Visceral Observations

Memoirs, biographies and autobiographies have always fascinated me. 🙂 I have long since enjoyed reading people telling their own stories. While there have been so many heartwarming books written about their wonderful parents (What We Carry by Maya Shanbag Lang) or dealing with loss of a parent (H for Hawk by Helen MacDonald); I soon realized that there was also a sub-genre in the memoir genre which is dedicated a lot about traumatic childhood, parenting, and so on. 

Not every child has overtly neglecting parents like the ones who are drug / alcohol addicts, physically abusive, too poor, those who abandon, or are mentally / physically incapable of taking care of themselves or their kids. Even the ones with normal childhood can retain scars from good parents. In some cases, these scars aren’t very obvious nor do they linger in your memory particularly. You genuinely believe with good reason that you had a normal, happy childhood. And for most part, it probably was. But yet, you may grow up thinking you need to earn love by being a good girl / boy or by performing and overachieving. You may have witnessed emotional neglect from your parents where they did take care of all your needs but you were emotionally lonely because they were busy or unavailable emotionally. You may have grown up with exceedingly critical parents, which happens to a lot of girls, that your self-esteem takes a hit. You become extremely sensitive to feedback as you grow up. Your parents were loud or always shouting at you that your partner raising their voice causes panic. Your parents were your early role models and perhaps they were pretty bad with their boundaries such as saying no when they should have. And perhaps you too have a problem saying no as an adult. The list is endless; how little things from a normal, happy childhood can manifest in your adult life in how you show up in your relationships and workplaces. All parents aren’t bad parents but all parents do manage to screw up their kids in some way. I say this with all the love and acceptance of the good parents.