7.11.2022

things i heard at the library: an occasional series: #34

A customer said this.
I tell my daughter I love her every day. I told my mother on her death bed, I'm not going to do what you did. I'm going to raise my daughter with love. 

My mother told me she hated me. She told me I ruined her life. She told me I was worthless and stupid. This is what they told her in the residential school. This was all she knew.

She would make me clean. She would force me down on my hands and knees to scrub the floor with my bare hands. She would push my face in the bucket with detergent and yell that it wasn't clean enough yet, push my face into the floor, and shout, look what you did, look what you did, you worthless slob.

To this day the smell of Pinesol turns my stomach. It can trigger my PTSD. My house is very dirty! I don't care. My daughter and I clean it together once in a while. We try to make it fun.

It took a lot of therapy and reading and hard work to find my way past that. But I am determined not to pass this to my daughter. I raised her with love.

3 comments:

Amy said...

Heartbreaking. One has to wonder how she broke that chain and found a way to be loving.

laura k said...

It is indeed heartbreaking, and also a testament to the strength and relisiency of people if they have help and support. She told me she has had both Indigenous, cultural-based healing and western-style therapy.

Amy said...

I am so glad she reached out for and obtained help. What a wise woman.