Not Mine

Have you ever had the distinct feeling that your body wasn’t your own? As a kid and as a teenager I was aware that decisions about how I looked and acted were controlled by my father.

I’m not referencing protective parenting where you won’t allow your child to cross a highway because you fear they’ll be struck by a truck. I’m referring to my dad not letting me get my hair cut. If I wanted to cut my hair, I had to get my dads approval first because he liked it long. Even after the major moment, when I was thirteen and finally allowed to cut my long hair, my dad continued to express his disapproval of me cutting my hair short. The shortest I ever had it cut was to my chin but that was still too short.

Throughout high school as my hair was cut, re-grown, and then cut again my dad could never say anything positive about how I looked. He scoffed at me, teased me, laughed at me, or told that he didn’t like my hair cut. I was caught in a trap with my dad. I only felt good or beautiful when my dad thought I was beautiful so I was chasing the balance between my father’s approval and my own. He only seemed capable of praising me when he had made a decision for me. My image wasn’t my own to decide. And when I deviated from a norm that was determined by my father, I was expected to understand that I wouldn’t be supported.

Wronged

I think the first time I felt she'd wronged me, really wronged me in a way a mother just should not wrong her daughter, was when she had all my hair cut off. Long long auburn hair cut so short I was often mistaken for a young boy. I'd felt wronged when she asked my father to leave or when I received a punishment I didn't understand, sure. As an adult, as a single-mother now myself, however, I've come to gain an understanding for those things.  Those events I could not grasp merely due to age, life experience and a lack of such encounters personally. But the Hair? Though I have my suspicions as to why, have my own idea's ... they still leave me feeling wronged. They do not excuse the act. They do not provide comfort for the self identity that was stolen. That is the first time I felt wronged by her, by my Mother.

~ Whytelash

Family Violence

When I was first asked if I’d like to do anything for Family Violence month, which is November, I felt uneasy. Even though I identify my father’s behaviour as abusive and I am able to recognize how it is affecting me I had never considered it to be family violence. Firstly my family didn’t look like the ones I had seen on tv or movies that were called violent. Secondly I was supposed to forgive my father because he had a troubled childhood. And Thirdly because of how frequently my father would have tantrums I let them blend into one long continuum to try and forget them easier. 

No my dad never hit me, or my mom, or my sister. And that was my understanding of what violence was growing up. If he didn’t hit us, not including spanking, we weren’t being abused. My dad would even boast proudly, acknowledging his temper, that he had never hit his family. But the hole in a wall left from a door flung open REALLY hard, the sound of tires spinning outside as a truck sped off, or the threat that my sister and I were never too old to be spanked were leaving scares on me. And these incidents never happened just once, but all the time.