Backlash

It seems that any recovery journey takes several alternate routes. I bet backlash generates many such  routes, and a healing soul embodies a complex map of detours. But sometimes these roads less traveled nurture post-traumatic growth. My own impasses steered me toward new forms of resiliency, although I realized this only in retrospect.

Like many survivors, unmasking the abuse to my family of origin resulted in re-traumatization. The backlash was devastating and ongoing. My curated narrative about a perfect childhood crumbled, exacerbating the pain of the truth in fresh new incidents of rage aimed at me from angry family members. It seemed I was to blame for ruining everything, for everyone’s unhappiness.

Anything positive I recalled about my childhood now seemed incompatible with the emerging truth that my mother had molested me, repeatedly, over the course of several years. The persistent the lava flow of memories spilled into my consciousness, disrupting my sense of time, place, and self. Desperate to stem the tide of cognitive dissonance between denial and truth, I physically harmed myself and repeated the disparaging and dismissive self-talk I had perfected as a child.

Grief’s Dissonant Cadences

I felt desperate to find music that matched my soul’s need to grieve. The slow movements of Mahler symphonies offered such solace. I reached for my favorite recording of the Adagio from Symphony No. 6 to mirror my abject sense of loss. Excerpts of the horn parts to these symphonies appear on audition lists for their challenging melodies. It was time to find my horn and start playing again.

I began playing horn excerpts from Mahler and Shostakovich, despite having no auditions scheduled. I practiced instead the excerpts to absorb their essences of anguished feeling into my inner sonic world. I craved these sounds, and I smashed my lip from overplaying, not caring about the bruises inflicted upon my chops. Mahler’s slow movement Symphony No. 6 switched between major and minor modes, perfectly matching the ways I moved through loss without wishing to die any more.

Our return to Duluth brought an unexpected additional betrayal. Two, maybe three colleagues in the symphony didn’t want me back in the ensemble. Orchestras can cultivate toxic workplaces of clannish cliques, and I had rebuked someone who held a position of power over my re-hiring. Under the pretense of mass auditions behind an anonymity screen, I was denied my old job. Yet I clearly saw member of the orchestra hiding in the balcony looking over the screen; and the person I’d rebuked could easily discern my signature sound/style since we’d worked together for years.

The strength I had found to face the incest now fueled my rage in penning a scathing letter to those responsible for blocking me from returning to the orchestra. Dave, furious with the dishonesty of the audition committee, promptly quit the orchestra despite winning his audition to return as timpanist. “Who cares, they are nothing,” he said.

I knew my chops as a musician were far superior to those who had stabbed me in the back. Besides which, the sniveling cowards on the audition committee were small potatoes compared to what I was facing in my life’s healing journey. What did I care if I burned those bridges, I told myself. I didn’t want to work with people who lacked integrity.

I still had my jobs in the summer chamber orchestra and the early orchestra. Yet it still hurt deeply to my core to be rejected. Sustaining more waves of betrayal, and from musicians in whom I had placed my trust as chosen family, taught me a valuable lesson about putting too much stock into work relationships. I have never held a permanent position in a full orchestra since then.

Forever will I hold dear those musicians who stepped out of this orchestra’s dysfunctional clique to comfort me in my grief. Since then, I have encountered plenty others in the business – performance and academic – whose self-centered greed for attention, money, and control over others spills out in appallingly inappropriate behaviors. Just as my mother and sisters did, they gaslight and deflect and blame others for the harm. It all seems a very boring Theme and Variations.

Every so often, my mother reached out into the silence between us that she didn’t understand.  She left messages on the answering machine or sent me notes. Somehow, she learned of our return to Duluth after we finished our coursework in West Virginia.  She coaxed some unsuspecting high school chum for my phone number and left messages at Christmas or my birthday. These sent me into torrential backslides of emotion.

Her pleading messages finally wore down my resistance. I agreed to see her on the condition that she traveled to Duluth and met with me over the course of three sessions mediated by Cathy, my therapist. Dave and his family, perplexed at my break of silence with her, assured me that they’d back me if it would help me heal. Denise and Julie also expressed fear at this decision, afraid for my safety. But they remained supportive.

Dave was at work when my mother landed at the Duluth airport. So terrified was I of being alone with my mother, that my friend Jane accompanied me to the airport to meet her and bring her to her hotel. Although she claimed to have had no idea what was wrong with me, Mother had been sending me newspaper clippings about adult children blaming their mothers for their unhappiness.

I trusted Cathy’s expertise in setting up the sessions with me and Mother. Cathy  had guided many adult survivors through confrontations of their perpetrators. She helped me prepare notes for our first session, so that I could stick to them and not get distracted. Mother validated memories of two  family friends (men) who touched me inappropriately, disclosing that they had done so to her too. She felt terrible that her attempts to ward them off by letting them touch her had failed to protect me.

Genuinely apologizing for these incidents, Mother nevertheless also threw plenty of barbs. She reported various problems my sisters had noted about me. She brought up criticisms of past boyfriends. And of course, there was my drinking. Refusing to take the bait, I took deep breaths through the familiar ringing in my ears signaling danger. I dug my fingernails into my palms and focused on steady, full breaths.

Mother, Uncensored

At long last, I stated what I needed to tell her: “Mother, I remember you molesting me. Several times.”  Mother leaned forward and flatly said “no way” and then leaned back as she folded her arms. She had been waiting for this moment. Drawing a bead on me, she gathered her anger into a ball of fury. She launched into her familiar tirades of the difficulties raise four children without any guidance, without a mother.

I remained still, waiting for the face of my ranting mother from my childhood to appear. Inside, the sound of wailing fear overtook the ringing. My stillness slipped into paralysis, and I heard my breath grow shallow. Mother suddenly bellowed out shocking new information, her anger reaching its highest pitch:

“My father shot someone and went to prison for it! I didn’t have anyone to care for me!” And I was…”

Mother suddenly stopped mid-sentence. We looked at each other in surprised silence for a long moment. Then she sucked in a huge gulp of air and pushed her hands into her mouth. Clearly, she hadn’t meant to say this. Her widened eyes looked wild, darting about for a moment before she bent over and pulled her arms inward. I had no idea who this person was.

Cathy suddenly got very busy. For the remainder of that first session, she tended to my mother, speaking in measured affirmations to reassure her that no one was going to hurt her.  Mother, eyes fixed on my therapist, followed her every word as she coaxed her back to the present. Eventually, Cathy led her to the waiting room to meet Dave, motioning to me to stay seated.

As soon as the door closed, Cathy spun around and looked me squarely in the eyes:

“She did it, Sadie. All of it. I believed you before, and I can confirm it now”

“What? But we didn’t even…”

Cathy held up a hand to quiet me, and continued:

“Your mother is in acute psychological distress. Everything you remember is true. But she also immediately forgot or was completely unaware of it.”

“How do you know?  What’s wrong with her?”

“Sadie, as much as you were harmed, I am certain your mother went through far worse. We cannot go with our original plan for tomorrow to hold her accountable. It would be ethically wrong, as a medical professional, for me to force her to unpack what she has buried. We have to let your mother be.”

Cathy collected her thoughts, then promised to meet us the next day with a new plan. What we had witnessed, she explained to me long after Mother went home, was a “textbook case” of acute trauma transferred/deferred with amnesia. In confronting my mother with what she transferred onto me as child, we triggered a dangerous breach in her cognitive, emotional, neurological pattern to jettison her memories to another place. A place where she could leave them and forget them, buried forever.

The reality Mother had constructed over her own childhood traumas, covered a past so hideous that it required suppression through the creation of a different identity, a different narrative altogether. The extent of these traumas had, to Cathy, been presented not only in blurting out her father’s crime but especially in her dissociative mannerisms.

“Go and take your mother out for a nice supper. She is already pushing down what just happened, and you go along with it.”

“But what about tomorrow, when…”

“No, we are no longer pressing her on any memories, yours or hers. She molested you as re-enactments of ongoing traumas she had suffered as a child. She conditioned herself to forget, if not negate, the reality of a violent past by creating a series of screen memories to cover it all up. We are going to pivot tomorrow.”

“Pivot? How? To what?”

“Tonight you and Dave take her out to a nice dinner. Go along with her forgetting what just happened, and …

“Forget? She’s a mess! She’s not going to forget this!?

“Yes she is. Out in the lobby right now with Dave, she is already covering over it and by supper will have pushed it down enough to be just fine. Trust me, Sadie. To push her, so many years later, to reconstruct those incidents from her own childhood would be futile. We cannot warrant an excavation of all that she has repressed of her own victimization.”

And indeed, by suppertime the three of us had a nice dinner at a lovely restaurant. It was as though the confrontation had not happened. But memories of that afternoon would haunt my mother would the rest of her life. Not toward unearthing her own trauma, but of the trauma I had inflicted upon her by making up lies.

Throughout her life, my mother cleverly curated a set of anecdotes that rendered her constitutionally incapable of admitting anything violent she wished to forget. She didn’t want to remember, and there was no one to help her heal from her traumas or a lifetime of shoving them away. It was not possible for her to even consider the feasibility of my experiences being true. I would get neither an admission nor an apology that she had hurt me.

My therapist suspected that my mother’s grasp on reality was rather fragile. By contrast, she affirmed mine as quite strong, enough to bear the disappointment of having a broken and needy mother who would never provide the nurturing I needed. Who would neither be able to admit “I did all that” nor apologize.

Sounds of a Doomed Truce

Cathy’s assessment of my mother continued the next day as we convened in a session different than what I had planned. In this second session, Cathy led my mother and I through a dialogue toward centering a ceremonious pact to leave behind, in her office, all the ills we had aired. We resolved to abandon our animosity about past ugliness (leave the past in the past) and begin a new chapter in our relationship free of what had happened. We would not speak of “it” again.

This second session centered on building up my mother. Cathy guided me through speaking affirming words to Mother about all she had done for me that was well and good. Cathy’s rationale was medically based on the extent of the distress she’d observed in my mother’s psychogenic fugue state in the first session. For our third session, Cathy further changed plans. Instead of meeting in her office, she suggested I throw a party for my mother at my house and invite all my friends.

After years of tending to me in various crisis states, my friends were aghast at my invitation to come and celebrate the woman they had come to hate. Many times, after pulling me screaming out of closets or cleaning up my self-inflicted wounds, they raged that they wanted to throttle my mother for hurting me.

Julie was incredulous. “You want us to WHAT? Embrace this woman who ruined your life? How do you think we can all just act like nothing happened? I’m coming over right now.” Julie listened carefully as I recounted the situation, sighed as she put her arms around me. “For you, and only for you, I will do this because you see it as the path to your healing.”

Jane understood the situation from her personal perspective of survivorship also as an emerging mental health therapist. Equally skilled as I in stuffing feelings, she agreed that Cathy’s plan was feasible, logical. Denise, in a phone call, expressed cautious support, sharing some ideas to keep myself safe. “Make sure Dave never leaves your side!”

Dave loved me, my friends loved me, and they grasped the explanation for why we had to re-direct everything. For the sake of supporting my recovery and out of their deep love for me, my friends buttoned up their feelings and agreed to the party. Everyone I asked showed up. They hugged my mother, thanked her for coming to visit me, asked her to tell her stories.

The next day, I drove Mother to the airport for her flight back to Ohio. She seemed exhausted, shaken from all that had happened. But she also expressed optimism for building a new relationship. It’s what she wanted.

Before she got out of the car, I touched her arm. “Mother. Mom…wait. I have something I want you to hear. It’s a song from a Broadway play. I made you a tape of it to take with you, to listen on your own.”

James Lepine and Stephen Sondheim set fairy tales to their musical Into the Woods as an exploration of consequences from choices seeking a “happily ever after” life. So many phrases in the tune “No One is Alone” articulated what I wanted to share with Mother, to express my hope that we could be okay. People make mistakes/holding to their own/thinking they’re alone. Witches can be right/giants can be good/you decide what’s right/you decide what’s good. While you’re seeing your side/maybe you forgot/they are not alone

We sat in the car at the airport parking lot, listening to “No One is Alone.”  I told her the music was meant as a tribute to her bravery, not only for her own life but for braving this visit. She listened, I held her hand, and we cried.

Cathy later informed me that parents rarely show up to these kinds of meetings. What a loving thing my mother had done, even as she felt destroyed by it. It fit also her self-narrative of an unloved orphan whose only value lay in giving to others with all her heart but never receiving love in return.

I had stepped right into confirming her life’s story. Within a fortnight of her return home, my mother caved into her lifelong default mode of persecution. I suspect she rallied the support of her eldest daughter, who had long resented and threatened me for daring to speak my truth. With no one there to tend to her the way she needed, my mother spiraled back down into her distress and returned to her familiar narratives of the unloved, unappreciated mother.

Mother apparently forgot all that was positive about her visit. Her distress over her visit very real, she nevertheless used it to spin a dramatic tale of her victimization as she told Tressie and several of her closest friends that I had accused her of being a monstrous child molester. So much for our agreement to leave all of that behind in the therapist’s office.

Whereas I remained steadfast in my commitment to a new silence – to avoid discussing the past with anyone connected to it – my mother used her voice to talk about it to demonize me. She felt certain I had blabbed my secrets to the entire town of Marthasburg.  In truth, I told no one in my hometown. I had long ago imposed upon myself a code of silence, and I stuck to it now with even more fervor.

Conveniently omitted in my mother’s recounting of our therapy sessions were the revelations about her own childhood. She also told no one about our agreement to build a new relationship, nor did she tell anyone about the party celebrating her. I felt betrayed but also tempted to resume my former role as Mother’s confidante and emotional caretaker. Playing role had earned me rewards in childhood, even though taking care of her required great cost to myself.

As it would turn out, my mother was incapable of following through on our pact to move forward. Reneging on our agreement took years to unravel, and I suspect that my sisters aided its demise. I increasingly saw my sisters as as opportunists, conniving to exploit our mother’s crumbling mental state to their gain. Perhaps they were punishing me for refusing to serve as her emotional caretaker. When I abandoned that role, I sensed that they grew to hate me for it.

Long before my sisters rose up to claim our mother’s estate after her death, I penned this poem to describe the devastation of feeling repeatedly betrayed by them.

Don’t Give me that Sisterhood Crap

My sisters bonded early on by playing me for a little baby
upon whom they could practice a distinct brand of poor parenting.
As adults, my sisters
felt it their right (nay, duty!) to mete out punishment
for telling my truths (because of course I lied),
for defining myself (because doing so hurt Mother and burdened them)
for daring to challenge their rules of Sisterhood.

Underneath their self-righteous anger
their faces and voices betray their shame
of knowing and doing nothing.
I suppose I should feel sorry for my sisters.
Successful career women, looking fine in middle age,
they remained emotional hostages to our mother.
She has driven herself insane
and they feel bound to her.

I dare not show compassion toward them,
as they would twist it into an opportunity
to shove me into their baby sister place
as though it were a loving ritual of Sisterhood.

They have always hated me
(they’ll never admit this),
Now especially, but also Then.
I got the treats, the rewards, the kudos and affection
that they craved from her.
But they didn’t pay for these things in the ways that I had to.

I reject their pretense of regarding me
as though they are my wizened “elders”
since they have yet to admit the true nature of our childhood roles (and benefits they reap from continuing to play theirs).
I’m crazy, I’m lazy, I hate them, I won’t cooperate,
is their complaint.

They know better, they work hard, they love me, they tried
is their justification
for shutting down when they sensed Mother was harming me
for trying to shut me up when I purged out the Truth to save my own life
for shutting me out when Mother’s guilt erupted in a fury —
a vengeful retaliation that conveniently rewarded them with a huge inheritance that they no longer have to share with me.

Membership in this Sisterhood has no perks at all.

Growing up, and into early adulthood,
if my sisters ever deigned to include me in their gripes about Mother
I leapt into their cauldron of agitated conversation,
willing to withstand the scalding water
for a chance to belong
for a chance to be heard.

Hoping to be noticed, perchance rescued.
Hoping for anything, for God’s sake. I’ll trade you all my treats, my stuff, just help me PLEASE

And just at those moments, within the blink of an eye
they abandoned me again
to simmer
in their hateful brew of discarded rage toward her,
feeling cleansed of their burdens, free to carry on once more without me.

I wonder if the day will ever come
when they are so emotionally malnourished
when they feel so intensely their bondage
that they seek me out
to heal their crippled souls.

I wonder if they would be willing or able
to sit in the cauldron of their own making
and do what it takes to get truly clean.

Invitations of sisterly friendship have been frequent in my life.
Some I have accepted, but not many.

I’m like a wounded stray dog who sleeps lightly,
ever prepared for a sudden reprise of hurtful blows
even though the hearth now offers warmth, comfort, and bounty.
Most bonds of any sisterhood are too painful for me to bear
as a full-fledged member.

But if you would honor my need to sit near the door
and allow me breaths of the outside when the air inside gets close,
then I should be content to stay among my dear friends.

p.s. I’m through with cauldrons.