Her Grief Caused Her to Shame My Estrangement
Oh, how I wish I’d had a father-daughter relationship like hers
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I sit in the airport, transfixed by a father and baby interacting opposite me.
The baby giggles and wriggles while the father makes funny faces and flies her through the air. Then, when the fun subsides, and she starts rubbing at her eyes and yawning, he places her on his chest and rubs her back until sleep cocoons her.
This scene is alien to me. I look on like an outsider peering into the window of a warm, cosy family home, wondering what it must be like to be that baby. I bask in their blanket of love.
Suddenly, I’m startled by a piercing scream to my left. There stands a tiny toddler, red-faced and distressed, as her family unit walks away from her. Her dad turns around and impatiently bellows her name.
I feel her anguish.
I want to scoop her up and hold her close. I want to reassure her and tell her she’s safe.
She’s in a strange environment, scared, and likely feels abandoned. How hard is it for her dad to hold her hand or place her on his shoulders?
The familiarity of her suffering stirs my inner child. Vicarious tears prickle my eyes.
Estrangement is considered a dirty word.
But what those with no experience of it fail to realise is that estrangement never occurs on a whim. It is usually preceded by years of navigating difficulties and seeking healthy workarounds for tricky relationships through the use of boundaries and open communication.
I tried; believe me, I tried to have some semblance of a normal relationship. But eventually, for the sake of my own well-being, I let things evaporate.
Perhaps what I find most difficult about my situation is the shaming and judging, Oh, but Ali, he’s your dad. And the way others try to fix me as if I’m broken and 43 years of dysfunction can magically be transformed if I play a little nicer or make a bit more effort.
Honestly, I’m done with being the good girl.
While a staggering one in four people in the UK are estranged from a family member, it is rarely talked openly about, leaving a sense of isolation and loneliness in those of us affected.
A dear friend of mine had the relationship with her father that I once craved.
Her dad cheered her through life and raised her to believe she could do anything. He was always a soft place to land. Somewhere she could return for reassurance before being sent back into the world, puffed up and boosted with confidence.
He had her back.
I would watch them together, marvelling at the mutual affection and how they knew the steps to their private dance. They positively vibrated in each other’s company.
Their normality shone a light on our abnormality.
Devastatingly, he died a few months ago. And in my friend's grief at losing her dad in a million, she was suddenly unable to comprehend and accept my circumstances. From her perspective, I’m lucky that my father is still alive.
We’ve got to make the most of them while they are still here, she says, followed by other equally pointed and not-so-subtle remarks.
And while I allow her comments to pass without challenge due to her grief, they only serve to have a gaslighting effect, leaving me feeling unheard and as if I am a terrible person. But it’s so much more complex than she can ever understand.
My dad didn’t do the things her dad did.
He wasn’t that warm place to land or the self-esteem-raising pep talker. He didn’t squeeze me close to him and encourage me to share whatever was on my mind. He wasn’t there in body, mind or spirit.
My dad ridiculed me for not knowing how to change a car tyre without realising it was his role to teach me. He expected perfect progeny without embracing the role of nurturing.
And while I acknowledge my friend’s words are said through the filter of her grief, they sting.
We wouldn’t listen to how a friend’s romantic partner behaved abusively and problematically and then suggest they need to make more effort. No, we would tell them to get the hell out of there and recognise their worth.
Growing up as the scapegoat child of a father with narcissistic tendencies was damaging. And I don’t use this term lightly. He hits all nine of the core features of narcissistic personality disorder.
I spent my childhood walking on eggshells, suppressing who I was in the hope of receiving love and acceptance.
But children are fallible, and often, my true self leaked out. And for that, I was punished. I was sent to my room, silenced, struck, or shouted at.
The hangover from my childhood is tinged with overwhelming feelings of rejection.
From a young age, I learned that love was conditional. The conditions were that I hid myself and behaved like my sister — the golden child — and then maybe, just maybe, I would be loved.
But largely, I was unloveable.
A hindrance to be relegated to the bottom of the pack.
And oh, the games of favouritism. Through his words, gifts, and actions, he established a pecking order between my siblings and me. If I licked my knife, I risked being sent to my bedroom. If my sister committed the same crime, she was given an affectionate warning look.
All I wanted was to be seen, loved, and accepted. To be treated equally to my siblings.
I was about to make excuses for him and write that I was a difficult child. But I stopped myself. I was a child in a difficult position.
I was a child full of energy and sensitivity—but also an old soul in a young body.
And just as he thought, his punitive methods with the family dogs made him a good dog trainer. So, too, he thought his punitive methods with me would win my loyalty and obedience. Instead, they built mistrust, fear, and insecurity.
The book Narcissistic Fathers by Dr Theresa Covert suggests that the child who becomes the scapegoat of a parent with narcissistic tendencies is most likely the one who threatens the parent’s sense of self.
The scapegoat child is full of self-knowing, authenticity, sensitivity, and kindness—the one who can not be manipulated.
And so that child is punished. Their successes go unrecognised, and they receive regular criticism. These dynamics may even continue into adulthood.
They certainly did with me.
We were always oil and water, me and him, communicating on different wavelengths, each yearning to be understood by the other. But I was only a child—a child who was expected to listen and obey. Even as an adult, I was expected to listen and obey.
You must hear the truth, he would say, believing his truth to be the truth. Yet another ploy in his triangulation tactics, which have fractured my family like ice between rocks, breaking us apart in irrevocable ways.
I don’t come at this with judgment or accusation. Instead, I sit in empathy.
Because generational trauma is cyclical and observing the dysfunction in the home of my grandparents, I can only imagine what he endured.
While I can have compassion for his wounded inner child, and recognise all the ways he was failed as a child, I must also honour my own experiences. His difficult upbringing does not justify the way he treated me.
Listing things done or not done to try and win your favour and illustrate my hurt is unnecessary. Please just believe me when I speak of my wounds.
So much time has passed that while some specific memories still exist, in general, it’s just a feeling—the feeling of being an inconvenience, inadequate, not enough, annoying…
And as Maya Angelou says “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
I was scared of him.
He took the Jordan Peterson approach to parenting. In his view, anger and intimidation toward young children were the only ways to discipline them. Discipline was considered more important than a child’s sense of safety.
What a drastically different childhood I would have lived if my dad had listened to childhood trauma specialists such as Dr Gabor Maté.
Dr Maté debunks the draconian ways of Jordan Peterson, not just by calling for the need to create a safe space with unconditional love for children to develop healthily but also by quoting science, which contradicts Peterson’s controversial ideas.
As cited by Dr Maté, this 2018 study in the American Academy of Pediatrics puts a call for the end to spanking and harsh punishment of children. They found this callous treatment elevated stress hormones and altered brain chemistry, which could result in mental health problems. Hmmm, figures.
Let me tell you, living in fear of a parent does not lend itself to a sense of safety, warmth, and love. Instead, I was constantly in a state of fight or flight, not quite knowing what I would get told off for next, while desperately trying to appease him.
And still, many years later, I feel stuck in this fight or flight mode. My hypervigilance scans the faces around me, looking for signs of danger.
I’m in the airport again. I’ve been doing a lot of flying recently.
I sit drinking a coffee in the departure lounge, awaiting my flight to Edinburgh.
A curious toddler wobbles over to my bag, drawn like an insect to the neon colours. He pulls at the straps and zips. His dad apologises and starts to steer him away. I tell him it’s ok. Let the toddler be entertained by my bag for a while. Let dad have a break. Dad smiles.
The toddler unzips my bag, pulling out my passport and phone and causing the other contents to spill onto the floor. I don’t mind. His eyes widen as I teach him how to click the straps together and then unclick them again. We high-five and giggle. Good job, buddy. Aren’t you smart.
Then, he toddles off in search of a new adventure, with his dad following a safe distance behind, ready to redirect him or catch him if he falls.
I bask in their contentment, and my mind drifts to my father.
Sometimes, it’s easier to love people from afar.
Like a kintsugi vase, my broken pieces have been glued back together. I am now stronger, firmer, and more valuable than ever.
I carry my scars as paths on my map. I know where I’ve been and while I’m unsure where I’m going, I sure as hell am not going back.
Adult children are not obligated to stay in the lives of abusive parents.
Watch how we fly when we realise we have wings.
This piece was originally published on Medium.
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Ali, I feel for your friend. But whatever our situation, it's not right to shame another person, especially about estrangement from an abusive father. You have every right to decide not to have contact with your father. It takes courage to make that decision and I am proud of you for doing so.
When I got married a decade ago, I wanted my cousin to be my maid of honor. She declined because I was estranged from my father and “he’s the only father you’ll ever have.”
Which is weird, because her biodad refused to pay child support when her mom was divorced and she was raised by her stepfather. Guess which one she considers “Dad.” Not the sperm donor!