I was thinking the other day about who we are to others, who we appear to be at this moment in time, and what is missing from the impressions we leave behind. This is why those “I have not done” lists on social media are so popular. We want to know a person’s story and who they were before who they have become. These lists are like the pictures of the 80-year-old woman standing in front of the mirror, and in her reflection, you see a nurse, a lawyer, a soldier…or a child. Snapshots miss so much about what made us who we are today, and they completely disregard the changes we have made in our lives. Most of all, they miss our growth and the lessons we learned within that change. The danger is that we dismiss the person’s past and expect what we see, often leading to less grace, less humanity, and less forgiveness.
“Then ask yourself why it is necessary to know why someone is the way they are, or what in their past taints their now, for you to give them the understanding and grace you would readily give if you met them in that past moment.”
My snapshot may look like this – Wife, Mother, Grandmother, Nurse, Student, Midwife, Woman of Faith, Lover of sunflowers. Where I have been has made me who I am, but you cannot understand ME without knowing my past or experiences. If I look in the mirror, I see a young girl with horribly low self-esteem with an extreme overbite, one too many bad haircuts, and years of bullying by both peers and adults. I feel the times of intense poverty and instability as a daughter of a diabetic blind father and a bipolar mother. I survived sexual assault and physical abuse and was kicked out of my house at 17*. These experiences were wrapped into a neurodivergent brain that said what it was thinking, did not understand social cues, and desperately wanted to be included and loved.
*My children know I am a survivor of childhood abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault. These have never been in-depth conversations and usually come about through topics such as autonomy, protecting self, how we treat others, and why I or others are the way we are. Many things have gone unsaid, and I have told my children that if they read my journals, they should do so with caution, and certainly after I have left this world because there are things they may not know. I think that is likely true for all parents, as we tend to guard our children from our past.
It is a protective instinct to shy away from sharing our past with others, especially our children. Sometimes, we are ashamed of our choices, or it is painful and difficult to talk about. We may believe that sharing our past gives our children permission to act the way we acted, and we do not want them to make the same mistakes we made, or we may believe that our past is behind us and does not impact our current selves. We may have come from a household where you didn’t talk about self, struggles, behaviors, or events and feel that speaking these truths is taboo. This may lead us to normalize negative behavior, leading to generational trauma as harmful practices are passed down from parent to child. In most cases, our children do not understand where these beliefs or behaviors stem from, and they may normalize the negative as they mirror our behaviors.
This is where I remind you that you are not responsible for the choices of others, especially when you were a child or the outcomes of those choices. It is not your responsibility to carry the weight of those decisions; doing so harms you and your future self. While you are responsible for your own actions and reactions, it is limited to what you knew at that time. If you, as a child, were given alcohol or drugs by an adult and became an addict, you are only responsible for what you did when it was solely your choice. If once you were responsible for yourself, you continued to use it, then that is where your responsibility starts. There are still consequences for your behaviors as a child; sadly, those consequences may carry through your life and into other’s lives. This is especially true in cases such as a child giving another child drugs, or a child sexually abusing another child. We must learn to forgive ourselves and let go of the psychological and emotional weight brought by another’s choice. Carrying this weight prevents us from healing and prevents that person from being held responsible. If you were standing in front of me, I would physically lift that invisible weight off of your shoulders, and we would symbolically place that weight on the person responsible. It is theirs to carry, not yours.
If you have known me for any period of time you have heard me say, “When you know better, you do better”. I often talk about the discussions I have had with my (now adult) children about their childhood and their perceptions. My husband and I have prompted our children to take what was positive from childhood into adulthood and leave the negative. We are honest that we made mistakes, sometimes that caused emotional and psychological harm, and we want our children to know that they can always talk to us about those mistakes. My fondest wish is to roadblock any passed down/generational trauma and forge the way for permanent change for future generations of my family.
Take what I told you above about my childhood, and think of a moment when you have judged another by their snapshot. If you knew more, would you have reacted differently to that moment?
Ask yourself why it is necessary to know why someone is the way they are and what in their past taints their now for you to give them the understanding and grace you would readily give if you met them in that past moment.
Snapshots are only one moment in the making of a lifetime.
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