I haven’t been posting much of substance lately. This is largely because my laptop screen is dead and I am trapped in the office and Shanna only gives me short periods of time where she is ok with me being in here. Challenging. I can read in short bursts but I can’t write like that. Thus I have been posting lots of banal one or two sentence things on facebook.
What I am mulling over and trying to figure out how to talk/think about is the next step of processing abuse I am working on. I have spent almost the entirety of my adult life dealing with the large scale sexual assaults in my childhood. That took a lot of work. That was a big deal. What I have never really gotten around to is truly examining and processing all of the small scale abuse and day-in-day-out neglect and awful that I experienced. Thing is, now that I am doing this parenting gig that is seeming much more important. When I talk about not wanting to pass on the cycles of abuse I am not worried about sexually assaulting my kids. I’m just not. That’s just not something that will ever be much of a temptation for me. (I’m kind of repulsed by people who are two years younger than me.) What I need to worry about is how to not tear down her sense of self. I need to worry about how to create a positive atmosphere where Shanna (and TBD) are free to become any person they want to become without my baggage being dragged along behind them. As we are getting deeper into toddler-hood I am noticing more and more of my baggage that way and I need to deal with it now. This can’t wait. Part of the problem is, I don’t really have the time or mental space to work through this stuff. I have to create it. I can’t just float through and ignore this. This is mandatory.
I don’t think I am being a bad mother, but I can see bad habits starting to pop up. I am not ok with Shanna crying unless I can see a direct reason for it (that I approve of). That’s not ok. When Shanna expresses an opinion I don’t like (dude, she’s a toddler) I come down really fast and harder than necessary. I need to stop thinking/talking about how I would like to hit her when she is frustrating. That’s completely unacceptable. I’ve smacked her hand a couple of times out of pure reflex and I don’t like it, but I don’t feel like that is a huge problem long-term. What is a problem is that I talk about wanting to hit her pretty frequently. That’s unacceptable. That is using the threat of physical control and it’s not really much better than a judicious spanking occasionally for serious problems. It’s probably actually worse. It’s trying to instill fear. I have to stop. That’s not ok. I don’t want my daughter fearing me. At this point she doesn’t really understand and it’s very clear that she doesn’t fear me. I want it to stay that way.