Permission to Tell

Long story short: this is a long story...

If the personal is political, sometimes too, the personal is public. There are many among us who walk with invisible scars, or barely visible scars, and then there are those among us who walk with visible scars. Scars that remind us that life can be hard, traumatic, violent, scary.

We have designated some among us to be watchdogs for pain, for injury, for violence. We hope to prevent or end abuse and pain. Doctors, teachers, social workers and therapists are mandated reporters. They are mandated to tell what they know to higher authorities, believing that something will be done. Sometimes this helps, and abuse does end, and with support, someone begins to be strong enough to stand up for themselves.

There are those among us who are reporters, the ones who interview, and take pictures, and try to contain and make tidy, very untidy scenes and stories. Then there are those of us who carry these stories inside of us, trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. Year after year, looking at the yellowing page of our own story. Mulling it over. I have been needing to tell, yet afraid to tell, my own history, my own stories. Sometimes, these stories need to be told when the truth just must be told, simply for no other reason. To fill in, to add context, to say, perhaps, that what we thought we knew was only a part of the story, condensed, to fit into what we wanted to believe at the time. But by condensing, we only increase our questions, somehow, our brains beg for context.

There are stories of violence that some of us carry within. Carefully guarded secrets. There are no contexts for these stories, outside of a therapy office. Stories we can’t bring up at lunch with friends. We carry them inside, afraid that if the truth were told, it would be too painful, or that no one would understand, or be angry with you for messing up their beautiful day with your untidy story. But after a while, the pain of hiding it becomes the greater pain.

I carry a secret story about my ex husband, Steve’s, family. Because we have children together, this is now my family’s story. This is a story about love and hate, and racism, and rage. A story about my children’s biological grandfather who tried to kill my children’s grandmother, when my ex-husband was school-age. It was the most brutal story I’d ever heard when I heard it. Steve and I had been dating for only months, when one night, he told me, as we sat in the dark of his 76 Monte Carlo, radio playing softly, that he was adopted, that his dad was not his real dad and that his real dad had thrown acid on his mom when he was a child.

I’d met his mom, a beautiful woman, elegant and sweet, with a scarred face. It looked like burn scars, and I’d never asked what happened. I guess it didn’t seem polite, perhaps I was afraid, and I was brought up not to ask questions. As he told me, I didn’t want to hear it. I was already out of my comfort zone, dating a black guy. Now, as he told me this story of violence, a thought creeped into my head, “Maybe black people really are more violent than white people.” Hmm, what would this mean?

This story scared me, I was scared, but I was not able to share my feelings, with Steve, or anyone else. I had never been allowed to talk about feelings. I didn’t even have the words for feelings. I was not aware of how to have a dialogue about race, let alone violence. I didn’t have permission. I thought that talking about it, being scared, would mean that I was racist, and I didn’t want to be that. I thought that I could only think that we were all the same, that it was only skin color.

I didn’t know that there could be so many different stories, so many different histories and that they don’t mean that we’re not equal, not human, but that we are different, and that it’s OK to try to understand the differences. It doesn’t make you racist, or a bad person to see differences and want to understand. I know a lot about internalizing now, and historical racism, and about white privilege. And I’m still trying to understand, to connect the dots between the personal, and the public, and history, both personal and collective. Both black and white, and it’s not simple and it’s not easy, but it seems necessary, if we are to move on.

I listened, horrified, to the details. Steve’s biological mom and dad married young, and his dad, Fred was abusive. Steve’s brave mom left him and remarried. When her new husband adopted Steve, Fred was angry. Angry enough to come to Minneapolis from Chicago with acid. Angry enough, in the cold of Christmas time to hide in Steve’s family’s garage, and angry enough, when Steve’s mom answered the door, to throw acid in her face.

I don’t know all of the details, I don’t know what day of the week it was. Who was home, who called the ambulance, where was Steve? I do know that his mom was pregnant. Steve tried to tell me about the loss of his sibling, but I didn’t know how to listen, at 18 or 19 years old, to his pain. It was hard to imagine, against the life I saw Steve and his family living at the time I met him. His mom was scarred, but beautiful and well dressed, his home, large and lovely.

His mom was a 1st grade teacher, a working mom. His step-dad was nice and friendly, accepting, and his sister, my age, stunning and proud. To me they epitomized a calm, well-ordered family, his home, never a mess, never anything out of place. My family of eight kids was wild, and my home was never, ever this tidy. I didn’t know what to expect, either, from a Black family. I was trying so hard to be polite, in spite of what I was feeling, having neither words nor permission for any of my experiences.

But there it was this story, this story that has haunted my life. One time, Steve took me to the library with him to look at the microfiche stories about the story. Of course this Christmas time crime made the papers. Steve’s bio dad was caught, charged and went to prison. Again, I don’t know the details, only that this was Steve’s ‘real’ dad. An angry, homicidal man. The fear stayed with me. I buried it, never told anyone at the time. I was ashamed of my fear.

I did have compassion for Steve, and I tried to understand with my limited understanding of anything, at that time. My limited understanding of historical racism, of mental illness, if that’s how we want to couch murderous rage. Limited understanding of trauma in children, and unresolved trauma in families. I knew Steve’s family was very happy that Steve was dating me. They were relieved he had someone to talk to. Problem was, I had no one to talk to.

With this sad story simmering in our shadow selves, we fell in love and married. Steve rarely if ever expressed anger, I thought this kept us safe. I felt anger, but it was always with a mix of other emotions, and it almost always came out in tears. I didn’t have words for feelings, and neither, I think, did Steve. We loved each other the best we could. And when his biological dad died, it was a strange mourning. A strange loss of only someone who we’d never know. Steve had met his dad a time or two, but even in this, it seemed Steve didn’t have the words to share what pain and confusion must have been there. Pain, guilt, sadness. I don’t know, I can only guess. A muddiness of emotions for both of us.

We had three amazing daughters together and this story fell into the past. Only to be revived when my oldest daughter asked her grandmother what happened to her. My mother-in-law lied to her, told her she got hit in the face with a ball thrown by a child. Hmm, what to do about this lie? I think I told my daughter the truth, sometimes, now I don’t remember. It was a dark secret, and no one really wanted to talk about it.

Steve’s grandmother had told me about all the surgeries Steve’s mom endured. The skin grafts. How she lost a baby. How she lost an eye, she had a glass eye. All this, and she struggled with diabetes also, she gave herself shots. She was amazingly brave and resilient and yet there was this thing about Steve, how he couldn’t upset his mom, it was almost as if one wrong word and she would die. It was strange. Very different from my family, where the women were strong and crazy, crazy strong. My great Aunt Tillie would drive from Minnesota to Alaska by herself and show up at our door unannounced to stay for a bit. My Aunt Esther was a WAC in WWII. Aunt Jackie, the lesbian, more out than in.

The story of Steve’s mom and his ‘bio’ dad faded into history, until my younger daughters were old enough to say, “Our real grandfather was a criminal, an attempted murderer.” Yes, well, there it was again. The story that weaves in and out of my life. The story that kept me with Steve when there were no words for whatever either of us were feeling. The story that made me look at him like a child, when I should have expected him to be a man. The story that stood in the way of so many things. The story that stood in place of the truth of two people, who were just trying to be in love and be a family. The story that left me speechless, and the story that I must tell. The one who still feels like the narrator, the white girl, the ex-wife. But it is my story, too. Stories are like that, never just about one person, never just content to stay in place. They move, they migrate, they become parts of people.


This story stays with me, when every so often, someone will ask why Steve and I got divorced. Why we couldn’t work it out. This story comes to my mind and it is too complicated to tell. So I say, “We just couldn’t make it work, we didn’t have enough in common.”

In the safety of my therapist’s office, I shared with him my reluctance to post this story. To tell it, to give myself permission. I was still so ashamed of the me who wondered, “Maybe black people are more violent,” as I was brought up as a white girl to believe. In a healing moment, he replied, “We were all told that.” Saddest thing is, we still are.

My daughter, Erin, just named her baby girl Audrey Myhrrene, Myhrrene for her paternal grandmother. Myhrrene, who is wonderful and brave and still very chic. I am so grateful that my daughters have this wonderful woman in their lives. I would not trade in any of the pain, any of the hard stories, any of my time so far, it is who we are. Shadow and light, pain and joy, sorrow and happiness. Past and present. Black and White.