My children paid for wounds that I hadn't healed

Not too long ago I was in a couple's therapy session with my lovely therapist, Janell. I had no idea what was about to happen to me. As I sat there my entire body felt flooded with emotion that I learned, long ago, to keep inside, to not let anyone see, to not be vulnerable, to not show weakness. I couldn't control what happened. Tears filled my eyes while my chest tightened and I could barely speak.

No one was ready for what erupted from me.

I hadn't been thinking about guilt per se, but I have been thinking about my children. It's what I always do, really, even though 4 of them are adults and two of them are parents themselves. One of my children is experiencing very tough times. He's been without a job for many months because their union cannot agree with the company. He hasn't gotten unemployment. He and the mother of his beautiful daughter had been doing well co-parenting after a relationship split, but everything changed. I felt for him and for my granddaughter so much because I had been there before. I remember the feelings. I remember having no money, but having to keep it all together for the kids.

Then I realized that I am one of the only people there to support him. The realization that I chose a man who was not only incapable of loving me, but also unable to love his children unconditionally was too much for my nervous system to hold onto any more. In the past few months I had to accept that their father is incapable of supporting them emotionally, unable to celebrate their accomplishments in a real way, to be there when life gets so difficult, and to understand that being a father means being loyal to your own children over anyone else. It hit me so hard that I felt like I couldn't breathe. The devastation of how incompetent he turned out to be as a dad made me cry in a way I hadn't in many years.

I chose him and I am ashamed.

My other two relationship decisions also negatively affected my children. I just didn't realize that I ignored red flags because being steeped in a relationship where I had to regulate the other person, where I walked on eggshells all the time, watched what I said, how I said it, and became less and less of me was like home. I am ashamed.

I learned way too late what isn't ok and my children were casualties of this war. I don't know if I can ever forgive myself. I just spent a paragraph or more putting down their father, but I am guilty too, of not being the best parent I could be. I knew how to love them, that's for certain. I knew how to support them, to honor them, celebrate them, but I didn't protect them. I am ashamed.

Then there's my mother. Yeah, I disconnected in 2010, but I never protected my children from her because I didn't think she would behave that way toward my kids. I was wrong. It took her a long time to show the crazy to them and have her behavior negatively affect them, but affect them she has, and continues to. Should I have cut them off from her years ago too? I really should have. I had an opportunity to protect them and I didn't do it. I want to hurt her for what she's done to my children and I am ashamed for what she's done when I naively trusted that she wouldn't.

I don't know how to give myself grace. Could you break it all down to being a broken human after the type of childhood I had? Probably. It doesn't let me off the hook, though. I should have done better. I realized it way too late. I never felt emotionally safe and I didn't realize that I put my children in situations where they didn't feel that way, either.

Cue the Cher song... If I could turn back time... If only.

This is a very real part of being a victim of abuse. It carries through generations unless you find a way to recognize it early, to understand how it shadows your decisions, to have a real grasp on the types of people who feel 'normal', when that normal is not healthy for anyone.

I claim to be well on my way of healing, but I'm not at all close to forgiving myself for the harm done to my children as a direct result of my own choices. While I may never have said an abusive word to them, or never made them feel less than, unloved, unwanted, or un-cared-for, the environments in which I placed them, over which they had zero control, tainted their childhoods. I am ashamed.

I have to work through this because I feel like it's eating me from the inside out. I don't have a pathway towards that yet because I see the looks on their faces when they talk about their disappointment in their father, or they bring up their other negative experiences growing up that I cannot change, no matter how much I want to.

I think one son got me back just a little bit when he stole my V8 Dodge Challenger and took it for a joyride in a Northwest Indiana snow storm. You know who you are...

I'm proud of them. I really am. I'm going to do my best to keep being someone they confide in, someone they can always depend on, no matter what. I would do that anyway, even without the ugly guilt monster chewing through me. If you know any way to tame that viscious beast (the guilt, not the kid who stole the Challenger... although he's still a little feral), I'm all ears.