Dear Mom,

Yesterday morning at breakfast, Idris asked me how I could send you letters if you’re dead. Good question, right? My answer was that I am not sending the letters anywhere. I’m simply writing them. In the hopes that somewhere out there, you are reading my words. 

Seemed like an innocent enough explanation for a five-year-old. And there is definitely some truth to what I said.

What I didn’t want to tell Idris, is that it goes deeper than that. I originally began writing these letters to simply restart a dialogue with you. To talk to you again. Now it seems I’m not writing only to you. I’m writing to me. I’m exploring my own issues by posing questions. Questions I know I probably would have never asked you while you were alive. And during this process of digging into my childhood, I am in turn learning lessons that will directly relate to how I raise him and his sister. I am hoping to learn from mistakes. To make better choices.

But as I focus on doing things differently and not making the same mistakes you made, I start to feel guilty. Because I don’t think your choices and mistakes as a parent are the sole source of all of my issues. I don’t want to place all the blame on you. That’s not fair. You are not my villain.

And that makes me wonder. Is there a villain in my life’s story? Does there have to be?

I think it’s natural to want to find a villain. To search for the bad guy. If I am the protagonist of my story, which I’ve in recent years accepted, then there must be some outside force to cause me my pain. And if there are no villains, then what is the cause?

Or what if there are larger villains that affect us all? Culture? Societal norms? Standards and double standards? 

If there is no villain, then should I be searching for the inciting incident of my story? Trying to pinpoint where to place blame? When did it all shift? What happened to cause me to become my damaged self? 

Could it have been a seed planted by a person in my life? Maybe an ex-boyfriend who emotionally abused me? Was it a friend who was in actuality using me and never cared about my safety? Was it simply the alcohol I was consuming? Or was it just my deep insecurities that clouded my judgement?

I’ve gone through all the possibilities, and the only concrete conclusion I’ve come to is that, again, you, Mom, are not my villain. 

And after looking deeper into my past I don’t think there is any villain at all. I don’t think there is an inciting incident either.

It seems like it was more of a culmination of years of searching. Waiting. Looking for connections. Friendships. Happiness. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t in need of medication. I was one of those under the radar kids and teens. I wasn’t ok but I wasn’t anywhere near being at severe risk. So, I went unnoticed. It was a slow burn. I guess if anything I could place blame on the absence of help. But that doesn’t feel right either.

Ultimately, none of my complications in life were your fault. They weren’t anyone’s. And this need to find somewhere to place blame feels wrong to me. It feels immature. Juvenile. I should be taking responsibility for my actions and moving on. Right?

And even now that I am aware of the fact that there is no one person or one event to blame, I still find this profound need to uncover and shed light and find an overall meaning.

But it all feels very human.

Why? What is this need to fill in all the holes of our youth? Why do we as adults long to find all of our answers? Why do we question everything? Why can’t we just be happy with the unknown? With the imperfections?

What is this seemingly universal need to blame our parents for everything? I don’t blame you now, but I have in the past. And those thoughts still sneak in from time to time. Because it’s easier to blame you. That’s the truth.

As I’ve been digging into my childhood lately, I’m started to realize that no parents are perfect. And now that I am a parent of kids, not babies, I can safely say that it is a waste of time to chase perfection. We try our best and we still make colossal mistakes. It’s as if I’m waiting for the years to pass to find out how I screw up my own children. It’ll happen in some way. I’m sure of it.

It’s an interesting process to question your parenting with me while I’m parenting my own kids. Everything becomes comparable. Like, I often ask why we were alone as kids so often. Why did you allow your kids to be so independent? You never came with us on our walks to the video store. You weren’t at the playground with us. So many movies we watched without you that were widely inappropriate for our ages. The Lost Boys did become my favorite movie at what? Five years old? And I’m not angry about any of that. Especially my movie choices. But I do question it. Why weren’t we together more? Why weren’t you paying attention to us?

And then I wonder where were all the parents? Did any kids in the 90s have parents hanging out with them? I don’t recall any adults in the neighborhood while kids were playing. Plus, we were in the burbs. It was safe. We were released into the outdoors every day and we all found our way home for dinner. This was hardly a characteristic of our household alone. 

And now I’m thinking beyond the 90s. Parents weren’t home coloring with their children in the 80s or 70s or 60s or before. It doesn’t take long to get to a time period where kids had to work at a young age. And then those who got married at a young age. There was never a time where children were truly raised by their parents.

So why is it so normal now to blame our absent parents for our own issues? Why do I feel the need to question if you’re the reason for all my loneliness? For all my insecurities? 

Again, it’s not your fault. 

It’s no one’s fault. It simply is. All of my problems throughout the years are a result of tiny choices. Choices that may have been driven by need or by desire or by chance. Some choices were barely thought threw spur of the moment decisions. And some of the chances I took resulted in years of darkness. But again, I can’t trace it back to anything concrete enough to blame. I really just have to take responsibility and move on. However, I am starting to believe it is more than natural to question. We as humans do that. We study history and art and ancient civilizations because of our deep need for answers. So, it makes total sense that we would question our own paths. Our own parents. Our own lineage.

And as I question and compare, I ultimately come to a recurring theme in my journey. That I didn’t have it so bad. 

I tend to minimize my life experiences. As if my trivial moments are nothing in comparison to others who go through true traumatic events. Like who am I to complain about my issues when nothing bad actually happened to me? When I don’t suffer from any legitimate mental health problems. No diagnoses. No chronic health disorders. I had it easy. So, I have no business looking into my past.

I did the same thing with your death. 

When you died it was very much expected. You were diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor said you had one year to live. Through clinical trials you lived for five. Lucky was an understatement. I remember the day you died. The week you died. Hearing stories of terrible accidents like a woman who was hit by a car while on her bicycle. Never saw it coming. I knew of friends who lost their mothers much earlier than me. And in unexpected ways. Quick cancers. Brain aneurisms. 

I was lucky. 

And as I’ve been recently thinking more and more about my upbringing and all the dark times I’ve gone through during my life; I keep arriving at the same place. That ultimately, I should quit complaining. Quit trying to place blame. To understand. To uncover. What is there really to uncover in a perfectly privileged life? While there are wars going on in the world. While there are real monsters walking the streets. Murders. Attacks. Attempts. There is legitimate darkness in the world and here I am questioning whether or not I was left alone too often as a child. Like shut up, Rachel. Stop your complaining. 

But again, I wonder, isn’t this kind of the whole point in life? Isn’t it a natural human experience to question everything? To compare our lives with those around us. To wonder how things could be different.

I recognize comparisons can be tricky. Like after you died, I used to say it could have been worse. It almost felt like that weighed in on how much grief was appropriate. Like I wasn’t supposed to mourn you too hard because your death wasn’t as traumatic as it could have been. But that’s bullshit. There is no measurement to grief. I am allowed to be devastated by losing you. Even if we all ultimately lose our mothers at some point during our lifetimes. Even if some have lost their mothers more tragically than I did. None of that matters in the long run. I still lost you. I still miss you. Your death still greatly impacted my life. And because I told myself at the time that I shouldn’t grieve you too hard, my process stopped prematurely. And putting a pause on my growth forced me to be hit much harder later.

And now, that I’m telling myself not to be too hard on my upbringing, that others had it way worse, I’m wondering if I’m falling for the same trap. Am I giving too much lenience? Am I allowing my small moments to dissipate because they aren’t as impactful as the bigger traumas others go through?

In the end, I’m concluding that this isn’t so black and white. We can take responsibility for our actions and can also question whether or not an outside force pushed us. We can hold these two ideas at the same time. Because even if you are not to blame, there are still choices you made as my mother that fed into me making my own decisions. There are things others did around me and to me that may have been small and insignificant in the grand picture, but when added together did indeed make an impression on me. Moments in my past most certainly impacted my future. But my hands weren’t tied behind my back. I stood on my own two feet and made my choices. And that’s on me. I recognize that. 

Going forward, I do still want to dig into my past. I still have the desire to discover new aspects of my childhood that relate to who I am as an adult. And I do think I owe it to myself to take these moments seriously. Even if my mini little ‘t’ traumas don’t come close to comparing to the big ‘T’ traumas of others, that doesn’t mean I should disregard them completely. They do still have a hold on me. And I do have to face all the ups and downs if I want to grow. I also have to allow myself space to sift through all the baggage. To clearly see which moments were pivotal in my development and how I can learn from them.

Because essentially, and this is yet another recurring theme of these letters, I want to take what I uncover and use those lessons to better my own parenting skills. I want to be able to raise my kids with an awareness that I don’t think was present in my own childhood.

One of the big changes I hope to make in my own family is the ability to fully communicate with one another. It’s strange to me that we don’t talk to our parents about their flaws. Seems it’s socially acceptable to question everything behind their backs. Talking with therapists. Talking with spouses. Writing letters to a dead relative. But why don’t we feel comfortable being honest with each other in real time? This is what I want to possess as a parent. I want my kids to talk to me about my parenting in the moment. To feel free to question my choices. To feel like they can make real impact on the way we interact. This is what I ultimately want. And this is why I write to you.

Just wish these letters weren’t so one-sided. 

That was a joke.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel