Love's Well Wishes
“I wish you well.”
That opening line of this beautiful song Matthew Perryman Jones wrote to his precious young daughters, stops me in my tracks every time I hear it.
From the time I was 18 years old, my heart knew that I understood the cycle of abuse to be love.
That understanding became powerfully clear when a guy I was having a little summer fling with really hurt my feelings, and then sent me a rose and that hurt melted away in an instant.
Even at 18 years old, as I was overwhelmed with joy holding that rose in my hand, the tiny part of my heart that knows all things was screaming that something was really wrong with my immediate forgetting of that pain at the first shred of kindness.
I thank all that is holy for 80s TV movies, because that is where I learned about the cycle of abuse, and it’s how my heart knew something was wrong in that moment.
Never doubt the power of storytelling that reaches the masses; it’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful for the platforms from which my amazing friend Miles Adcox is able to speak.
Those movies, and that awareness, saved my life.
I promise you that had I been in relationships all these years prior to this healing work, I would have chosen one where I was being hurt, I would absolutely have stayed, and I could well have ended up dead.
As it was, several of my close friendships were abusive, and those friends’ primary relationships were very clearly abusive.
I have long wondered how I came to understand so deeply the cycle of abuse to be love, when there was no traditional “abuse” in my home or family.
There was certainly screaming and yelling, but there was never anything close to violence, and there was absolutely no question - then or now - that all of my parents and stepparents wanted the best for me and loved me to the absolute best of their ability.
Still, abuse felt like love to me, to the depth where I actually told someone in the year before I moved to Nashville, that it was so much sweeter when someone was mean to me and then apologized, than it was when they were kind to me the whole time.
I discovered this morning as I wrote a fairly epic email to the man who brought the truth of love to my life and heart, how it was that I came to understand abuse to be love.
Surprise is an amazing teacher.
Paying attention to what surprises us shows us the foundation on which we are walking, and the things we are carrying and believing that we’re not even aware of.
A father speaking the words “I wish you well” to his daughters, takes me completely by surprise.
It was powerfully clear to me that my parents didn’t wish me well.
Of course they did, but all that matters to the development of our hearts is what we hear and understand and experience ... People’s intentions have absolutely nothing to do with our experience, and thus nothing to do with how we come to know ourselves and the world.
Hear me: It doesn’t matter if you love your children.
What matters is whether they feel and experience it.
If they don’t, THEY ARE NOT LOVED, regardless of how much you love them.
Acknowledging the vast chasm between what is said and what is heard, and the truth that only one of those matters to our experience, is a monumental piece of the work of healing.
It’s how we unravel our story from everyone else’s, the only way we can truly heal.
When we don’t first do that, when we see our story only in the context of others and their intention, we cannot fully own the truth of our experience - because we require that “they” did something before we can fully own it - and therefore we cannot heal our wounds.
So, a couple of things contributed to my understanding that my parents didn’t wish me well.
My mother, the most powerful voice in my life, was so entrenched in her own pain that ANYONE’S joy was a dagger in her heart.
She experienced other people’s joy as a painful reminder of what she would never have, so she was unable to truly wish ANYONE well. Joy and good fortune, mine or anyone else’s, were met with “It must be nice,” lacing every joy with guilt at its being wrong, undeserved, and taking something from her.
My dad on the other hand, clearly wanted the best for me, but in his worldview you had to earn your worth and value through performance, and I was never, ever good enough.
My young life, then, was a never-ending series of punishments for my grades and my “dishonesty” about them … Something they characterized as a moral failing that was fundamental to who I was, rather than the absolute survival mechanism it was.
Their wrath was vicious and shattering, and my “moral failing” was nothing less than self-preservation.
Not only were these never-ending punishment in the way of taking away privileges, but they came with the cold shoulder of parental disapproval and disappointment.
I didn’t simply lose the things that brought me joy, I lived for months and months on end in the dark and bitter cold of my parents being “mad at me.”
Endlessly and painfully and shatteringly so.
While I fully understand that their intention was only the best for me, what I learned at a fundamental level - what all children learn from punishment, particularly when it’s tied up with horrific emotional deprivation - was this:
My parents wanted me to hurt.
I understood to the core of my soul that in my quiet moments, I was supposed to be hurting and suffering and endlessly berating myself for not being better.
I understood that that’s what they wanted for me.
Even as I know now - and I knew then - that their endgame was ultimately for me to be better and have a happy life, they nevertheless WANTED ME TO HURT, then and in my quiet moments.
My. Parents. Wanted. Me. To. Hurt.
That is what this little girl - whose mother incidentally also called her fat - understood.
It is just not ok to be conveying to our precious children that we want them to hurt.
Ever.
EVER.
Not even for a moment.
It is never, ever “love” inflicting pain on your child.
It is also not benign.
It shatters their hearts.
It destroys their lives.
So, at 46 years old, I truly can’t fathom what it is for someone who matters deeply to me to wish me well.
For someone to wish me peace, and a life of love and joy.
It still feels like the fundamental truth of the universe that if someone matters deeply to me, they want me to earn those things by being “good enough” and being who they want me to be, or to painfully suffer.
This is what we learn when we are controlled rather than loved.
When our parents endeavor to shape and create who we are, rather than endeavoring to come to know, embrace, and celebrate who we are.
We don’t come into the world blank pages to be written.
We come into the world fully written pages to be read and discovered.
Control writes over those pages, obscuring the beauty and truth of who we are and creating wars inside us.
Love simply sheds light and reads those pages, in awe and wonder at every word.
Control wishes us ”good” and “right.”
Love wishes us well.
I will never have sufficient words to thank Matthew Perryman Jones for this and so many other powerful lessons I’ve learned in the space he creates.
If you don’t have The Waking Hours, go pick it up, along with the rest of his stunning catalog.
It is healing magic.