there is only love

originally written jan 21, 2019

Let me make myself clear as the clearest crystal, beaming with energy of Truth and Love.
The anger I am finally allowing myself to feel over being duped into giving my two beloved children up for adoption, is healthy anger. It is a beautiful and productive anger and it does not aim at the children’s father.

From my experience with his family, they turned us against each other back then. Dangling benefits of support and care in front of his face if he would just get rid of me by any means possible.

I strongly do not believe my partner at the time, my first love and father of our two beautiful children was evil or out to get me. I do think he was weak back then. Easily influenced by his ultra conservative parents and religious family, pressuring on all sides to toss me away as my background of Mixed Blood Indigenous, poverty, violence and addiction brought shame onto their family. Or so they told themselves.

His father was an agent of Indian Affairs and made it ultra clear that he despised me. “You can’t change a sow’s ear into a silk purse.” He told Kelly one day as he lectured his son about dating me. That was common. Those sorts of comments. Demeaning and humiliating. Kelly used to stand up to him at first. Stand up for me. But they got to him. They wore him down.

No one saw me the way they did. No one saw me the way they persuaded me to be. A wreck of a human being trying to raise a family on welfare with no outside help from even my own family. I fought every day to be the best mother I knew how because I knew the way my mother did it was absolutely wrong in every sense of the word, Mother. My own mother will argue about this too. She’ll say I was the bad one. I was the trouble maker. But she was a liar too.

I was fourteen years old when I left home. To fall into a limbo I didn’t find my way out of until I was forty years old. A limbo I got myself through.

I had dreams and aspirations, like any other kid. I wanted to do and be something. My family didn’t guide me. I went to therapy on my own volition. No one forced me or told me to go get help. I had to figure out how to do that all on my own. I started therapy in 1989, when my son was just barely a year old. Because I knew I needed to get educated on how to be a mother and good human being. I started to stand up for myself after I realized the way people talked to me was not ok.

When I got pregnant and started to act like the adult and mother I was about to become, lots of people talked and they talked bad about me. About how I was crazy and psychopathic. But they never bothered to check out the side of the stories of the ones telling the tales. What was their contribution? Gaslighting, emotional manipulation, neglect, negligence, withdrawal of affection and protection, isolation… I could go on. 

I was fourteen when I left home. The day I left, the police broke into our house because the neighbours called them. My mother was beating the living daylights out of me and the people on the other half of the duplex could hear it as she threw me against the kitchen counter and punched me in the face. Her hands were wrapped around my throat, strangling me just as the police barged into the kitchen of her house. Instead of her being taken away, I was. Then I was tossed around from family member to family member.

“A lost cause.”

So, no one put any real effort into helping me find my way. I made mistakes like every other teenaged kid on the planet from a broken home. But nothing worth letting me flail on my own for. My childhood was lost forever. My mom will likely tell you that it was all my fault. But here’s the thing, I was the kid, not her. She was my mother and supposed to take care of me and my three siblings. Does she ever mention how I raised my siblings until I was violently ripped from our household because she was beating me up? Does she ever tell you how she frequently and brutally beat me physically to the point that I was terrified of ever doing anything wrong to upset her? Which could have been anything and your guess is as good as mine. Did she tell you I also used my babysitting money to buy food because there was none in the house. Or how she had a gambling addiction that she would also borrow my babysitting money, to go gamble instead of feed her kids? Probably not.

Do not forget: I WAS A CHILD. It was her responsibility to raise me and if I was such the problem that she claims, then why didn’t she get help? Why didn’t she help me? She chose to beat me into a pulp instead. She beat my siblings too but not to the extent I got whooped. But that’s my fault too, right?

The last time my mother verbally and emotionally attacked me was when I was 42 years old. It was that day that I walked out of her life possibly forever. I told her then and still feel the same today that I will not have a relationship with her until she goes to therapy. And as much grief as I have for not having a mother, I felt relieved that day to finally be able to protect myself from her and say ENOUGH and walk away, without fear of her chasing me down the hall to tackle me to the floor with her 300 pounds of weight and pummel me.

I look back a lot, as I move forward and find myself in a beautiful, awe inspiring life. I am grateful and proud and astounded at what I have been through and continue to get through. And today, as the anniversary of my father’s suicide approaches, I have Kelly on my mind and heart. Because he was ripped off too.

And he apologized to me randomly one night when I was living in Regina. He apologized for nothing specific but I knew. He did’t mean to let the things get out of hand the way they did. I’d like to believe he is sorry for not leaving me and my children so that we could thrive without him, because he so desperately needed help and support too. I told him then and I still say it loudly today, that it was the adults in our lives who failed us back then. His family and my family and everyone in between, failed us.

I want to make it crystal clear that I do not hate or have any harsh feelings toward the father of my children. I love him deeply and always will. He was my best friend for a short and pivotal time in my life and he is the father of my children and I love him for that.

Make no mistake there is no hatred toward him and there never will be. Even after all the stupid and horrible shit he did to our children and me, because I can see it for what it really is. It is not that I do not hold him accountable, because I do. He was weak. He was an abusive partner that drove me to abusive behaviours too. The only difference was that I was the one who stepped up and said we need to stop. But when I did that, I ended up having my children and Motherhood stolen from me. When I was the one who was being accountable.

I hope he is getting better every day because god dammit he was an awesome human when I knew him way back then. I always wanted him to shine bright. I still want that. Make no mistake about it.

Do you hear that my children? I have not ever hated nor will I ever hate your father. If anyone tries to fill your head with any such nonsense, they are lying.

I am no longer afraid to say this out loud.

I want to say I forgive, but there is nothing to forgive.
There is Only Love.

Thank you for listening.