Dreaming and surrendering

I’m a little bit afraid to write this. Some parts of my memoir are just tricky and very vulnerable to share.

But I feel moved that sharing my process may help others and this is the pulse I always follow when writing.

Over our holiday vacation my now adult son and teen daughter were laughing and joking about theft and gambling. And my son who has always been extremely competitive got us all playing poker. And of course, because he loves to push his mother’s buttons, kept joking about falling prey to gambling and crime.

There are so many ways that because of my actual lived experience, I have the ‘unexpected’ reaction to what may be normal lighthearted joking. I appreciated the closeness we have and their ability to feel free with me, and yet I also felt immense fear arise.

My mind was blown that I could work so hard for so many years to raise them away from my father’s criminal activity, and they could unwittingly play with fire.

My mind was blown that we live in a world where children who were so intentionally and lovingly raised have a platter of vices and underbelly laid before them.

My mind was blown that I really have zero control over any of this, no matter how hard I tried to break cycles.

Of course I knew these things, but it was ever more real in the moment.

Up until this time, I had really not shared much of my father’s crime life with my children. I always shared what little I knew of his good qualities but  felt sensitive to giving them any identification of a ‘criminal’ archetype or lineage to live into.

This I share with a knowing that as my father actually said, “there is a fine line between who ends up in jail and who stays out.’

I don’t judge my father’s path.

I understand the way the system fosters perpetuating cycles of criminality, the nuances of gang involvement and so on, but I don’t glamorize it either because I lived in its shadow. When steeped in media glamorizations, the wounded self can make many justifications, ‘we are warriors’ ‘it’s in our blood’ etc. Add to this a young person’s bravado and naivete, and you can understand why this mama would worry!

Because of my complex background, I don’t have a playbook for how to handle situations like this.

What do I do? Squash my fear down and keep the secret of why their playfulness is triggering me? Be a good lighthearted suburban mom and just laugh?

These are pressures I often feel, but ultimately I cannot do those things because I believe in authenticity. I have been holding onto alot since uncovering more about my father, after his death. And I felt in my bones, the energy of a secret is not healthy.

I decided to just do what always feels best, which is, be honest.

I felt guided that honoring my little girl’s experience and not hiding it, offered us all an opportunity to make our choices.

I had to sit with my feelings of helplessness over their path, their wellbeing and step into surrender.

So I pulled them aside, and shared with them a piece of my case file, where a social worker documents that while I was in his custody, my father was wanted for robbery in three different cities. This was a small fraction of his story but I knew that sharing something documented, in my hand, may convey the reality.  I shared that when they joke, I understand where they are coming from but it is not a joke to me.

It is terrifying.

I know how a whole life can crumble in the aftermath.

(and how many lives continue to)

They were sweet and understanding as they always are, but the irony continued.

A few days later, my son described a pageboy type hat and said he really wanted one, and I unthinkingly said, ‘oh I have one that was my dad’s.’ I regretted it the moment I said it, but he was excited and urged me to dig it out of the garage.

I hesitated to give it to him, but my partner said, ‘aww, he just thinks it’s special because it was his grandfather’s.” I tried to see it through that innocent lens but it was not my default because I know the backstory. And I realized later the expectation that I would view it that way is dismissive of my lived experience and gaslighty, though I know it was not his intention.

So now, he is getting us all to play poker and he’s playing with my dad’s hat on, making his usual jokes.

I’m sitting there thinking about how little I understand in this whole dream of life and how there are elements and forces at play that are so beyond me.

And I just have to surrender.

Of course, I will do what a mama bear does, and pray and cleanse and send away any hungry ghost energy as well as I can. And this includes taking the hat back (and probably burning it) because I didn’t painstakingly create a better reality for us, for my father who abandoned me and blamed me for my own abandonment, to be venerated in some false nostalgia.

My son is sweet, of good heart, a true friend, extremely witty and playful and I prefer to buy him a hat that only holds his energy and the highest expression of his ancestors.

But ultimately, I have to surrender ‘my children’ to their unfolding in the dream.

Even if I talk about spiritual concepts of protection, awareness, or  the ‘reality of crime and the system,’ they generally can’t fully hear it from me, the one playing their ‘mom’ in this dream.

They need their village…but it’s broken.

They need their earth connection…but they live in a landscape normalizing her rape and oppression.

They need their grandparents…and yet one of them modeled a dangerous and heartbreaking path.

And this, this is our current expression of the dream, and I can’t change it for them in a grand way.

On this wintry day, in the new gregorian year, a ‘new year’ that is an invention, a collective dream,  I can  step outside and expand this dream, knowing it’s a dream.

I know there are so many other possibilities, that there is so much liberation in breaking cycles and stepping into more real love and connection. And yet I’m also remembering that I can only truly know and realize this for myself. This is the essence of free will, and after many years of facilitating, a truth I know deeply:

no one can choose love and liberation for us.

We are each the keepers of our souls.

I say none of this lightly, because these are my babies after all.

It is so hard to feel the deep helplessness. And I do try to contradict my trauma brain and bring in the truth that they will likely be okay/our realities are different/they can tell loving from unloving.  I also allow the righteous outrage and grief that I have to think about these things when others can live in oblivion.

Still ultimately, I can only tend to my soul, embracing her, walking the path that feels good and nourishing, bringing back the wholeness she needed and deserved and holding this for my family.

Hoping upon hope that the light of this love grounds and sustains my children on a harmonious path.

Yet also knowing, I am just one small part in a huge, complex, nuanced,

ever unfolding Mystery.

A remembering that is its own liberation.

So this is where I sit, and this is what I share, not because I feel a lofty ability to surrender, but because it is a path I’m walking of necessity and as always,

I hope the breath it gives me, can be helpful to you.

And let’s all keep our future generations in our prayers,

because putting our energy there has immense power too.