Skip to main content

There Are Things...

 


There are things in life you truly never want to have to tell your children, but must.  And there things in life most will NOT ever have to explain to their children. In turn, many will NOT be compelled to discuss nor bring up certain traumatic events/subjects with any real depth or knowledge to another human being. 


Years ago my worry was, 'How do I explain certain things in my family's past that are tragic, without traumatizing my children?' Its a great question.

There is a time and a place for everything.  You just have to wait for it, and bank on your soulful intuition.

Today, realizing my one daughter is now eighteen. I arrived at a sobering thought. A reminder of sorts. Something I knew about way before I was age eleven. Yet, as I explained it, I told her I was blessed. That was my explanation of how I avoided a tragedy, that many other children in the past in my family were unable to avoid. 

As well, intuitively I was a protector of sorts. As busy as I've always been,  I've made it a point to remain a protector of sorts. I laid the ground work with my now deceased husband for our daughters to know what NOT to accept as normal.  We explained what abuse was, early on. We made certain others did too, while we watched our daughters in their martial art classes for over a decade.

So, after a quiet New Year's Eve last night, before she headed to work, I made her a cup of coffee. I began to tell her what cruelty was. However,  just before that I said, "You did the right thing last night. This is serious business." She seemed disappointed, yet nodded. She understood.

I explained to her why certain people in my family were out of control when I was a kid,  and the ones who were innocent were punished by it. As well, as how it effected generations on one side of my family. My mother tried to break the cycle. However, I was the one who did.

There was more than one cycle among girls and women in my family that needed to be broken. One my sister and I did.  And one I was the beginning of Breaking through, and was successful at. Yes, there are always more cycles to be broken. However, those two were the most oppressive and damning. And now I've uncloaked the skeleton in the closet to our oldest daughter. I did that today.

It took a few minutes to explain a chunk of it. Yet, on some level without my saying so, she knows that today because of her overall actions of responsibility that she HAS demonstrated,  I knew she was ready for some damning traumatic information.  And so, it was delivered. The raw, straightforward, disdainful and painful information that will protect her as it has, as well protect others in the future. ----Jody-Lynn Reicher

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow
2 comments
Read more

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to
Post a Comment
Read more

It's About the Soul And...

  ...perhaps the soles of our shoes. My father-in-law used to say the feet are what soldiers depend on, as we do food. He said that to me in 1985 as I stood in his home office.  My husband, Norman was a shoe guy. And it was all about the soles on the shoes.  For me, the way I have stayed on my feet was soul deep. Sometimes praying every step of the way, to not fall over out of exhaustion. The approximately 170,000 miles of running, many of which Norman had witnessed or known of. He wondered how I stayed standing working on my feet all day. Only to come home, and go for a second run at midnight at times.  Often Norman would give me a lecture on good shoe care. It was about the soles of the shoes. He'd point out stitching on a shoe that was done wrong. Therefore commenting, "...giving a shoe less time of wear on this earth."  He'd remark quite often. "You have to buy good quality shoes." I have to say, there was absolutely something comedic about his shoe obse
Post a Comment
Read more