(This is the first year I’ve participated in the “Girl In Effect’ Blogging Campaign; an online movement dedicated to raising public awareness about the challenges and achievements of girls living in the big-wide -world. I’ve decided to re-post a blog I wrote some time ago about being the daughter of a woman-not-well-loved-by-her-husband. Although a daughter’s umbilical chord is severed from her mother at birth, the ties that bind them together emotionally and spiritually are not so easily cut. If you’re a blogger you can join the campaign by going to the “Girl In Effect” website http://www.taramohr.com/joinus/. The official campaign blogging date is October 4th, 2011. )
July 17, 2006 – Monday
On being the daughter of a woman not well-loved by her husband
I’m the daughter of a woman not well loved by her husband. I grew up watching my mother turn herself inside out, dancing wildly along the razor’s edge, in a futile effort to please a man who openly demeaned and devalued her.
Although it would be easy to vilify my father, the truth is he’s not a bad man. His hardscrabble beginnings in the backwoods of east Texas taught him a thing or two about suffering and loss. It made him hard in ways I can’t understand not even now. No, my father’s not a bad man but he’s a seriously flawed one and that makes him human like the rest of us.
My father was a staunch disciplinarian. A man of few words who let his hands do the talking for him. He expressed love and devotion in the way he knew how–by working hard; very hard. He worked two jobs to support his family, standing on his feet for long hours. Sometimes when he came home, he’d sit in his La-Z-Boy recliner and moan in pain. All of us kids took turns massaging his swollen, aching legs. My father was no slouch but neither was he a knight in shining armor.
Whatever can be said about my father’s shabby behavior can also be said about my mother’s. Believe me, she wasn’t an innocent victim in their marriage. She’s an emotional ”co-dependent” who tolerated my father’s poor treatment for decades. Almost five decades to be exact. Her long-suffering finally came to an end when she divorced him seven years ago. She was 61 years old.
I think my father believed that because he “loved his kids” any acting out he did with my mother was a personal matter between the two of them. In his mind being a good father had nothing to do with being a good husband. According to his way of thinking, these two concepts were like apples and oranges.
What my father didn’t know, what my mother couldn’t see was my sense of worth as a woman was in large part derived from the value my father placed on her as his wife. In other words, the more devalued the mother is in a relationship/marriage, the greater the probability her daughter will internalize feelings of low self- esteem and/or worthlessness. Just ask me.
There is a popular song whose lyrics sometimes leave me teary-eyed. The song pleads with fathers to “be good to your daughters because daughters will love as you do.” I always think about my father whenever I hear this song and I say a prayer for hurting little girls everywhere.
