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Today, September 28, 2009 I feel I am finally ready to begin to face down my own feelings about my father. I want to do this because I have NEVER made any progress toward finding my own truth about who and how my father was in my life — either when I was a child or when I was an adult — by continuing to ‘try’ to be angry with him.
My truth today is that there’s a mystery here. I don’t KNOW my father. He is talked about in my mother’s letters. I even have access to letters that he wrote himself. I have a right to explore and examine my father — as much a right as I have to do this in regard to my mother.
These pages will reflect my efforts to find my father. I have nobody to answer to about him but myself. I am granting myself permission to do my own explorations, find my own ‘evidence’, search for my own understandings, come to my own conclusions — about my father. Nobody stops me but myself.
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1959 May -- Dad so thin, all of us walking the mountain
Homesteading: That’s me with the white round thing, Cindy, then Sharon to my right, John to my left, photo somewhat fire damaged, hence the reddish tinge.
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This page has the following sub pages.
- *Photographs – My Father
- *My Father and All the Broken Vehicles
- *Link to post (093009) about my father’s missing ‘self’
- *Poem my father wrote to my mother
- *Link to October 21, 2009 Post About My Father
- *1959 September 11 – Dad’s note to Grandmother about $ troubles
- *1962 November – The 5th Year Moose Hunt
- *1963 – August – Dad’s Civil Engineer Work Promotion Form
- *My father’s first letter from Alaska June 11, 1957
- *1959 – April 3 – Father on tractor with kids on mountain road in snow
- *1961 Dad and Baby David (on changing table)
- *1963 – August 12 – Letter from Dad to Mother
- *1963 – August 19 – Letter From Dad to Mother – He’s in Alaska, we’re on way to Santa Fe, New Mexico
- *1963 – August 23 – Dad’s Letter to Mother
- *1963 – August 26 – Letter from Dad to Mother –
- *1963 – September 3 – Dad’s Letter to Mother While the Rest of Us Are In New Mexico
- *1963 – September 4 – Letter from dad to mother
- *1963 – September 6 – Dad’s Letter to Mother
- *1963 – September 8 — Dad’s Letter to Mother
- *1963 – October – trip back from Santa Fe – Dad at Grand Canyon
- *1968 or 1969 – Link to phograph of Dad adding wood ends onto Jamesway
Thank you! I am going to be reaching the true Cinderella stage of my childhood soon in my book writing – so won’t second guess what I will find there! It was absolutely THERE — but because Mother was a severe Borderline (and I am guessing your wasn’t?) the ‘reasons’ behind all that she did were, well, without ‘reason’ in any ordinary sense of the word.
I am not sure I will ever — quite frankly — waste my time any more than I have already done “trying to figure out my father.” I don’t think I, honestly, GIVE A CRAP! He did what he did and that included — well – he was Mother’s co-criminal in my book.
Some of us end up with a WHOLE CHUNK of too much to deal with — coming on down the generations! I had a marriage to someone I would call ‘passive-aggressive’ (P.A.) – a doormat with hidden agendas. I divorced him and really have never looked pack. I find P.A. stupid and nauseating in my adult life, no time for it whatsoever.
They do, obviously, get a huge payoff but it’s no more than a form of twisted masturbation in my book. Pardon me, but why mince words?
I am relationship free for the most part. I am in love with a man who I will never live with — and it’s taken me over 11 pain-filled years to learn the wisdom in this situation. But it is there!
I am very grateful this blog has offered insights that are useful to you! A rough rough road we walk in so many ways. Peace, true peace be to US!!
Dear Linda,
I want to write to you to say how much your blog has opened new doors for me. I found you through your work on vagus nerve connection to trauma. Thank you for all you’ve done. I’ve read most of your site, and your other two but must admit I have not read every single post and link. I am fascinated by how much back story you have on your mother, father and grandmothers……what a gift. After reading about the account of your father blowing up after you left and choking your mother I began to think about those relationships (wondering how much of it impacts the children) and it has led me down an interesting path.
You title this section “Where was my father?” and I think that is a very valid title, and a question that was never really answered. The accounts I have read lead me to believe that your mother was in over her head (I know I would have been!) caring for several children and moving over and over, seemingly by herself to a homestead in Alaska. Your father always seemed to be elsewhere……..much like my own father. I was the last child in my family, 6 years younger than my next oldest half-brother. I was the only child of the marriage of my mother and father but like Cinderella was forced to cook and clean for the rest of the family while the others did as they pleased. My mother seemed also to be in over her head but used me as the great equalizer. I know she was abused as a child as well as my father and that made them the people they were. I didn’t understand it then, but now know that my parents had a classic passive aggressive husband/martyr wife dynamic going on.
I understand it now because I have installed myself in a very similar dynamic. My intense research into this over the last two days has produced this: The martyr wife was a victim at some point in her life which affected her self esteem. She attempts to control situations because of the anxiety it produces.
This type of woman is drawn to the passive aggressive man because they are so passive in the beginning…….classic nice guy – he seems very safe. Only problem is the nice guy is only really nice on the surface. He is a simmering volcano underneath but frightened to let it out due to his contentious relationship with his parents. So the pleaser outter persona “appears” to go along with whatever the wife wants but chafes underneath at being “made to do something” he didn’t want to do but can’t stand up and say so (replaying childhood dynamic). So he goes about undermining his wife at every turn in very surreptitious, passive aggressive ways because as a child he was not allowed to express anger or learn how to deal with it properly.
The wife is already on edge from her background and as a martyr takes on far more than she should and now the husband is pushing buttons left and right, only no one else can really see what is going on, least of all the children. Seemingly the major issue is the male is super dependent upon the female but resents it to the nth degree and punishes her for her attempts to control his out of control adolescent behavior.
It appears on the exterior that Daddy = good cop/ Mommy = bad cop and that probably is true because Daddy is forcing her to express the anger he cannot and then feels righteous when he can push her into blowing up. These types are drawn together like moths to flame………I’m sure the dynamic can go the other way, but P.A. husband/Martyr wife seems to be the most common configuration.
In your case, you were the first born daughter and I would expect that your mother expected you to be the little helpmeet that she wanted and needed. I don’t know how you fulfilled that role, but clearly it wasn’t to her liking. I was the accidental last, very much unwanted, child who had the very bad luck to be an almost carbon copy of my mother and she projected all her fears and failing on to me and since she was abused as a child well…….”bad things happen to everybody, forget about it”.
This most surely led me to two failed marriages and now a third with another passive aggressive. I always suspected this, but couldn’t really put my finger upon it. Your blog was the ignition point. I don’t know that my interpretation of my situation has any relevance to yours, but I wanted to tell you anyway. Perhaps your father really was a saint and your mother a demon, but my journey in life tells me that the truth is rarely so simple or cut and dried.
Thank you for all the work you have done here. You may use this on your blog if you like, only I would rather you didn’t use my name…..call me Cinderella if you wish