Heather, I so relate to what you wrote here and I'm 70 with some big dreams. I was raised on criticism and comparison to others. My mother was a narccisist who saw me as an extension of herself. I was so confused and didn't know who I was. I still at times feel angry when remembering certain events and have learned to let the anger be there, to acknowledge it and sometimes wash it with tears. I feel I have spent most of my adult life undoing the programming and actual lies that were told to me about myself from my parent's misguided perceptions. I have also learned that unworthiness and arrogance are two sides of the same coin. Something I've danced with. It does get better - our journey into self awareness is a worthy endeavor, that has nothing to do with career choices or other people's opinions. When I was your age I was just beginning to learn who I am and to be supportive of myself and to realize my boundaries. We tend to internalize our parents voices until we repeat them to ourselves, not even knowing that those voices are not ours. I hope you unravel what is truly yours from what isn't and you are on your way to doing that - the proof is that you wrote this letter. You are already aware of your true self. Keep exploring and know you are not alone.
It sounds like you've come a long way in understanding and healing from a difficult upbringing. It's so true that our parents' voices can become our own, and recognizing this is a crucial step in reclaiming our true selves. Your insight about unworthiness and arrogance being two sides of the same coin is profound.
I also find the path to self-awareness and self-support is indeed a worthy endeavor.
Your encouragement to keep exploring and acknowledging our true selves is inspiring. Just curious, how do you continue to nurture your true self and set boundaries today?
LR, I’m older than you and Polly, and even with over a decade of good therapy, my dad is still able to get the knife in deep with just an offhand comment. The people who know us best, know where the chinks in our armor are. Sometimes they put them there. If you can get distance from your father, it helps. Establishing and maintaining boundaries is easier if you’ve got physical distance from them. And you are allowed to have boundaries. It can feel weird at first, I didn’t know they were a thing growing up either, but they’re fucking awesome. And ironically, having boundaries will allow you to let people in more, to be vulnerable, because you won’t have to keep yourself shut off to prevent others trampling over your soft feelings like your parents are prone to doing. Boundaries will also give you emotional distance from your father, even if you can’t move away. He will fight you on them, but you have a right to be the one who decides how people can treat you. One thing that’s helped me is treating myself like I would a friend going through the same thing. Would you tell a friend the things you’re saying to yourself? No, because you’re a kind person who knows how much such words hurt. So try to stop hurting yourself with them. And therapy is great, there are affordable options, it really helps to have an hour with someone who doesn’t mind how messy you can be and will never judge you for it. It’s a fucking revelation really. Hugs, bunny. You can be happy, you can find your people.
Heather, everything you said I wish I had heard years ago. At 71 I’m finally beginning to understand why those negative feelings have cost me. I was the funny one to break the unbearable tension, childhood, marriages, friends that left when I tried to exert a small boundary. Someone important in my life said “ You sound very angry. I think I liked you better depressed.” Isolation is my go to. I’ve resigned my count jester role. So, my little tidbit, is don’t wait until your 71.
And Björk in particular! I’ve wanted to be a lot of different famous artists, but she’s the most magical. If you haven’t even it, I recommend watching the video of her explaining the interior of a television in the early-mid nineties. Gawd I love her so much. But she also had a mother and grandmother who supported her self-expression. Sometimes it’s easier for people to be magical right off the bat! Others have to wade through family disapproval first, and keep navigating it over their lives.
I was 2/3 the way through your letter when I thought... I could have written this.
And going by all the responses so far, it seems we can all relate.
Interesting for me, and perhaps for you too, is, my father couldn't care less about my grades...we never had 1, one, conversation about my future...college, work, nothing. There was no pressure, because their was no expectation. And yet, you sound very much like me.
Polly is right to say "you'll end up feeling sorry for him".
I just want to end by saying... in my opinion... 21 years older than you... there's no such thing as Life. There are over 8 billion lives... every one of them uniquely different. You are having a human experience just like all of us xxxx
Lola, thank you. I also had no expectations from my dad. I'm British, 62 now & I've learned enough about what was going on in my family to realise he was probably PTSD from Korean war & maybe WW2 also. My mum seemed permanently furious, or on the verge of it. Understandably, because she'd been left with a hell of a lot to deal with - a younger, orphaned brother, 4 kids, and a guy who didn't seem to care much one way or another that he had kids at all. He wasn't horrible, and he provided materially, just emotionally absent. She had a long affair, and that guy (selfish but present) partly brought me up. And it was the 60s & 70s and kids' needs were way down the list below the grownups'. Hell, kids didn't HAVE needs until about 1985.
So for us, it's not so much about replacing a parent's criticism as putting some sort of self-esteem, some mojo in the empty space, maybe. Tough, right? I absolutely swing between mainly over-selfcritical and occasional fear that my hard-won, self-awarded self comes across as unpleasant superiority. Don't think I'll ever stop needing the affirmation of others; don't even think that's a bad thing any more. Stiff upper lip? You can stick it. No man is an island.
Sounds like a similar history... English father, furious mother with 4 kids and an emotionally disabled husband. The result in our upbringing was 3 daughters, unmarried and no children, unmarried alcoholic son. It seems like kids today are no better off as they are constantly affirmed that their needs in terms of feelings are everything. We all just stumble along. 😊
Yeah I feel my generation have raised our children to have the 'emotional antennae' we lacked. As a kid, if I said something horrible or hit another kid, my mum would yell at me, give me a whack. There was no justice, no opportunity to say what happened, what the other kid said or did to me, any attempt to justify myself was met with fury. My generation is more likely to sit our kids down, listen, and say things like, "How d'you think that other kid feels? Put yourself in his shoes for a minute." And, y'know, I still feel that's got to be the better way. But - and it's such a big but - I know that it was exactly the lack of antennae, my insensitivity to a lot of what was happening on the emotional plane, that got me through adolescence and most of my 20s kind of unscathed. Anxiety? The only thing I was ever anxious about was my mum shouting. Once I left home, that went away. I was serene, pacific - a 'nice guy' - but emotionally illiterate. Steep learning curve when I met my wife, who couldn't believe how dumb I was, how little I picked up.
My kids, like many of their peers, are plagued by anxiety, especially social anxiety. It's not social media; they despise & avoid it. They have the antennae I didn't have, they think about other people all the time, too much. They overthink others' imagined reactions to what they do and say, and it can cripple them. They're slowly learning to toughen up; they have friends but no girlfriends or boyfriends ever, they've preferred the security of bedroom & videogame.
That's so interesting. I have a very close friend who's kids I'm very close to aswell. She instills Kindness above all else.
I have pondered this, as, I'm afraid they'll get trampled by the world.
My adult friends are in agreeance that it's much much harder for kids these days, and probably parents too. It sounds to me, having that insight, you're doing pretty well yourself.
I genuinely don't know; the kindness/emotionally-aware track is a double-edged sword, isn't everything?! I like 'trampled by the world', it's a good phrase; it captures how life is unkind sometimes & just knocks you down randomly; no one person is responsible (though there are always some of those too), it's just 'the system', 'the way things are' - and those are the hardest things to explain to kids - at least, I think they are. Parents the world over respond to "It's not fair!" with "Life's not fair;" it's such a cliché but it's true. How to deal with bad stuff that just happens; how to deal with unfairness that's baked into society and which you have no way of changing: these things are tough.
But, as Polly says, 'If you didn’t have conflicted feelings about the world — and celebrate those conflicted feelings without shame ... If you never doubted yourself or felt angry or sad, you’d never bother to write a book or a song or a poem or design a dress or build anything at all. You wouldn’t bother to say words out loud or make friends, because you’d be perfectly serene without other humans around most of the time.'
I WAS serene, I had no doubts but, unknown to me, I wasn't equipped to have a proper relationship because I couldn't really feel other people's feelings. My kids and many of their generation are the opposite, they feel too much - but, as Polly suggests, if you react by going numb you risk being immobilised by shame at feeling inadequate, at your numbness preventing you from achieving 'perfection'. I'm way better than I was but that's still a place I visit frequently.
It seems English fathers are quite good at being emotionally unavailable, and inducing fury in their wives - and numbness in their children. I was on that track. I couldn't even see that my dad was missing any genuine ability to express love, I just thought that was normal for dads. I really hope you've found, or generated, enough mojo to make up for what your dad couldn't give.
What you say about your kids and their friends, that they feel too much, has never occurred to me. I feel too much. But is it really too much? Maybe. I'm not sure. It's a journey, and you adapt.
Luckily, as a child I was very aware that being kind wasn't enough. That you had to be kind plus...something. I resolved to be honest with myself and truthful to others. The 'being honest with yourself' has been like a sort of suit of armour for me, I have grown into quite a resilient person. That's why I say Luckily.
During this time of the call to Be Kind, as if challenging anyone else's opinion, no matter how outrageous, is somehow un-kind, I have been pushed to knowing for myself that when it comes to the crunch Truth trumps Kind.
If you don't know what your truth is, how can you speak it? And knowledge really is power, even when it's inner knowledge, or even, especially when it's inner knowledge.
They're just my thoughts. Being on Substack has taught me loads, but I have also seen how freaking bright some people are, and conversely how little I know. But I hope I have replied to your thoughtful comment in kind 😊
i love this very much: "That’s why the primary advice I have for you is this: You must replace your father’s insults with your own acceptance, love, and celebration of how tenaciously you’ve refused to become what he wants. "
Here I was sitting on my sofa after bottoming out, leaving my job, and feeling utterly useless as I searched for work to fill the gaps and I stumbled across your post this morning. HOLY WOW, did you punch me right in the gut. It’s exactly what I needed to read to rekindle my fire and drive. Thank you thank you thank you. I needed this more than you could know. This was the pep talk I needed. 💛
LW, thank you for your letter and Heather, thank you for such a grounded and honest reply. DAY OF BIG DOUBTS is going on a notecard that I can put on my fridge when I'm feeling stupid and pointless generally. Also, LW, I've noticed that ADHD is really something to be reckoned with in one's mid-to-late thirties. The gap between the intelligence, creativity and drive that you earnestly know you possess, and what you've been able to manifest in your life can sometimes seem so wide/unexpected/disheartening. At least I know that's when I started to hear the fire alarm. May I recommend the book *A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD: Embrace Neurodiversity, Live Boldly, and Break Through Barriers*? Drilling down on how the ADHD mind works was a big step for me in accepting who I am and swimming with the current of my strengths rather than against them. Ditto for meditation and a dopamine boost. We have pretty magical brains it turns out. Good luck on your journey. <3
Heather, I so relate to what you wrote here and I'm 70 with some big dreams. I was raised on criticism and comparison to others. My mother was a narccisist who saw me as an extension of herself. I was so confused and didn't know who I was. I still at times feel angry when remembering certain events and have learned to let the anger be there, to acknowledge it and sometimes wash it with tears. I feel I have spent most of my adult life undoing the programming and actual lies that were told to me about myself from my parent's misguided perceptions. I have also learned that unworthiness and arrogance are two sides of the same coin. Something I've danced with. It does get better - our journey into self awareness is a worthy endeavor, that has nothing to do with career choices or other people's opinions. When I was your age I was just beginning to learn who I am and to be supportive of myself and to realize my boundaries. We tend to internalize our parents voices until we repeat them to ourselves, not even knowing that those voices are not ours. I hope you unravel what is truly yours from what isn't and you are on your way to doing that - the proof is that you wrote this letter. You are already aware of your true self. Keep exploring and know you are not alone.
Leilah, thank you for sharing your journey.
It sounds like you've come a long way in understanding and healing from a difficult upbringing. It's so true that our parents' voices can become our own, and recognizing this is a crucial step in reclaiming our true selves. Your insight about unworthiness and arrogance being two sides of the same coin is profound.
I also find the path to self-awareness and self-support is indeed a worthy endeavor.
Your encouragement to keep exploring and acknowledging our true selves is inspiring. Just curious, how do you continue to nurture your true self and set boundaries today?
LR, I’m older than you and Polly, and even with over a decade of good therapy, my dad is still able to get the knife in deep with just an offhand comment. The people who know us best, know where the chinks in our armor are. Sometimes they put them there. If you can get distance from your father, it helps. Establishing and maintaining boundaries is easier if you’ve got physical distance from them. And you are allowed to have boundaries. It can feel weird at first, I didn’t know they were a thing growing up either, but they’re fucking awesome. And ironically, having boundaries will allow you to let people in more, to be vulnerable, because you won’t have to keep yourself shut off to prevent others trampling over your soft feelings like your parents are prone to doing. Boundaries will also give you emotional distance from your father, even if you can’t move away. He will fight you on them, but you have a right to be the one who decides how people can treat you. One thing that’s helped me is treating myself like I would a friend going through the same thing. Would you tell a friend the things you’re saying to yourself? No, because you’re a kind person who knows how much such words hurt. So try to stop hurting yourself with them. And therapy is great, there are affordable options, it really helps to have an hour with someone who doesn’t mind how messy you can be and will never judge you for it. It’s a fucking revelation really. Hugs, bunny. You can be happy, you can find your people.
Heather, everything you said I wish I had heard years ago. At 71 I’m finally beginning to understand why those negative feelings have cost me. I was the funny one to break the unbearable tension, childhood, marriages, friends that left when I tried to exert a small boundary. Someone important in my life said “ You sound very angry. I think I liked you better depressed.” Isolation is my go to. I’ve resigned my count jester role. So, my little tidbit, is don’t wait until your 71.
As an eldest immigrant daughter, I felt this in my bones. Thank you for your words. 🌻
I didn't know other people woke up lamenting that they weren't a famous artist like I do :|
Haha I feel seen <3
And Björk in particular! I’ve wanted to be a lot of different famous artists, but she’s the most magical. If you haven’t even it, I recommend watching the video of her explaining the interior of a television in the early-mid nineties. Gawd I love her so much. But she also had a mother and grandmother who supported her self-expression. Sometimes it’s easier for people to be magical right off the bat! Others have to wade through family disapproval first, and keep navigating it over their lives.
Yes hahahaah
Omg same!!!
Hey Heather 👋
I was 2/3 the way through your letter when I thought... I could have written this.
And going by all the responses so far, it seems we can all relate.
Interesting for me, and perhaps for you too, is, my father couldn't care less about my grades...we never had 1, one, conversation about my future...college, work, nothing. There was no pressure, because their was no expectation. And yet, you sound very much like me.
Polly is right to say "you'll end up feeling sorry for him".
I just want to end by saying... in my opinion... 21 years older than you... there's no such thing as Life. There are over 8 billion lives... every one of them uniquely different. You are having a human experience just like all of us xxxx
Lola, thank you. I also had no expectations from my dad. I'm British, 62 now & I've learned enough about what was going on in my family to realise he was probably PTSD from Korean war & maybe WW2 also. My mum seemed permanently furious, or on the verge of it. Understandably, because she'd been left with a hell of a lot to deal with - a younger, orphaned brother, 4 kids, and a guy who didn't seem to care much one way or another that he had kids at all. He wasn't horrible, and he provided materially, just emotionally absent. She had a long affair, and that guy (selfish but present) partly brought me up. And it was the 60s & 70s and kids' needs were way down the list below the grownups'. Hell, kids didn't HAVE needs until about 1985.
So for us, it's not so much about replacing a parent's criticism as putting some sort of self-esteem, some mojo in the empty space, maybe. Tough, right? I absolutely swing between mainly over-selfcritical and occasional fear that my hard-won, self-awarded self comes across as unpleasant superiority. Don't think I'll ever stop needing the affirmation of others; don't even think that's a bad thing any more. Stiff upper lip? You can stick it. No man is an island.
Sounds like a similar history... English father, furious mother with 4 kids and an emotionally disabled husband. The result in our upbringing was 3 daughters, unmarried and no children, unmarried alcoholic son. It seems like kids today are no better off as they are constantly affirmed that their needs in terms of feelings are everything. We all just stumble along. 😊
Yeah I feel my generation have raised our children to have the 'emotional antennae' we lacked. As a kid, if I said something horrible or hit another kid, my mum would yell at me, give me a whack. There was no justice, no opportunity to say what happened, what the other kid said or did to me, any attempt to justify myself was met with fury. My generation is more likely to sit our kids down, listen, and say things like, "How d'you think that other kid feels? Put yourself in his shoes for a minute." And, y'know, I still feel that's got to be the better way. But - and it's such a big but - I know that it was exactly the lack of antennae, my insensitivity to a lot of what was happening on the emotional plane, that got me through adolescence and most of my 20s kind of unscathed. Anxiety? The only thing I was ever anxious about was my mum shouting. Once I left home, that went away. I was serene, pacific - a 'nice guy' - but emotionally illiterate. Steep learning curve when I met my wife, who couldn't believe how dumb I was, how little I picked up.
My kids, like many of their peers, are plagued by anxiety, especially social anxiety. It's not social media; they despise & avoid it. They have the antennae I didn't have, they think about other people all the time, too much. They overthink others' imagined reactions to what they do and say, and it can cripple them. They're slowly learning to toughen up; they have friends but no girlfriends or boyfriends ever, they've preferred the security of bedroom & videogame.
That's so interesting. I have a very close friend who's kids I'm very close to aswell. She instills Kindness above all else.
I have pondered this, as, I'm afraid they'll get trampled by the world.
My adult friends are in agreeance that it's much much harder for kids these days, and probably parents too. It sounds to me, having that insight, you're doing pretty well yourself.
I genuinely don't know; the kindness/emotionally-aware track is a double-edged sword, isn't everything?! I like 'trampled by the world', it's a good phrase; it captures how life is unkind sometimes & just knocks you down randomly; no one person is responsible (though there are always some of those too), it's just 'the system', 'the way things are' - and those are the hardest things to explain to kids - at least, I think they are. Parents the world over respond to "It's not fair!" with "Life's not fair;" it's such a cliché but it's true. How to deal with bad stuff that just happens; how to deal with unfairness that's baked into society and which you have no way of changing: these things are tough.
But, as Polly says, 'If you didn’t have conflicted feelings about the world — and celebrate those conflicted feelings without shame ... If you never doubted yourself or felt angry or sad, you’d never bother to write a book or a song or a poem or design a dress or build anything at all. You wouldn’t bother to say words out loud or make friends, because you’d be perfectly serene without other humans around most of the time.'
I WAS serene, I had no doubts but, unknown to me, I wasn't equipped to have a proper relationship because I couldn't really feel other people's feelings. My kids and many of their generation are the opposite, they feel too much - but, as Polly suggests, if you react by going numb you risk being immobilised by shame at feeling inadequate, at your numbness preventing you from achieving 'perfection'. I'm way better than I was but that's still a place I visit frequently.
It seems English fathers are quite good at being emotionally unavailable, and inducing fury in their wives - and numbness in their children. I was on that track. I couldn't even see that my dad was missing any genuine ability to express love, I just thought that was normal for dads. I really hope you've found, or generated, enough mojo to make up for what your dad couldn't give.
What you say about your kids and their friends, that they feel too much, has never occurred to me. I feel too much. But is it really too much? Maybe. I'm not sure. It's a journey, and you adapt.
Luckily, as a child I was very aware that being kind wasn't enough. That you had to be kind plus...something. I resolved to be honest with myself and truthful to others. The 'being honest with yourself' has been like a sort of suit of armour for me, I have grown into quite a resilient person. That's why I say Luckily.
During this time of the call to Be Kind, as if challenging anyone else's opinion, no matter how outrageous, is somehow un-kind, I have been pushed to knowing for myself that when it comes to the crunch Truth trumps Kind.
If you don't know what your truth is, how can you speak it? And knowledge really is power, even when it's inner knowledge, or even, especially when it's inner knowledge.
They're just my thoughts. Being on Substack has taught me loads, but I have also seen how freaking bright some people are, and conversely how little I know. But I hope I have replied to your thoughtful comment in kind 😊
dear heather,
thank you for sharing these beautiful words.
i love this very much: "That’s why the primary advice I have for you is this: You must replace your father’s insults with your own acceptance, love, and celebration of how tenaciously you’ve refused to become what he wants. "
(and the rest of it!)
much love
myq
I loved that one too.
Just. Wow. Polly xxx
As a Bjork and Kate Bush adorer, I approve this message.
Yes. YES!!!!
Thank you for sharing. The vulnerability in the question and the simplicity in the answer.
This brought me joy 🥹
Here I was sitting on my sofa after bottoming out, leaving my job, and feeling utterly useless as I searched for work to fill the gaps and I stumbled across your post this morning. HOLY WOW, did you punch me right in the gut. It’s exactly what I needed to read to rekindle my fire and drive. Thank you thank you thank you. I needed this more than you could know. This was the pep talk I needed. 💛
This is absolutely stunning and beautiful and so soothing to read.
LW, thank you for your letter and Heather, thank you for such a grounded and honest reply. DAY OF BIG DOUBTS is going on a notecard that I can put on my fridge when I'm feeling stupid and pointless generally. Also, LW, I've noticed that ADHD is really something to be reckoned with in one's mid-to-late thirties. The gap between the intelligence, creativity and drive that you earnestly know you possess, and what you've been able to manifest in your life can sometimes seem so wide/unexpected/disheartening. At least I know that's when I started to hear the fire alarm. May I recommend the book *A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD: Embrace Neurodiversity, Live Boldly, and Break Through Barriers*? Drilling down on how the ADHD mind works was a big step for me in accepting who I am and swimming with the current of my strengths rather than against them. Ditto for meditation and a dopamine boost. We have pretty magical brains it turns out. Good luck on your journey. <3
I love you Polly san
Thank you, I needed this today 💜
Out with the old, in with new.