The sins of our fathers

On broken children breaking cycles.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.”
- Philip Larkin

Approximately 30 years ago, a little boy aged about 5 or 6 was picked up from school by his dad and never went home.

He was driven hundreds of miles across the country. To a new house, a new school, a new ‘family’.

He didn’t see or hear his mother for a year after that. She was just gone.

You’d probably call it kidnapping today. You’d probably call it kidnapping then too.

The years that followed brought trauma. The years before weren’t much better. Trauma made friends with him there, too.

When he was small it looked like being pushed through windows to vandalise property. Set fire to wallpaper. Throw paint on cars. Things to spite the other parent because he was still little enough to fit or too young to understand. It was being caught in heated crossfires - strapped into the back of a car, driving at speed, headed for one parent or another. It was being put on top of a shed that he couldn’t get down from when he’d been ‘naughty’.

That’ll teach you.

Then when he grew it looked like having his records smashed. Being held at knife point. Living out of his car. Being scared enough that he had to sleep with a sofa pushed up against his bedroom door.

But it was also smaller things. Quieter cruelties. Things that his friends got without thinking.

No money for school trips or school shoes. Smaller cruelties that lead to bigger ones - being the only one left in the classroom when friends piled onto buses. Hearing the stories when they came back and not being able to join in. Feeling the shame of the battered shoe that told a thousand stories - none of them kind.

It was not being supported in things he wanted to do. Not being supported full stop.

It was feeling all the things that little boys feel and having nowhere to feel them. Then feeling all the things that bigger boys feel with nowhere to feel those either. Feelings that grew teeth and bred their own destructive behaviours. Behaviours and feelings that shouted “I need you to feel me and I will keep coming back until you do”.

It was crying in his room in secret.

Feeling so alone and unsafe that he could never quite breathe easy. Like his lungs stopped expanding before he felt like he’d taken in sufficient air.

Fight or flight. Constantly.

Childhood trauma.

It began wrapping its arms around him like an unwelcome hug from a young age. And it stayed lodged there.

Of course, there were good times too. With friends, in the sea, at the beach. This is Devon we’re talking about – white sand and salt and sunshine and palm trees and seagulls and good things. Things childhoods are made of.

Some might say there are worse places to be taken if you’re going to be kidnapped.

And there were good times with parents, too.

Because people are never all bad.

But they were bad enough.

And when your parents are bad enough, it’s still pretty bad. Because when the people who are supposed to love you the most, protect you the hardest, and see you the clearest get it so wrong, it rewires you.

It teaches you not that they failed, but that you weren’t worth getting it right for.

The little boy hasn’t seen his father for over 18 years now.

Now a man he would probably tell you he doesn’t really have parents. Not in the way we think of parents. Security. Protection. Unconditional love. A safety net. Or should I say, not in the way I think of parents.

Unfortunately I’m sure there are plenty of others who think of parents just like the little boy.

The little boy with the glowing blonde bowl cut. With a smile that reaches every corner of his beautifully angelic, cheeky face. The smile he still has 30+ years later. Full lips frozen in a perfect heart shape. Little ears that stick out in what I’ve affectionally decided are trophy handles.

The little boy who in many lights looks so much like my little boy. Both perfect. Precious. Deserving of love and safety.

The little boy is my partner.

The little boy is now the father of my son.

The little boy who was broken and is now trying his best to raise a little boy who isn’t.

The little boy who is sometimes parenting while on fire.

We are all doing our best to raise our little people to be whole – loved and untouched by the messes we carry. And we all carry messes - some are just more messy than others.

But when you grow up with pain, neglect, volatility or complete emotional absence, you don’t walk away untouched.

You carry it with you – sometimes tucked away neatly. So neatly no one would ever know. So neatly in fact that people expect you to see situations as they do (I am guilty of this) – people who have lived a life of sunshine and roses in comparison – people like me.

Sometimes though, it spills over. In your relationships, in your parenting and in your sense of self.

Most of us parent by memory you see – whether unconscious or not. We lean on examples we saw growing up.

But what if all you saw was dysfunction, chaos, anger, detachment?

I don’t think we talk enough about how heavy that is.

The awe I have for people who are doing this parenting thing from a space like that – I can’t quite put into words. And I definitely don’t tell my partner that enough. The awe I have for him. It’s something I must do better at.

The weight of raising a child is hard enough, even with a family rooted in stability. But the weight of raising a child with nothing but instinct, love and a determination to be better than what came before is something else entirely.

Trying to stay calm, present and nurturing while parts of you are still stuck in the rubble of your own upbringing. Trying to parent your own child while reparenting yourself. I don’t profess to know what that feels like.

I walk through my life with the quiet knowledge that whatever happens, my parents will be there. The tiniest inconvenience, or the biggest catastrophe – I know I can count on them to help. It’s not something I even have to think about.

It’s taken for granted.

Like air.

You don’t think about breathing. You just do it. Much like I don’t wonder if I will be okay if something goes wrong because, well… I just know I will be. Because of them.

There is no way for me to understand what the other side of that feels like. And when I try I feel sad. And I feel angry. So angry.

For my partner. And for all the little boys and girls who have experienced the same.

We talk about “breaking cycles”.

So much of that happens after someone has children of their own. And that is hard. So very hard.

You might feel like you’ve done the work, or some of it at least. And then bam, you have a child and the wounds that you felt able to close are ripped wide open. Ripped open with jagged, painful edges.

Because when you love your own child unconditionally you can’t understand how anyone can do it any differently.

What was it that made you so unloveable?

The answer, dear reader, is nothing.

You did nothing. Nothing at all. And maybe that makes it worse. Maybe it’s why your head tells you that you’re bad. Because there had to be something that made them treat you this way.

But there wasn’t. There really wasn’t.

Your parents were ill-equipped. Possibly broken by their own childhoods. Carrying wounds they never learned to heal. And I could say it’s their loss. And it is. But that minimises the pain. Because to not have reliable, loving parents is a loss that will always be felt.

They aren’t dead. They just aren’t there. And what’s worse?

The sins of the fathers visit the sons

“Hurt people hurt people.” And in parenting it’s maybe not because they want to, but because they don’t know any different.

We inherit behaviours. Passed down from one generation to the next. A father the product of his father. And his before him. And on and on it goes.

Absence, emotional coldness, cruelty – they aren’t born from nowhere. They’re handed down, polished and repeated until someone says: enough.

Maybe you are that someone. Like my partner.

To the cycle breakers

If you’re reading this as someone who grew up in a house where love was inconsistent, or cruel, or simply missing, and you’re trying to do better now, I have no words of wisdom other than, give yourself grace.

Having only watched it through someone I love from the outside, I can’t know the struggle first hand. But I know that beating yourself up will do nothing. So, give yourself grace.

If you’re trying to soothe a crying baby or an angry toddler with tenderness no one ever showed you, give yourself grace.

If you’re terrified of becoming your parents and still sometimes hear their voices coming out of your own mouth, give yourself grace.

If you are still here, still trying, still doing, still becoming, give yourself grace.

You are not your childhood. You are not your parents. You are not where you came from. And you are not doomed.

You are doing the work. Hard, hard work.

And maybe your own childhood didn’t show you what love really looked like. But your children will know. Because of you.

Not perfect. Nothing ever is. But safe. And loved.

And they’ll love you right back. And maybe that won’t erase what was lost, but it might eventually begin to heal it.