This is my story, the way it was for me back then, when I thought I was experiencing true love, when what I was actually experiencing was self-abuse and self-denial. This is my story of how I learned to tell myself the truth about myself only when it became too excruciatingly painful to hold on to the lie. This is my story of discovery, about how a broken little girl becomes a broken woman who creates a broken life because she needs broken people to support the fiction she has created to keep herself emotionally safe. These were not bad people. In fact, they were teachers of the highest order because they drove me straight into the arms of God. This is my story of how personal defects can lead you to the edge of your personal power, and how loving and accepting yourself in the midst of all that you discover about yourself will force you to jump head first into your greatness.
When your life is going downhill, it doesn’t get better just because you want it to. Nor can you will it to be better.Your life will only get better when you get better.
CHAPTER 3
FROM THE POT INTO …
A BIGGER POT
I was about 26 years old, married with three children, when I realized that there was something seriously out of order in my mind and heart. I was in New York City, riding in a taxicab. It was a scorching summer day and the taxi was freezing. I sat in the back seat in my tank top with my teeth chattering. Then I realized that as a paying customer, I could ask the driver to turn the air conditioning down. But I could not get my mouth open. I could not ask this man whom I was going to pay $10 or $12 to take me to my destination to adjust the temperature in his car so I could stop shivering. When I thought about asking him, a huge lump formed in my throat. I decided I had no right to ask because he might get upset with me. Instead, I tucked my arms down inside my tank top and slid into the corner of the back seat.
There was an argument raging in my mind between the rational adult that I was and the wounded, abused child I had been. The child remembered times when I had asked for something I needed or wanted. The child remembered names I had been called and things I had been told about myself. The adult reminded me that I was paying for a service and I had a right to be comfortable. No! I did not! I did not have the right.
After several minutes of the back and forth in my mind, I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. My heart was racing and my throat was closing. I knocked on the partition and motioned the driver to pull over. I am sure he could see that I was distraught.
“Are you okay?”
I couldn’t speak; I was struggling to stifle the scream that had formed in my throat. I shoved a $10 bill into the little cup and stumbled out of the taxi, nowhere near my destination. The driver peered at me through the window and then pulled off. I stumbled over to a wall and stood there trying to gather my wits. I realized that I had suffered through many indignities rather than ask for what I needed or wanted, out of fear that if the person got upset, I could get hurt. It was a pattern I learned as a child. It was an ingredient in my pathology. It was, I believe, the reason I stayed for nine years in that physically abusive marriage.
In medicine, pathology is the study of the causes of disease. In human life, pathology is the disease; the stuff going on beneath the surface, handed down or passed on to you, the family stuff that you can see and feel even though no one ever talks about it. From a purely human, non-scientific perspective, it’s why so-andso does such-and-such when so-and-so is or is not around. It’s why no one talks to so-and-so or talks about them as soon as they leave the room. We, all in our own way, live out or attempt to avoid living out the pathologies of our lineage; the pathologies of the shameful, dirty family secrets; the secret desires, secret behaviors, secret liaisons, and unconscious motivations. There can be some very good family patterns, but I am not concerned about those right now. For the most part, my story is about the dysfunctional pathology, the self-debasing patterns, the things I heard and saw the adults do that gave rise to the picture I held in my mind and heart about myself specifically, and about life in general.
We all have patterns of thought, belief, and behavior that we inherit from our family of origin. In the same way that our ears, our eyes, our nose, and the texture of our hair are inherited, we inherit certain mental, emotional, and even spiritual proclivities.
We call them habits. Habits are hard to break and, despite our most earnest efforts, we usually remain loyal to our family patterns, even when they are dysfunctional. It is a function of the family cloth from which we are cut. In certain cases, like my case, you can awaken enough to decide early in life, I don’t want to be like thesepeople! Somewhere in your being, you know that something is just not right. Unfortunately, when you are a child, you don’t know how to change. You don’t know how to not be like the people who feed, clothe, and shelter you. So, you wait, growing more like them each day. You wait until you are old enough to move away, run away, hide from, or flat-out deny that you have anything at all to do with “these people.” But sooner or later you realize that whether you are a block away, a state away, or on the other side of the world, you cannot deny the fabric of your being. Somehow, you will discover that you do what they did, or you say what they said, like they said it. Or you find that you act like the one person on earth you would not want to act like. Your mother, perhaps. If not her, your father for sure. And, just in case you’re wondering, it doesn’t matter if you knew them or not. That’s the puzzling part! How is it that you end up with the karmic drainage and inherited damage of people you may not even know? This is the function of the family of origin: The family sets up the pathology and the patterns that you are called to heal in your lifetime.
Understanding the emotional propensities we inherit through our parents DNA is the missing puzzle piece. It was my missing piece. I became aware that there were puzzle pieces that I inherited from my parents that were alive in my emotional DNA. These were tapes playing in my subconscious mind. The enemy was within me. The harder I tried to overcome my internal demons, the harder they fought back. My saving grace was God. My only way out was through the Spirit. Somehow I tapped into a sacred knowledge and wisdom that let me know that prayer and meditation could and would save me.
It was my vigilant prayer life that allowed me to speak brilliantly to thousands while my personal life was crumbling. It was my deep and abiding desire to know and serve God that enabled me to bypass the beliefs of guilt and unworthiness, to listen within for the inspiration to write book after book that changed the lives of many. There were days when, on my way to a speaking engagement, I battled thoughts of suicide. My soul was weary; my heart, shattered.
At a personality level, I couldn’t get the man I absolutely adored, even worshipped, to see me for who I really was and treat me accordingly. I felt his support and his criticism, but never his compassion. But at a soul level, God could use me, a deeply flawed vessel, and I could look in the eyes of another human being and speak three words that would pierce their soul, resulting in their personal transformation. No matter how much I did, or how “famous” I became, I never felt good enough. At the time, it made no sense to me at all. Now, I understand the maze of inherited pain. Just knowing that, and recognizing that I could live beyond the pain eventually brought me to a sense of peace. Unfortunately, my journey to peace may have cost my daughter her life.
There was a time when I would think about all the things that the adults in my life did not give me and my soul would weep with sadness. That sadness turned to sorrow when I realized I had done the same exact thing to my own children. There were so many things I needed to know that no one taught me; things that would have changed the way I saw myself and lived my life. No one ever taught me about personhood or womanhood or parenthood; love or sex; vision or purpose. I did learn to keep my body and home clean. I learned to make the best of what I had and not dare dream about having more. I also learned how to avoid, ignore, and dismiss the truth. If only I had been raised by adults, instead of wounded children, maybe—just maybe—my path would have
been less traumatic. Then again, I’ve learned we all get exactly what we need, when we need it, in order to learn what God intends for us to know so we can be who God intends for us to be.
I don’t remember anything about my mother dying. What I do remember is the day of the funeral. I remember my grandmother cooking and people bringing food to our house. I remember because the food was everywhere and I could not touch or eat any of it. I remember that a few days before the food arrived, I got a new dress and a brand-new pair of white patent-leather shoes. I’m not sure why I remember that. I also remember the day of the funeral because we rode in a big black car. It had buttons that made the windows go up and down. I remember playing with the buttons and getting yelled at for it, then slapped across the face for ignoring the warnings. I remember finally being able to eat the food and being warned not to get dirty—which I did. I remember getting snatched up and dragged into the bathroom, where I was chastised for ruining a brand-new dress. I was told I didn’t know how to listen or how to take care of anything. What I was not told was that my mother was dead or that I had just seen her being put into the ground. I was three years old.
My mother’s death was like an amputation. She was there. Then she was gone. Her voice was gone; the voice I had come to know in the womb. Her touch was gone; the touch of her hands on my body, her face pressed against my face. Her love was gone; a love I can’t even fathom because I have no conscious memory of it. However, I do know that it created a void in my being that I did not discover until 30 years later.
My paternal grandmother was the mother figure I knew, the mother I identified with for the next two years of my life, as my patterns of thought and behavior solidified. My grandmother’s home was supposed to be the sanctuary where I would heal after my amputation. Instead, my mind and body were infected by Grandma’s anger, resentment, and inability to express love. Through her speech and behavior, she taught me that nothing I did was ever good enough. Because she was my primary caregiver, she created an incontestable picture of who I was and who I would always be—bad, wrong, and never good enough.
I always thought my grandmother was a huge woman. When I was 3 years old and two feet tall, she was 40 years old and stood 5' 9" tall. It seemed to me that no matter how much I grew, she grew taller and bigger. Perhaps she stood as an overwhelming figure in my life because she was so stern, or as some might say, just plain old mean. In the family, she had a reputation of being meaner than a wet cat! And, if you knew what was good for you, you’d better not cross her. But I didn’t understand why I was with Grandma in the first place, and I didn’t have a clue about how to navigate the minefield of living with her. I didn’t know how to move fast enough or slow enough. I didn’t know how to answer questions properly or when not to answer at all. I did learn that everything had to be done the right way, which was her way. It had to be done completely to her satisfaction, in her time, to her specifications, and I had better have done it with the proper look on my face. I also learned that no matter what I did or how I did it, it was wrong. It was wrong because I was bad. It was wrong because I didn’t listen. It was wrong because I was hardheaded or because I must be stupid. It was wrong because I was a pain in the butt—just like my father. I figured out that it was not a good thing to be like him, because the only person my grandma disliked almost as much as me was my father.
When Grandma was working, my father would stop by the apartment several times a day to check on my brother Ray and me. I never knew when he was coming. I didn’t know where he lived. It was strange to me that he didn’t sleep at Grandma’s house, but I knew better than to ask why. I wanted him to be there to rescue me from Grandma. I also knew better than to mention it to him.
I really loved my daddy, even though he rarely said more to me than “Hey, baby.” I loved his mustache and the way he smelled. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. He always wore a crisply starched shirt and a hat tipped to the side of his head. I knew the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs. I would jump up from whatever I was doing and run to the door because Daddy was home, and it could mean a popsicle, a piece of Bazooka bubble gum, or a stick of Wrigley’s. The truth is, it didn’t matter whether he brought me anything or not; he was my daddy and he was the only my anything that I had.
My daddy was a numbers runner. He always had Wrigley’s because that’s where he wrote the numbers that the people in the neighborhood bet on. Even that made him clever in my mind.
Over time, I learned to stop expecting my daddy to save me from Grandma’s wrath. When he did try to speak up on my behalf, she would shift the focus of her name-calling from me to him. If he raised his voice, she would throw something, not at him but in his direction. I remember the few times he did attempt to stand up for me. That would really set her off. I don’t remember much of what she said, but I do remember how her venomous barrage usually ended. He would beg her to stop, telling her it was enough, she was right. Then he would find a reason to take me with him wherever he was going, to give us both a few minutes of peace. I’m not sure if he knew that when he took me back home and left me there, Grandma would continue the barrage against me.
I loved those rare occasions when my daddy took me for a ride in his car. I thought it was our special time together. Sometimes, we would go to the candy store his best friend owned. On most occasions, Daddy would take me to a lady’s house to get my hair braided. Rarely did I go to the same lady more than twice. There were many. Some pretty, some not. Some nice, most not. When I got a new hairdo, Daddy didn’t walk me all the way upstairs at Grandma’s house. He would kiss me on the third floor and wait as I walked the last two landings to our fourth-floor apartment, instructing me to tell Grandma he would see her later. She always wanted to know who had done my hair. What was her name? Where did she live? And did she give me any money? Then she would retreat to the kitchen to mutter and cuss to herself. I would find Ray and sit really close to him, just in case the muttering to herself turned into slapping of me. I sometimes got slapped for not knowing the answers to her questions. If I was sitting close to Ray, the slap was often reduced to a pinch or a push; those usually didn’t upset him and only hurt me a little.
Unlike me, Ray had the map to the minefield. Even though he was a year older than me, he always seemed much more fragile and, as a result, more acceptable to Grandma. His melancholy disposition, a sharp contrast to my incessant chattering, helped him avoid Grandma’s wrath in a way I never learned to do. Because Ray was asthmatic, Grandma was very tender and gentle with him. He got to do special things with her, like sit in her lap and sleep in her bed, while I slept on the floor alongside. He also had fewer chores than I did. Because I only knew Grandma’s harsh and brutal side, I often watched with curiosity and amazement as she transformed into a tender, nurturing mother figure with my brother. It was painful because I made up that it meant there was something about me that made her angry and mean. I couldn’t figure out what I needed to do or how I needed to be to experience her softness, to experience the Grandma that Ray knew and loved.
It taught me that boys were somehow entitled to more than me and that there was a standard for being loved that I did not meet. It is one thing to get beat down. It’s another thing when your beat-down is known to someone else—someone you love. Someone you think cares about you. When someone you care about watches your beat-down and doesn’t help you, it feels like a betrayal, and the memory of it stays with you. Perhaps sitting close to my brother was a way to avoid the full wrath of Grandma is what led me to conclude that the most I could hope for from the men in my life was presence in body, if not in mind and heart. It taught me that gentle male souls can offer some small measure of hope. Perhaps that is why I found my first love so appealing. He too was quiet and gentle like my brother. Perhaps. Who knows? I also recall, however, the betrayal of my brother moving out of the way when Grandma did decide to slap or shake me.
Just because you are defective does not mean you cannot see the defects in othe
rs. I must have been slightly more than four years old when I figured out that Grandma was just plain crazy. In modern-day terms, she would be considered emotionally unstable or perhaps depressed. I now know that there is a form of depression, particularly among black women, that leads to sudden, erratic, and violent behavior. It is caused by stress, and it is deemed to be a mental illness. When I was growing up, you didn’t talk about mental illness. You just didn’t. No one dared challenge or confront the pattern of abuse. Instead, the dysfunction was denied, avoided, and hidden. I was simply collateral damage.
In my story, Grandma’s mental instability was about me. I was so wrong and so bad, I made her angry. As a result of just being me, I was snatched, shaken, beaten, or pushed out of the way. In most cases, it happened so that Grandma could demonstrate to me the right way to do a thing. That thing could be ironing a pillowcase or a shirt sleeve. Or it could be cleaning the toilet or sink with a torn-up undershirt. Or it could be tucking my undershirt down in my panties so that the bottom of the shirt lay flat on my butt through the leg holes. That was the only way to keep my undershirt from rolling up and exposing my fat belly to everyone who cared to notice it. In most instances, I simply couldn’t do what Grandma demonstrated, because by the time she finished showing me the right way to do it, I was terrified. I could hardly hear her instructions through the barrage of cuss words. I couldn’t see what she was doing because my eyes were filled with tears that dared not fall down my cheeks. If you cried in Grandma’s presence, one of those huge hands of hers would give you something to really cry about.
Living with Grandma broke the innocence and curiosity of my little-girl spirit into a million pieces that I did not know how to pick up—at least, not in the right way. In Grandma’s house, it was best not to ask anything and to surrender totally the need to know anything. When I did make the mistake of asking, the response was more often than not about me; my physical characteristics or the wrongness of me. It is a wonder that I learned anything at all during my tenancy with Grandma, but I did learn some things that it has taken most of my adult life to unlearn. Grandma taught me that no matter how bad something hurt, it was best to not ask anyone for help. In Grandma’s house, I learned the silent, crushing pain of not being wanted and feeling I was unloved.
Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through Page 4
