The Big Bad Wolf

I've never really been shy about my upbringing or the trauma I was exposed to.

I've always talked to my kids about it because I needed them to understand that sometimes the way I reacted to things had nothing to do with them. Sometimes it was a trauma response. Sometimes I was still trying to understand myself.

I wanted them to know that if I pulled away, if I struggled, if I reacted in ways they didn't understand, it wasn't because they had done something wrong.

I've always wanted them to understand me without making them responsible for me.

Recently, I was sharing some of my memoir posts with my daughter when she looked at me and said, “That's horrible, Mom. I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that.”

Then she said she wanted to talk to my mother.

She wanted to tell her that what she did was wrong.

She asked me if she could message her.

I told her, “You can do whatever you want. You're an adult. I can't stop you.”

But I also told her that if I were her, I wouldn't bother.

Because I already knew how it would go.

It wouldn't stay about what happened to me.

It would get flipped around.

Suddenly, I'd be accused of talking shit about my mother to my children. Suddenly, my children would be portrayed as hating her because of me. Suddenly, somehow, again, I'd become the problem.

I've seen that pattern before.

It's not just my mother. I've experienced it with my sisters too. There has always been this need to project a certain version of me, a version they don't know, one that doesn't match the person I actually am.

They still see that young teen who reached her breaking point and started to fight back.

And when I say I fought back, I mean I stood my ground. I stuck up for myself. I started creating boundaries they didn't like because I stopped submitting to the version of me they expected me to be.

And that's the part of me that's tired.

I stepped away for a moment, and when I came back, my daughter told me she had already messaged my mother.

My first reaction was, “No. Please! Delete it.”

Not because I didn't want my daughter to defend me.

I didn't want to deal with what would come afterward.

I told her, “Maybe one day you can. But I don't want to know about it.”

Because if I don't know about it, I don't have to hear the backlash or the blame, or have it somehow made to seem like I orchestrated it.

And that's when I realized.

My children want to stick up for me, their mother, and I stop them because some part of me is still programmed to brace for what comes next.

What will they say?

What will they come back with?

How will they twist this and put it back on me?

I'm tired of being portrayed as the big bad wolf.

Like, little piggies, I ain't coming to blow nobody's house down.

The funny thing is, they seem to think I spend my life gossiping about them, when they have been the ones spending their lives gossiping about me.

For the longest time, I didn't understand why they kept projecting that onto me.

That's why I've spent so much time telling myself:

Don't say anything.
Don't make it worse.
Don't engage.
Don't give them another reason to turn it around.

I've spent so much of my life trying to avoid the consequences of other people's reactions that sometimes I don't even realize I'm still doing it.

But my children know who I am.

They've had front-row seats.

They've seen me cry.

They've seen me isolate.

They've seen me break down.

They've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

They've seen me struggle, and they've also seen me keep trying.

They've watched me push forward, try to do better, try to be better, and take accountability for my own behavior and my own choices.

They know me.

They don't need someone else's version of me explained to them.

And maybe that's what makes this different now.

I spent so much of my life wanting my mother to see me, accept me.

To see the little girl.

To see what I had survived.

To see the strength and perseverance it took to survive.

To see that I wasn't the person she made me out to be.

But my children have seen me.

They've seen me for who I am.

I can't control what anyone else chooses to believe about me.

I can't control the stories people tell.

I can't go back and rewrite the version of me that other people decided to create.

What I can do is keep showing my children that life can throw things at you that you never asked for.

You can be hurt.

You can break.

You can lose yourself.

But you can still choose to get back up.

You can take responsibility for your own life.

You can keep pushing forward.

And you can become something different from what happened to you.

My children know who I am.

And honestly, that's all I need.