When did you stop being a child?

Dr. Edith Eger is an Holocaust Survivor and a practicing therapist who has vowed to never retire. Her life’s work is helping people to escape from the trauma that is holding them prisoner, often times long after the trauma is over. She says, “No one heals in a straight line.” She’s right, and we are all proof of that.

No one lives, heals, or loves in a straight line. With my own healing, it’s often been two steps forward, one step back. I dance. It’s never straight, but I get there. Dr. Eger often asks her patients, “When did you stop being a child?” And she will take them back to that moment. I have thought a lot about this question, because I think that is where my healing might begin and where my competencies were formed. I went to college in Massachusetts and my parents moved to Indiana just before my freshman year. I returned “home” to Indiana after my first year with the idea that I would stay for a week or two and then rejoin my friends back in Mass.

My parents hadn’t told me that one of my brothers was suffering with addiction and that he was in a program, not living at home. Or… that as part of his program we were going to stay at the rehab center for an intensive week of family therapy. When I got home, my father said, “Your Mother needs you at home, we don’t want you to go back to Massachusetts until school starts.” This was a very familiar role for me, and one that I slipped into with ease. Your Mother needs you. My sister was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) when she was 8 months old. I was 3. My Mother had to administer physical therapy to clear her lungs of the mucus that would stick to her lungs and make her sick. Three times a day my Mum would lay Shauna down across her lap and pat her on the back, she would sing songs to make it more bearable for her, for Shauna. “Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker’s.... ” “Man.” Shauna would finish. Then she would cough up the dangerous phlegm that could attract the pneumonia. To this day, I hate the sound of someone coughing. The sound of someone spitting makes me physically gag. I became the helper, doer, fetcher.

When I was five, I started helping with dinner. I would ask my Mum what was for dinner, and did she need me to go to the store for her. She would tear a piece of paper from the newspaper, a magazine, a book—whatever was near—and write down a few things, always careful not to make the list too big because I would need to fit all of the groceries into the basket that hung from my handle bars. Before you get all up in arms about a five year old biking to the store, let me describe my route. We lived in a beach town that was essentially deserted between Labor Day and Memorial Day. In the half of a mile between our house and the Brant Rock Market was the town center, which held a diner, a candy store, a fish store, a hardware store and the post office. I only had to cross 2 streets on the trip, and in the winter, my purple bicycle with the flower basket was the only vehicle on the roads. Anyone I saw on my travels knew my name. I would arrive at the market and would be greeted by name. Hi Kelly, what do you need? There were people to reach items for me if they were too high. The market was small. The meat counter was always the trickiest because usually by the time I would get to the market I would have lost the small slip of paper. I would have to remember, did she want 3 pounds eye of the round roast or 1 pound of ground beef? The butcher would sometimes call my mother and ask.

My mother was exhausted, and the only evidence of it that I could sense then and can see now is that she would let me do things that other five year olds don't do like ride the bike to the store or fill everyone's Easter baskets.

I loved the feeling of riding my bike to the store. I had purpose. I felt important, independent, smart, capable. I could do anything. She’s exhausted again when I come home after my freshman year. I do as my Dad asks, I stay. We go to the week of family therapy.

I remember being asked to sit in a very large circle in a room with other families. The only thing I remember from the entire week of therapy is sitting in that circle, feeling intimidated, out of place, out of sorts, as we listen to a mother across the circle talk about her deep sense of loss. She’s weeping. Her son or daughter is an addict and their family, like ours, are in therapy trying to figure it all out. She says, “I thought I had the Donna Reed family.” No one responds for a beat and then from across the circle my someone booms, “there’s no such thing as a Donna Reed family.” This isn’t the normal therapy murmurings, this is a booming proclamation from across the circle. There is no such thing as a Donna Reed family. It's my Dad who is booming his voice around the circle, then he stands and leaves the room. The woman wipes her face and sits back. The circle breaks up. “Dad??,” I follow him out of the room, “who’s Donna Reed?” The Donna Reed Show ran in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Donna Reed was the star and played the Mom, married to the pediatrician with 2 children, Mary & Jeff. Donna Reed was also a comedian, so the show was a typical sitcom, everything tidy-ed up with a wink and a laugh by the end of 30 minutes. My Dad and this Mom from the other side of the circle must have both grown up watching the show, she imagining that someday she would have that kind of family, my young father getting blasted with the reality that there really isn’t any such thing.

A Donna Reed family doesn’t have a child die at age seven from CF. A Donna Reed family doesn’t sit in a therapy circle. A Donna Reed family is not a real family, because as my Dad said, there is no such thing.

Real families have struggles. In real families nothing gets tidied up in half-hour segments. Real families are messy and complicated, full of love and heartbreak and security and uncertainty, joy and pain. And inside of those real families, if you’re lucky enough you can ask for help to get through the mess.

Back to Dr. Edith’s question. I can’t really pinpoint if I stopped being a child on the way to the grocery store at five or in that therapy circle at 18 or at any of the moments when my parents needed me in between. I do know that in both of those moments my core competencies were being laid out in a foundation that sustains me to this day. Without that foundation I would never have had the strength to rise to my mother’s last request of me; to help her die with dignity.

“Your mother needs you.”

Got it. It’s messy and real and complicated and I got it. I am the competent daughter.