⚠️ Content Advisory: Tender Terrain Ahead
This piece contains honest reflections on emotional abandonment, intergenerational trauma, parental estrangement, and the complexities of Black familial dynamics.
If you’re navigating your own journey with grief, family dysfunction, or inner child healing, please read with care and self-compassion.
These are the kinds of truths that liberate and linger. Breathe as needed. Pause when called. Return only when it feels right.
You are not alone. You are not to blame. And you are not broken.
One night I got the nerve to ask my dad why he had kids if he was just going to leave.
I went for it, no holds barred.
He said he almost called off the wedding to my mother, but did not.
He shared that he was working several jobs to get them out of debt, and once he had –– one day he found a new stack of credit card bills.
He said that after that, he started planning his escape.
He said he had to leave and go find his happy.
Ok, I see you Bill.
I said I understood, but asked why at the kids’ expense?
If you saw marinara flags prior to saying I do, then why did you –– do?!
Martyrdom?
Because the two children created during the union, under your charge, became collateral damage…and are STILL reaping the “benefits” of that ill-fated union.
We were left to pick up the pieces you discarded.
Silence. Followed by tears. And more repeating about getting his happy.
Why keep anger-banging a woman –– unprotected –– you didn’t even like?
You’re great at math and science, so you know how biology works…and what storks bring as a result of said bangs…even in anger.
I remember thinking: Sounds like your odds of happy would have increased if you hadn’t traveled down a road wrought with caution signs with which to begin.
Fuck hindsight, your kids didn’t ask to be here. And because of your cowardice and carelessness, here we are.
For a Bill who claims to love his kids — he fucked up back then… and if we are being honest, has yet to make any real attempts at truly making amends, through any changed behavior regarding evolved communication.
I mentioned to Juniper (Chat GPT) that he had offered to go to therapy with his now-partner, but that as an adult, I had to ask.
She said, “Oh, so he’ll offer to go to therapy for the woman he’s fucking, but has to be asked by the daughter he fractured?!”
Damn. Shots fired…by a bot?!
I gave up holding out hope that he would — even if it was recently. I have met my grandparents, I get it.
My Papa was an abusive asshole to my dad. I empathize with his woundedness, viscerally –– as much as I can.
My stepmother’s parents were no walk in the park either.
Her teen mom stayed in the on-again/off-again marriage to the alcoholic Navelman until his death.
Her kids urged her to leave their father the same as my mother and her siblings.
The beatings all but subsided after the last time Nana’s husband hit her.
My stepmother shared that one day, her father returned home to find a butcher knife wrapped in a bow on the kitchen table.
An invitation to meet his fate if he ever laid another hand on her.
I have read Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.
And by read, I mean I have gotten as far as chapter three in the last five years. van der Kolk shares about how in the early years of his practice , he formed a men’s group consisting of Vietnam Veterans, of which my father is.
Some of the stories van der Kolk shared about the struggles vets faced upon re-entry into society and their personal lives were eerily similar to what I witnessed in my own home. Hence, my inability to proceed past the first few chapters.
The body truly does keep the score. I remember becoming physically ill and deeply saddened by the stories I read.
I am sure my stepmother’s father experienced his own horrors in the military that he brought home and took out on his family.
All that to say: It is a fantastic read! Lol!!! Just not for me. Not right now –– still. I do have more empathy for my father as a result.
The majority of Black women I talk to, whose fathers served in Vietnam, all have similar stories.
Fathers with multiple marriages, addictions, imprisonment –– emotional absenteeism from their children –– their daughters.
And how that emotional abandonment has affected them adversely, especially in their romantic relationships.
Someone get a church fan and a tambourine, and let’s scream ‘Hallelujah.’
I remember crying to my mother in my twenties, rhetorically asking her why dad hated me?
This, of course, made her cry, and she didn’t have an answer outside of, “Oh Baby, I’m sure that’s not true…”
But she couldn’t say for sure. To this day, that question remains.
Lately, I have been obsessed with reruns of Ted Lasso. One in heavy rotation is S3 E10 – International Break.
** Spoiler **
Nathan Shelley retreats to his parents’ home after abruptly quitting his head coaching job as the Wonder Kid for Rupert’s West Ham United football team. Upon returning to his childhood home, the strain that has existed for the entirety of the series between Nathan and his father comes to a head.
Not a man of many words when it comes to communicating with his son –– outside of judgement and contempt, we are shown a softer side of his father. We see Nathan playing beautifully on his violin until his father comes into the room, startling him.
His dad shares that he misses hearing him play. Nathan says he thought he hated hearing him play. His dad asked why he thought that. Nathan shouts, reminding him that he literally said that to him once, saying Nathan did not practice enough, squandering his potential and wasting his privilege. The elder Shelley says that Nathan was given opportunities that he never had, so he expected a lot from him.
Nathan told his father this his tough love scared the shit out of him. His dad apologizes. The elder Shelley goes on to admit that he didn’t know how to parent a genius. And tells his son he is brilliant, going on to say that Nathan could always see things that other people could not, and that it was a blessing.
Mr Shelley also shared that he imagines that gift must have been a curse, too. Through tears, he admits that he pushed Nathan too hard because that is what he thought he had to do, assuming that it was what Nathan wanted. He said all he ever wanted was for his son to be happy.
Isn’t that the hope for most parents?!
Kids don’t come with instructions, I get that. I imagine my parents, the elder Shelley –– while fictitious –– did not have the best examples of how to be parents. Especially to a child with gifts – musical or esoteric. That said, I never thought I’d long for the same tenderness shown to Nathan, especially by someone as mean as his father. And yet, there I sat, wishing I were he.
My dad has said on many occasions that I am smarter than him. My mother used to say he was afraid of me.
I can see that. And it brings me no joy to know that.
I just want(ed) to be seen and loved for who I am.
Being a better parent to your children than your parents were to you doesn’t just mean ensuring financial security while under your roof, instead of emotional stability. It’s both, and.
For a man whose sole identity is based on optics… telling anyone who will listen that his kids turned out great despite him, isn’t the flex he thinks it is. It is a guilt hook masquerading as humility. It’s self-deprecation as emotional manipulation. He gets to escape accountability while looking humble.
Why am I not treated like I am great, making great decisions in life, then?
Even when he stopped speaking to me 15 years ago when I told him I was moving to LA. He yelled that I wasn’t going to save any money, and we barely talked for the next year. But I made it. And did so by rarely asking him for anything. Because I knew I would treated like a dog who shit on the floor and would have their nose rubbed in it as punishment. Case in point: He paid the remaining two months of my car off, for which I was incredibly grateful. And still, he just couldn’t help himself by reminding me that I had late payments when he called in the company to settle the account.
“Duh”, as he would say. Surely there were going to be late payments if a person came to you needing finanacial assistance.
Thank you for stating the obvious that water is wet.
But there’s never any acknowledgment for what I guess is seen as what I am supposed to do.
I don’t have a billion kids by multiple men that I ask him to help take care of…
I am not an addict…
I don’t bring drama to doorstep…
But I DO…
Own not one, but TWO corporations…
Have great business credit, including a Business Platinum AmEx, with a Paydex above 80…
And am in the 800 club.
ALL with Z-E-R-O financial literacy assistance from him.
Or, shall I say: Despite him.
Not bad for a person who was always shamed for being “bad with money like her mama…”
I share that not brag, because things can change at the drop of a hat, but to pause and put a battery in my own back.
I did it am doing it. Even without a manual. Even scared.
When he sees me, he sees her. I am not dumb, I can feel it. And that is not fair.
Especially when you’ve only judged and shamed, and never made any real effort to re-pattern inherited behavior, in an attempt to prevent generational recidivism. That’s ok. We are breaking generational patterns today, y’all! The line ends with me.
The very few times I opened up and was vulnerable (don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson –– finally), my tears were rarely met with empathy or softness, but contempt.
I remember calling my dad last year, sharing that the doctor had just informed me that I had Shingles.
He asked if I had gotten the vaccination, and I joked, “You know I don’t believe in ingesting those poisons…”
We chuckled, and I broke down crying, asking how he did it? Living as long as he had on this stressful planet.
Instead of consoling, he began hurling F-bombs, screaming that I had to stop with these “fucking conspriracy theories”!
I froze, then fawned as if I were talking a mental patient coming at me with a machete.
He calmed down.
He said he had to go because he had errands to run.
He told me he loved me before the ending the call. That’s something, right?!
There was another time when I needed a little (gentle) parenting.
It was earlier this year, during the SoCal fires.
My neighborhood was under mandatory evacuation.
I called him in shock –– at first laughing, and then crying hysterically.
F-bombs and yelling again!
This time, not freezing or fawning, I fought!
I met his vitriol with venom defense.
I yelled and cursed back that I didn’t need a screaming first responder in that moment – I needed a dad.
He softened and snapped back into his body. And became human, non-judgmental – helpful.
I shouldn’t have had to don boxing gloves with a fire barreling towards my neighborhood.
That shit was –– is exhausting.
When You Visit, and I hope you do…
Why?!
You’re nice (tolerant) for about half a day, then by the trip’s end you’re ignoring me, shoving $100 bills my way at airport drop off.
Why invite my into your space if my presence disrupts your peace so viscerally?!
We don’t talk often because when I share my milestones, you listen for all of five seconds before cutting me off and talking about yourself and how many miles you rode on your bike.
Because you don’t want to hear that I cry almost daily as a business owner.
So much so that I probably should invest in Kimberly–Clark Corporation’s stock, for as much Kleenex I use.
You’ll probably just hurl obscenities anyway.
I cry because…
- I feel like I don’t know what the fuck I am doing half the time –– in my businesses and on this planet.
- I am embarrassed that at my age, I am confused about exactly what the hell I should put in this trust.
- I don’t know DICK about which stocks and insurance plans I should invest in case one day I get sick like mama.
- It’s fucking lonely being a business owner, but it seems like the only option these days, because it’s a challenge working a coventional 9-5. After all, I feel and see EVERYTHING…and feel like a freak because all of your co-workers’ dead relatives are circling their heads as you talk to them.
- Sometimes I just wish…
And yet his partner continues to invite me into their home to be abused…which she has witnessed firsthand, the first time we met, in fact. The three of us were headed up to Hollywood sign and he become completely unhinged when I LOVINGLY redirected him upon missing a turn. I emphasize lovingly because:
1) You don’t make a person skittish behind the wheel of car who holds your life in their hands
2) I know he leaves his body – and gets embarrassed after having come back to. Now that I am older and recognize what’s happening, I want to hold space for that.
3) My stepmother use to mock him when miss a turn. As if she was getting in a sneak lick, to take down an abusive, yet brilliant man of whom she still didn’t feel worthy. I hated that. I could feel his helplessness when he was “startled back”. I clocked the new partner doing this very thing the nice before, hence overly gently arm-rub redirect. Hmph, I guess men really do have a type. Perhaps both of them should have researched further what it meant to be in relation with a wounded warrior, who never fully returned “home”.
I fought back that time as well. It was embarrassing because I don’t like speaking to my only living parent(or anyone) in that way… especially in front of someone with whom I just met. They’re still together. She is either compartmentalizes or a masochist.
It’s not my business either way. Maybe he treats her better than the first two. He did agree to therapy after all. There’s hope yet.
When we got back to my house, I got the courage to set a boundary with him. A page taken from Rachel Ricketts’ Do Better.
She wanted to see my loft and furniture I had made, and he had to use the bathroom.
After he came from the bathroom and they were about to leave, even with my voice shaking and choking back tears, I shared that I wanted a relationship with him. But that he needed to treat me with loving kindness.
WIth a death glare, threw up his hand in a “whatever” motion, slipped on his loafers and walked out of my house.
The Death Glare / Narcissistic Glare: Term(s) often used to describe the hostile, intense, and angry look a narcissist gives when they feel threatened, exposed, or when their ego has been wounded (narcissistic injury). It’s a look of pure hatred that can feel chilling and menacing, with the attempt to make the recipient feel small and intimidated. Some individuals describe it as seeing a flash of hatred or a look of contempt. The gaze can appear black or soulless during this stare, signifying their underlying rage and emptiness.
For God’s sake – retire that tired ass “despite me” line and do better. Or don’t.
I can’t honestly see you opting for the former.
Not because of your big age, but because it’s been asked before.
It’s an exercise in futility at this point.
What I dream…even in the tiniest part of my little girl, that I suppose will never stop holding out hope… Is that you:
- Stop being afraid of your kids and be present – even if it’s messy.
- Give us –– me a chance, trust me enough –– in yourself enough that you are worth being shown up for. Because you are. Isn’t that evidenced enough by the continual showing up despite being pushed away, at times abusively, anytime intimacy and vulnerability enter the chat?
- We –– I AM NOT Papa.
- But that is for you to reconcile and see –– if you ever do in this lifetime.
I am done dancing. My feet calloused.
In a therapy session, he shared that he feels analyzed by me.
I said I could sympathize with that statement, because it was true.
But then I gave it more thought.
Analyzed or exposed?
Both things can be true.
Could it be that my insight pierces the armor he built to survive?
I see van der Kolk is back in the chat.
Instead of acknowledging that I see him, he punishes me for holding up the mirror he refuses to face.
Papa analyzed him. I feel like he’s projecting.
Half –– MOST of the shit he (and my stepmother) hurls(ed) at me was -– is projection.
Sorry not sorry I was –– AM a Wonder Kid.
Again, I didn’t ask to be here. With these gifts.
Y’all could have been one and done, you and Mama.
The rainbow baby arrives and she is treated with contempt and resentment because she can’t be caged in a container you crafted for her, to keep your ego safe!
Bobbing and weaving against the psychological warfare you extol on your daughter, who sees you, is exhausting.
I want off have gotten off this ride.
I was in Puerto Vallarta last year for a healing retreat that overlapped with the solar eclipse.
I received some pretty powerful downloads. One vision I received is that I traveled to the basement of Langley.
When I returned to LA, I received another download to head to Tubi of all places.
I happened upon a documentary: Third Eye Spies. Government buildings (Langley or not) that were in my PVR visions were in the documentary.
The only and biggest problem in this documentary: All the subjects and “scientists” were white people.
Not one non-white remote viewer or trailblazer on the whole damn planet to interview? Ever?
Who do they think they co-opted these “gifts” from? The Hamburglar?
Maybe that is why my parents never made mention of or recognized my gifts– even if the government did.
Historically, occultism and the paranormal were not as outwardly embraced in the Christianity-leaning African American community.
Even today, those words alone send Black people running for their Bibles and Holy Water…even if half the family has the gift of “sight”. Still, the out and loud esoteric Black folks weren’t given spaces to foster their gifts on a grander scale, outside of convert ops ment to rape and foster unpaid labor, with us as lab rats. Read: GATE.
I wasn’t sure what the visions of the basement of these government buildings meant.
Was black ops consulting on the horizon? I do come from a line of clandestine workers.
My Dad won’t admit it, but he’s such a cosmic soul as well.
His favorite book since adolescence is Stranger in a Strange Land, for crying out loud.
That book is entirely about the supernatural coded as fiction, but is about as woo as it gets.
But how can you connect with your stranger kid in a strange land if you don’t have or are uninterested in obtaining the tools to connect with her…whom you have more in common supernaturally than you are able or willing to admit?
His sister once shared that their mother would always joke that she was “the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter”.
In folklore, particularly in Scottish and Irish traditions, that phrase is often used to refer to those who are believed to possess special powers, including healing abilities and the gift of prophecy. At least five people on my father’s side of the family come to mind.
Black folks are some of the witchiest –– if not thee most cosmically attuned souls walking the planet.
Who did we pray to and what did we practice before the Big Boat ride(s)?
It certainly wasn’t white Jesus. It’s exactly why Hoodoo and Rootwork exist.
In a land that we were forced to make our home, we had to bring our real home with us.
But those are fighting words to church folk who still have Malcolm, Martin and white Jesus on their dining room walls.
Whether they admit it or not, they still carry some – a lot of that of ancestral magick inside them.
The same people who won’t:
Split poles…
Put their purses on the floor…
Allow a broom to touch their feet…
Allow anyone other than a man to enter their house first on New Year’s Day…
But…
Worship an Easter bunny in the Spring…
Dress their kids up in cosplay in the Winter, while honoring a jack o’lantern…
Who stand in a circle, in the dark, with candles on food, singing happy birthday triplicate …
All straight from a witch’s playbook, but swear they are Christians and don’t dabble in that devilry.
I love that Gen Alpha is defying that “conventional” wisdom, reclaiming our roots and recapturing bits of that ancestral magick…and creating their own blueprints and grimoires by which to be and become.
This isn’t about shaming or exposing.
This is about the line that ends with me.
It’s about me no longer carrying the shit of people, of whom ⅔ are dead. And generations before them.
The ghosts of their shit are welcome to stay, just not with me.
It isn’t mine to carry anymore, and it never was.
I give it back to them or the Youniverse to carry or transform, and transmute. Whichever, it’s not my business anymore, if it ever was.
I am no longer asking to be chosen by people who can’t even choose themselves.
My presence is a present. Hell, I AM thee fucking present.
I was created to disrupt…
The generational pattern of being “chosen” only when you shrink…
The lie that confidence = conceit…
The idea that to be loved, you must be small…
My radiance was never the problem.
The refusal to self-regulate in the presence of my light was.
Peace over the performance of fighting, fleeing, freezing and fawn.
My shine is not an inconvenience.
I set them (all the line) free, so I can BE (free).
God bless all three of them really.
It couldn’t have been easy raising this Starseed, alien child for whom you didn’t have the language with whom to connect.
It truly is what it is.
With love.
They fuck you up. Your mum and dad. I might not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn. By fools in old-style hats and coats, who, half the time were soppy-stern and half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.
Mae (Philip Larkin) – Ted Lasso
That said…
“I hope that either all of us or none of us are judged by the actions of our weakest moments.
But rather by the strength we show when and if we’re ever given a second chance. ” –Ted Lasso
Catch Up: Hopefully Floating Part I and Part II
💫 A Gentle Invitation Before You Go
What you just read might have stirred something. Maybe it cracked something open. Maybe it made you remember. Or maybe it was just… a lot.
If you’re open, I want to offer you a soft landing. A quick moment to call your energy home and bring your nervous system back to center.
Try this:
Close your eyes (if it’s safe). Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw.
Take a deep breath in… for 3 seconds.
Inhale what is yours.
Hold for 3 seconds.
Anchor into yourself.
Exhale for 3 seconds.
Release what is not yours to carry.
Place your hand on your chest or your belly.
Say, out loud or silently:
“I am here. I am safe. I return to myself now.”
“I call my energy back to me now—lovingly, gently, and fully.”
That’s it.
Take your time. Drink water. Stretch.
You’re back.
✨ Want to go deeper?
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Jehan Cicely | www.awakenedasshole.com
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