I cried once in between the funerals of my father in 2001 and my mother in 2012.
It was my sophomore year of high school, and I was in the living room with Mom. It had been a rough day at track practice with homework assignments looming across multiple subjects. Mom asked me what studying/homework I had to do, and I broke down.
The work wasn’t undoable; it was just the combination of all the challenges happening at once. I told Mom about performing poorly in practice, plus all the near-due school stuff, and I trailed off and cried. Mom was standing over me, so I stood up off the couch and just hugged her and cried into her shoulder for maybe 30 seconds. And in response, Mom said….
….nothing. She said nothing. I stopped crying, she nodded to me, murmured, “OK,” and I went upstairs and about my business.
….That’s not a very touching story, you’re probably thinking, especially on the anniversary of Mom’s passing. I agree. I share this, however, because this year is different than any year prior. I have taken a personal day off from work, something I have never done on a parent’s death anniversary, and I am honoring Mom in a way that has taken me every one of these prior years to finally embrace: I am honoring myself.
As I’ve alluded to on here in the past few months, this has been a season of extreme personal growth through hard, intensive emotional work in the “gym” we call mental health counseling, or therapy. Even beyond my time in therapy from late 2022, this second chapter of therapy work from the beginning of this year has revealed truths that enable me to be the best version of myself, for myself, my family, and those around me.
This time around, my new therapist, Damien (I had to find a new person licensed in Massachusetts), came alongside me after I wrote a 1,500-word introductory essay on my journey to that point. My previous therapist, Mark, and I unpacked the early childhood pressures placed on me by Dad through forced youth sports participation and virtually impossible academic standards. None of that ever was or ever is OK.
Damien and I have taken it many steps further to explore how this culture of “manning up” and “performing” programmed my inner critic to speak words of self-deprecation and worthlessness to my reflection in the mirror. In our very first session, as Damien correctly identified, my voice had always told me, “you are not important, but what you provide and what you produce is.”
It is a message commonly circulated within families, especially those from historically marginalized communities. We paused to recognize that we were fortunate to be loved and cared for by our parents; they could not have known the future impacts of some of their messaging.
Hence, the uncomfortable anecdote at the top of this essay.
Mom was always in our corner (as anyone who was blessed to love or be loved by her knows), and she was doing the best she could to push my brother and me to a successful trajectory. At the same time, there is space to acknowledge that her guidance sometimes lacked emotional vulnerability, perpetuating our familial mantra of “just man up.” It was not until these latest therapy sessions that we were able to tie together these negative core memories, like panic attacks before/during/after baseball, to the messaging I later received, like that sterile “OK” in reaction to an emotional breakdown. Now, I can call them what they were: traumatic events.
I’d argue we have all had traumatic events – we just don’t always call them that, because we reserve ‘trauma’ for deaths, diseases, and physical abuses. If ‘trauma’ is a word you’re not comfortable identifying with, think of these as events that shaped our core fears, insecurities, and generational behaviors and/or curses.
Many traumatic or fear-shaping events happen in our earliest years, and they happen for the simple fact that we – ourselves, our parents, our guardians, and our villages – are all fearfully, wonderfully, and beautifully perfectly imperfectly made. We also, hopefully, have positive virtues modeled for us by the same people, and those are inspirations we can act out and pass on ourselves.
The negative events and behavioral patterns impact, and in many ways determine, the core message of our inner critic.
For me, it was essentially “you suck,” and “you are not important.” It told me that “to keep the bad away,” I needed to perform, perform, perform, often at my own expense, in all aspects of life – job, caring for immediate family, being hospitable to friends and extended family. But while doing my job well and caring for others are critical works, as an airplane safety presentation says, we have to put on our own oxygen mask first before assisting others. That is the only way we can fully show up for ourselves and our loved ones.
Maybe your inner critic says, “I am not good enough”… “I am doing this wrong”… “I am not wanted”… “I am not needed”… “I will not be OK outside my comfort zone”… “They think ____ of me”… the list of human psyches is endless. The critic means only to protect us, but it often does so by showing us the same movie over and over, consciously or subconsciously replaying those core memories that personally defined “bad” and what we had to do to keep the bad away. These deflecting thoughts become defense and coping mechanisms. The critic can also help us, but we have to separate the fear-based lies from the healthy behaviors that were, again, hopefully modeled for us.
We have two options – 1) Unpack then restructure our traumas and/or conditioned fears and insecurities, in order to turn the volume down on the inner critic. 2) Box up our emotional weight, ignore it, and pass it on to the next generation (or distribute it among the world around us, or both). It is our choice.
Why expound on this topic on this day? Well, I have a confession to make, first to myself and then to y’all: A lot of my writings, especially on my folks, have been performances. Some have been more genuine, personally helpful pieces – my thoughts on various social issues, for example, were written by me and for me first and foremost with cathartic conviction.
Even the more “performative” essays of parental adulation have been true – don’t get me wrong, I stand by all the stories I’ve told of my parents being instrumental, mighty people – but as I said to Damien earlier this week, grieving doesn’t always mean building a monument to our lost ones. I cried on camera after saying that aloud.
I have hidden behind words of pure, 100%, relentlessly positive parental adoration, failing to also grieve all the unsaid emotional baggage that I’ll never have the chance to reconcile with my parents in this life. So this musing is exploring that avenue, not to disparage my own lifegivers, but to fully humanize both them and me by talking about all sides of my inner voice.
This sometimes ugly, awkward side of loss helps restructure my “you suck” and “you are not important” voice to being inevitably existent but irrelevant. Then I can decipher the parts of my inherited story that encourage me. My voice helps me lean into Dad’s drive to be his best, earn that Rice scholarship, push our family to new heights….but I won’t do that through self-bullying and suffocating pressure to perform. My voice helps me remember Mom always putting others first….but I won’t do that by shuttering my own needs and withholding emotional vulnerability.
This no-days-off approach to self-awareness and emotional intelligence has real, practical benefits. I can tell my beautiful wife how I feel – my experiences in whatever bumps in the road we may hit – knowing that it might take some time to process these feelings and responses, but we. will. get. there. Health-wise, my blood pressure has dropped from 100+ (the bottom number) last summer to right at 80 currently. Spiritually, I see myself as a child of God, in the image of God, an image of goodness and greatness that has nothing to do with winning and losing or accolades and accomplishments.
Today I am honoring my mother, Sylvia Trono Derrett, by honoring myself. She told me various times in various contexts that she just wished for us to be happy. Through the ups or downs we had – the memories I cherish and perpetuated mantras I am discarding going forward – I know Mom wanted our happiness so, so badly.
Mom would be delighted knowing that Mary and I have each other to care for one another; Mom would be uplifted seeing the ways our villages care for us as well. But I also want Mom, and myself, and everyone to know that I am practicing care of self, because that is where wellness must begin. The better we treat ourselves, the better we treat the world and embody Christ’s love.
That is what I have wanted all along, what many of us want in different ways, and what I believe Mom wanted more than anything in this life. Mom, I am more well than I ever have been before – and you deserved to see it.
We love you.