Earthworms, Bullies and Relational repair

Hey Friends,

This morning I found myself dragging a terrified child past the legions of drowning earthworms clogging our Brooklyn sidewalk, all the while wondering: what the hell am I even doing? Stubbornly towing a kid, who had moved past negotiation to sobs, in a futile attempt to make the school bus, sucked. After we missed the bus his quavering voice asked me: “Is it all my fault?” 

Yeah. Not my finest hour. 

My mother in elementary school

“Either you’re gonna go and fight those bullies, or you’re gonna fight me.”

One of my mother’s favorite stories was the time her grandmother stood behind a screen door and threatened her, saying “Either you’re gonna go and fight those bullies, or you’re gonna fight me. But either way you’re gonna fight someone today.”

We would never, ever, EVER think of this as good parenting nowadays. But it had a profound effect on my mother and in telling the story over and over again she attempted to impart the wisdom she gained without the corresponding trauma. That there was a power and relief in overcoming seemingly  insurmountable obstacles. My great-grandmother was attempting to love my mother through her fear in the only way she knew how. For grandmother Martin, it was an act of fierce compassion.

My mother employed this compassionate no nonsenseness whenever I came home complaining about something:  Don’t like how you’re being treated by a system? Organize and change it. In high school my mother showed me a video of her and other Freedom Summer volunteers from her days as a leader in CORE (the Congress on Racial Equity) in Louisiana and Mississippi. My mother was screaming insults and physically assaulting other black folks. It was appalling and I didn’t get it till my mother explained: They would force themselves to endure the abuse while maintaining nonviolence. The story behind all those folks peacefully integrating lunch counters while angry people throw food, smack them around and hurl abuse is that they did it to themselves first. My great-grandmother’s lessons on survival gave birth to profound collective liberation. 

I know this. I embody it. AND I’m not sure earthworms are the place to employ that lesson. 

My Kiddo and I

I know this. I embody it. AND I’m not sure earthworms are the place to employ that lesson. 

Now on my alternate route to get the kiddo to school, while listening to my son calming himself down by humming softly I wondered: How can I teach my kids to overcome obstacles and triumph over fears without traumatizing them? I reached back from the driver’s seat and offered him my hand. He gripped it tightly. After a while I apologized. Then I started sharing some of the things that scare the shit out of me. I asked him if being scared of something was normal and okay? He wasn’t sure. So I told him about the times I triumphed over scary things, and also the times I failed. We talked it out. By the time we got to school he was still afraid to cross another worm graveyard by himself but he took a deep breath, opened the door, and faced it. 

Fierceness. Compassion. Care taking. And, of course, the all important relational repair when we inevitably screw something up. Because none of us is perfect. At Angry Momma we are not offering a perfect solution. The very idea that there is a perfect parenting solution is part of what screws with our heads.  We are offering a space to move your bodies, to share your struggles, to see and be seen and most of all to forgive yourself for just being human.

Before the mass earthworm sidewalk extinction my eleven year-old had been enjoying the fresh freedom of solo walking the three blocks to his school bus stop. In his blind panic about squishy squiggly worm corpses he had demanded a return to parental accompaniment. I compromised and asked him to call when he came home on the bus if he felt he couldn’t make it by himself. I never got that call. My son made it home by himself, bounced up the stairs, eager to share his newfound tactics for navigating his solo journey and ecstatic with his ability to overcome the challenge.