the hog-tied and bleeding mother, the ripped out phone…
At 15 years old, I decided that I could not deal with the living conditions in the house nor hold on to the secret of the molestation anymore. My mother knew about the bathroom break-ins and all of the other things that were going on, but she never said anything about them. I sat her down on her bed when he was not home on a Saturday afternoon. I told her what had happened when I was nine. She looked me in the face and said, “So what?” That was the kindling my resilience spark needed to burst into flame. Something in me snapped that day. I realized that she did not care about me. My mother…the person who was supposed to keep me safe and secure. It was one of those moments with an epiphany, bugles and all. The clarity of that moment remains with me until now.
I had been ashamed of myself before I told her. I thought I had done something awful. I was ashamed of her and angry with her after I told her. But my resilience muscle had a firm footing and would only get stronger as time passed. I knew the only way out of the situation was to get an education, which I did. My mother was still throwing my education in my face years later when I obtained a Master’s Degree. She scoffed at me, saying I thought I was better than her. She said she did not believe I had earned my MA. I brought my diploma to show her because I felt I had to justify myself.
She had manipulated me my entire life. Despite that, I continued to have a relationship with her because it was the right thing to do (or so I thought). She even came to live with us for the last two years of her life after she fell and broke her femur. I knew having her in our home would be challenging, but I would do what I needed to do like I always did. A bit of backstory – when I was 22 and planning to go to Puerto Rico on vacation, she told me to get out of her apartment and not to come back because if I had the money to go on vacation, I had the money to leave her abode. In truly resilient fashion, I went on vacation AND moved out simultaneously. I vowed never to live with her again in her house. I never did, but I allowed her to live in ours until her death.
In spite of everything, I know she loved me to the extent she was capable of loving me.
Resilience is practiced. It is exercised. It is honed by circumstance. It becomes a strategy that protects you from the glaring realities of everyday life. It leans into you, making you find a way to survive the daily insults that your being endures. It paves the way for you to plan the life you want, not what is being foisted upon you. Most importantly, it gives you hope; hope is key to resilience because they cannot function without each other.
Allow yourself to grieve after a loss and then leverage that grief to your advantage. Grief can haunt you or make you stronger. Release the grief and allow that energy to become a positive force in your life.
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