Second Childhood
I believe in creating a second childhood.
Not the kind where you pretend the first one didn’t happen.
The kind where you finally get to have some of what you missed.
I didn’t have much of a childhood.
I had books.
I had the piano.
I had my imagination.
They were my friends.
Because I didn’t really have actual friends.
I didn’t have the ordinary things I longed for: the feeling of belonging, of being part of something, of being seen and welcomed without having to earn it.
I looked different from my family.
My face was different. My body was different. I was born with Moebius Syndrome, although nobody had a name for it when I was growing up. I was also different in all the ways that mattered inside my family.
I was the wrong kind of girl.
And then I had a daughter who looked like my mother, grandmother and the rest of my matrilineal family.
I heard something years ago:
There are two types of faces: monkey and rat. I was a monkey, my daughter and my mom are rats.
I remember being pregnant and having a picture of the little girl I imagined I was going to have: a chubby little girl with red hair and hazel eyes.
A little me.
I imagined tea parties and fairy forests and mother-daughter dances.
Instead, I got my daughter.
Wild.
Yang.
Aries.
Nothing like me.
And because I was already so wounded, I didn’t know how to meet her in her difference.
I loved her.
And I was also disappointed.
Both things can be true.
That is one of the hardest things I have learned about telling the truth.
We don’t have to make anyone the villain in order to tell the truth.
Not my daughter.
Not my mother.
Not even myself.
There were things I did that hurt people.
There were things people did that hurt me.
There were systems we were all living inside that were bigger than any one of us.
And there is grief in that.
So much grief.
There is grief for the mother I never had.
Grief for the daughter I imagined.
Grief for my daughter who also did not get the mother she wanted.
Grief for the childhood I never got.
Grief for the family I kept hoping would eventually become a family.
And grief for the years I spent believing that if I could just become good enough, useful enough, successful enough, lovable enough, someone would finally choose me.
But something has changed.
Nothing has changed, obviously.
My mother is still my mother.
The history is still the history.
The losses are still the losses.
The unanswered questions are still unanswered.
And yet everything has changed.
Because I am no longer waiting for someone else to give me the childhood I didn’t have.
I am beginning to give myself one.
I am learning to play.
Learning to belong.
Learning to be wanted without performing for it.
Learning that I can choose my people.
Learning that I can leave when something hurts me.
Learning that love does not require me to keep handing myself back to the people who hurt me.
And learning, perhaps most importantly, that grief doesn’t mean I am doing something wrong.
I can grieve my mother and still leave her behind.
I can grieve my daughter and still love her.
I can grieve my childhood and still have another one.
And now, something as simple as a birthday can feel enormous.
My soul daughter is planning my birthday which happens to fall this year on Canadian Thanksgiving.
People will gather.
There will be food and laughter and someone will sing Happy Birthday.
I can’t remember the last time that happened.
And perhaps what makes it so meaningful isn’t the party itself.
It is that I am finally able to receive it.
Not because I performed my pain well enough.
Not because I earned it.
Not because someone is rescuing me.
But because I am here.
Because I stayed.
Because I changed.
Because I have worked so very hard to become someone who could recognize love when it arrived—and allow myself to receive it.
There is a strange kind of freedom in realizing that the life I kept waiting for may not arrive in the form I imagined.
It may arrive quietly.
A birthday dinner.
A walk.
A poem.
A song.
A beautiful morning.
A friend who stays.
A dog who barks too loudly.
A moment when I realize that I am no longer asking someone else to make my life whole.
I am here.
I am making it.
And maybe that is what a second childhood really is.
Not going backward.
Not pretending the first one didn’t hurt.
But finally becoming free enough to play with what is left.
To wonder.
To create.
To love.
To be surprised.
To receive.
To begin again.
I lost so much time waiting for someone else to give me what I needed.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting.
Nothing has changed.
And everything has changed.
Because now, at almost seventy years old, I am finally learning something I should have known all along:
I can give myself all the love and forgiveness I can muster.
I believe in creating a second childhood.
Not the kind where you pretend the first one didn’t happen.
The kind where you finally get to have some of what you missed.
I didn’t have much of a childhood.
I had books.
I had the piano.
I had my imagination.
They were my friends.
Because I didn’t really have actual friends.
I didn’t have the ordinary things I longed for: the feeling of belonging, of being part of something, of being seen and welcomed without having to earn it.
I looked different from my family.
My face was different. My body was different. I was born with Moebius Syndrome, although nobody had a name for it when I was growing up. I was also different in all the ways that mattered inside my family.
I was the wrong kind of girl.
And then I had a daughter who looked like my mother, grandmother and the rest of my matrilineal family.
I heard something years ago:
There are two types of faces: monkey and rat. I was a monkey, my daughter and my mom are rats.
I remember being pregnant and having a picture of the little girl I imagined I was going to have: a chubby little girl with red hair and hazel eyes.
A little me.
I imagined tea parties and fairy forests and mother-daughter dances.
Instead, I got my daughter.
Wild.
Yang.
Aries.
Nothing like me.
And because I was already so wounded, I didn’t know how to meet her in her difference.
I loved her.
And I was also disappointed.
Both things can be true.
That is one of the hardest things I have learned about telling the truth.
We don’t have to make anyone the villain in order to tell the truth.
Not my daughter.
Not my mother.
Not even myself.
There were things I did that hurt people.
There were things people did that hurt me.
There were systems we were all living inside that were bigger than any one of us.
And there is grief in that.
So much grief.
There is grief for the mother I never had.
Grief for the daughter I imagined.
Grief for my daughter who also did not get the mother she wanted.
Grief for the childhood I never got.
Grief for the family I kept hoping would eventually become a family.
And grief for the years I spent believing that if I could just become good enough, useful enough, successful enough, lovable enough, someone would finally choose me.
But something has changed.
Nothing has changed, obviously.
My mother is still my mother.
The history is still the history.
The losses are still the losses.
The unanswered questions are still unanswered.
And yet everything has changed.
Because I am no longer waiting for someone else to give me the childhood I didn’t have.
I am beginning to give myself one.
I am learning to play.
Learning to belong.
Learning to be wanted without performing for it.
Learning that I can choose my people.
Learning that I can leave when something hurts me.
Learning that love does not require me to keep handing myself back to the people who hurt me.
And learning, perhaps most importantly, that grief doesn’t mean I am doing something wrong.
I can grieve my mother and still leave her behind.
I can grieve my daughter and still love her.
I can grieve my childhood and still have another one.
And now, something as simple as a birthday can feel enormous.
My soul daughter is planning my birthday which happens to fall this year on Canadian Thanksgiving.
People will gather.
There will be food and laughter and someone will sing Happy Birthday.
I can’t remember the last time that happened.
And perhaps what makes it so meaningful isn’t the party itself.
It is that I am finally able to receive it.
Not because I performed my pain well enough.
Not because I earned it.
Not because someone is rescuing me.
But because I am here.
Because I stayed.
Because I changed.
Because I have worked so very hard to become someone who could recognize love when it arrived—and allow myself to receive it.
There is a strange kind of freedom in realizing that the life I kept waiting for may not arrive in the form I imagined.
It may arrive quietly.
A birthday dinner.
A walk.
A poem.
A song.
A beautiful morning.
A friend who stays.
A dog who barks too loudly.
A moment when I realize that I am no longer asking someone else to make my life whole.
I am here.
I am making it.
And maybe that is what a second childhood really is.
Not going backward.
Not pretending the first one didn’t hurt.
But finally becoming free enough to play with what is left.
To wonder.
To create.
To love.
To be surprised.
To receive.
To begin again.
I lost so much time waiting for someone else to give me what I needed.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting.
Nothing has changed.
And everything has changed.
Because now, at almost seventy years old, I am finally learning something I should have known all along:
I can give myself all the love and forgiveness I can muster.
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