Ode to My Sisters

Ode to my sisters

I’m so sorry for any words that may have hurt you unnecessarily or unfairly. But this is not just an apology.
This letter is a reckoning.  This is not a letter of blame. Blame does nothing but foster resentment and allow wounds to fester forever.

I think a complete reckoning includes thorough discussion of circumstances, apologies, gratitudes, and intentions and commitments for the future.

Given that there are decades of Past and contentions over what is acceptable words & behavior, I want to speak my gratitude and acknowledge my responsibility first.

I own my imperfections of memory, lack of timeliness, at times being sanctimonious about my intelligence, politics. I acknowledge that I broke with tradition by resisting and often challenging Mom’s authority while expecting her financial support.  Although I’ve received much less financial support than many others in our extended family, some of whom you befriend and value.
I acknowledge that instead of just working my ass off and suppressing or transferring the shame that I was taught, I chose to wrestle myself away from patterns of abuse toward acceptance and healthiness, even if it meant living inside my resentment for too long, hesitating at job and academic opportunities, and working on healing myself and my confidence instead of just powering through life by sheer force of will and emotional denial.

I also own that until 20019 I held out hope that I could play and win at the game of being a successful and valued child and sibling.  I didn’t think I was still playing that game, but it’s so firmly programmed and lurks in undiscovered corners of our minds.  If I had realized years ago that I still held a secret hope of our family being supportive and loving in a healthy way, and that this was a remnant of my learned codependence, I would not be in my current state of wavering dependent self esteem.  It’s crazy to me that I’m just now getting the opportunity to learn that a healthy person knows and feels that they are the source of their own goodness.

sidenote on healing from shame:  [I see Coaching as social re-learning, receiving the permission to locate my value solely within myself instead of giving that power to others.  As well as reinforcing daily practice of healthy and nurturing habits.

You guys had to go through so much crap and struggle that I did not.  from all the stories from everyone it sounds like there was a lot of survival/existential struggle, & emotionally abusive fighting.
I admire your career tenacity, and determination and even being excellent mothers.
For all that I admire about you, is one issue I wonder if you've ever considered, because I don't recall you ever saying or behaving in a way that would suggest you get it. Despite all the disadvantages, (body) shaming, shit you had to endure, you had one huge developmental &; emotional windfall that outranks any material advantage I may have had: YOU HAD EACH OTHER .  Do you know if there are studies that confirm how emotionally beneficial having siblings you're close to , even if you don't always get along?

It would make a difference if I could hear you acknowledge your blessing, & you're still close to this day. Who do I have?  Did I ever have anyone to assuage my loneliness or feeling that I had no one on my side? That no one understood me, to at least verbally talk through the abuse I went through or the constant bullying I received at school?

For a brief moments Mom was on my side, Mar was often emotionally supportive, Dad was always supportive.  But the relationship of having someone in your peer/age group involves a level of understanding that you can't get anywhere else in the world, except maybe in a rare friendship.    I hope you're grateful for that exceptional advantage you had. Gratitude is paramount in healing and happiness.  

I AM GRATEFUL that I was spared all those emotionally abusive parental arguments and the torturous divorce that our parents went through.  Although mom and dad liked to retell some of those stories, and the highlights are still seared in my memory.

And while it would be nice for you to speak for yourselves on this matter, you usually don't. You usually speak the automatic knee-jerk Pain Body talk that comes from the seat of fight-flight-freeze response (known as the cerebellum & brainstem).
Everyone in our family has been hearing that repetitious song for decades [generations] especially on the Fulnecky side of the family.

A reckoning should mention these circumstantial evidences, but not give them the same spotlight as we should/would give a unique or fully empowered or fully self expressed free-willed testimony.  Because those are complaints and ideas that belong to most if not all humans.  Those are verbalized expressions of the older, instinctual parts of our brain: the parts that we share with lobsters (Dominance and hierarchy).

The thing that I think impedes us most from being a healthy family (that shares joy & support vs attacks) is how we talk to each other.

All five of us still attack ourselves as well as each other. Brain scientists, developmental & therapeutic psychologists, coaches, science-based teachers, Journalists, lawyers, politicians base their careers on the FORMATIVE POWER OF WORDS. And they have demonstrated in study after study  that WORDS MATTER.

Words are critical to relationships, to the formation of healthy brains, self esteem, and frankly it's embarrassing how much we use words to harm in our family.

And there appears to be a randomly enforced prohibition on using positive encouraging words, which is scientifically and psychologically reprehensible.

If I could help free you from the self hate that you were taught, if I could encourage or teach you to silence your voices of criticism, and to love your body, I would.
Hell, I'm still on the journey, like you.
It would just be nice if we could support each other on that path.

But I've had to release the notion that one day you might come to embrace me as a full member of this family. 

Michelle and Jennifer have told me in so many ways that they don't feel so much like I'm their brother but more like a distant cousin, because I was born under different circumstances, I didn't see or experience the same exact trauma; although I experienced plenty of it In different ways. Have you ever tried do you understand that you don't have the unique privilege of being the eternal winners of victimhood or that you live your life better than I live mine?

I'm guessing you think I had it much easier, but if your powers of compassionate sight were clear you could see how probably I was not made to suffer much less than you if any less, my sufferings were just different. 
I belong to a different generation, a different mindset, my brain as a man is also biochemically different than yours.

But it seems that we sibs keep returning, some of us more than others, to a world of comparison, another feature of a destructive way of being. 

I'm ready to put that behind me and so I have to communicate this regardless of whether you agree with it, regardless whether you even read it.

It's the stuff I'm past ready to confront, forgive, heal, & And reclaim the energy that has been wrapped up in pain & blame.



Blackbird singing in the dead of night just take these sunken eyes and learn to see/All your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free
blackbird singing in the dead of night take these broken wings and learn to fly/all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive

I also apologize for sounding sanctimonious. Sometimes heartfelt sincerity comes off that way especially when you want things to be better.


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