Welcome to Not Fit for the Feed, confessions and conversations about parenting through the hard stuff. I'm Brettne Shootman. I'm not a therapist or an expert on parenting. I've just survived a lot of things I didn't see coming, and it often felt like I was going through it alone. But here's what I've learned. When we release our fears and our pain out into the sunshine, instead of keeping them locked away, they lose their power over us, and we stop being alone in them. So pull up a chair, and let's get started. Today's episode is about the three adults who were supposed to protect me and what I learned from watching all of them I have many fond memories of my childhood home because we spent so much time outside playing alone or with neighbor kids, riding bikes, swimming in the pool, jumping on the trampoline, and even camping out on the trampoline with pillows and blankets. We even slept in our swimsuits so we could immediately jump in the pool when we woke up. I think my generation was the last feral generation of kids. Our parents just sent us outside to play. We were forced to figure out how to entertain ourselves, because we were only allowed inside to go to the bathroom and when it was time for dinner. Seriously. But really, life was better outside. Um, you know by now what was happening inside my home, which was stressful and troubling. I wish I could say that it was all the fault of the stepmother, but my dad played a part as well. He's been dead for 17 years, and so I wish I had asked him why he married her and why he stayed married to her even after it became apparent that she was abusive. I've asked his brothers and my current stepmom, but no one knows for sure. What I think is that he endured their years together because he didn't wanna give up on the marriage after already having gone through one divorce. He was not a quitter, and divorce still held such a stigma at the time. No one wanted to be known as a divorcee. I also believe that at his core, he was a good man just trying his best. But the reality was that he allowed and contributed to a lot of the stress that my sister and I experienced as children. Dad was exacting and judgmental. He was a polygraph examiner who dealt with criminals every day, and sadly, his work bled into his relationships with the people who lived with him. You either did or didn't do something. There were no shades of gray and no room for discussion. He was strict and uncompromising, and if you did do the right thing, there was rarely any acknowledgement because good behavior was just expected. I always felt like he was my rock, always there, always working to provide, but it was always his way or the highway. And although he was married to my stepmother, I think he actually loved my mom for at least part of his second marriage. There is such a fine line between love and hate, and he definitely held on to an intense anger toward her for years. He didn't wanna be in the same room as her, and he seemed intent on vengeance of some sort. I think in a lot of ways, he used my sister and me to get back at her As I mentioned in the last episode, we saw our mom every other weekend. She picked us up on Saturday at noon and brought us home on Sunday by 7:00. Things were so bad at home that leaving with my mom was a welcome respite. My sister and I grew to rely on those few hours of peace with my mom's family, away from both the drama and the trauma. However, if my mom was even one minute late, we were not allowed to go with her for the overnight stay. Dad would literally send us outside to tell her we couldn't leave with her. One time, my mom came to the house to pick up a pair of shoes she had bought for me. I think they needed to be repaired anyway, we knew she was coming, but because this visit was not sanctioned as part of her visitation rights, my dad, who wasn't going to be home at the time, instructed my older stepbrother to make sure that we did not go outside to see her. We were forced to talk to her through the kitchen window Of course, my sister and I wanted to go outside to hug our mom, but instead we were reduced to sobbing through the screen on the kitchen window I remember going into my closet afterward to sit on the floor and cry. I just wanted to be alone and wallow in my sorrow. Life felt so incredibly cruel, and my dad must have come home fairly soon afterward because he came into my room and saw me on the closet floor, and he took one look and said, "Stop being a baby. Get up and get out of the closet." When I was in the fifth grade, my dad and stepmom came home and pulled my sister and me into a bedroom. They closed the door and told us to sit down on the bed. We immediately thought we were in trouble. We asked what was wrong, and my dad said, "Your mom was in a car accident." I immediately asked if she was okay, and when he said she had broken her neck, I started crying because I knew that most people don't recover from that type of injury. Dad didn't know anything more than that she was alive and in the hospital with serious injuries, and he said it was going to be a wait and see situation. In addition to her injuries, there was a lot happening in the background that I didn't know at the time. When she'd been brought into the ER, someone had gone through her personal items and found drugs, a lot of drugs, including cocaine and barbiturates. While still in ICU, she was charged for being in possession of drugs with the intent to sell. This was a shocking revelation. Uh, none of us had known that she was selling drugs. I remember my dad asking if I'd ever seen her with any drugs, and I hadn't, but I told him that I had seen these little wi-vials of white powder in her bathroom drawers. He was so angry when I told him that, and although I didn't know it then, he very quickly set out to take away her visitation rights. In fact, we were never even allowed to visit her in the hospital. We saw her briefly months later when she was released. The next two years were long as my mom continued to heal from her accident. She had had to be resuscitated twice immediately following the accident, and the doctors were forced to do an emergency tracheotomy because in addition to breaking her neck, her larynx had been crushed. She was left with a scar running across the entire front of her neck and damaged vocal cords that don't rub up against each other properly, so her voice sounds like a whisper. She was extremely lucky to be alive, and her luck even extended to the law situation she was in because she was in ICU for so long, she never went to jail to await trial, and eventually the drug charges were dropped because it was determined that her things had been illegally searched. Of course, this only served to infuriate my dad, and he stuck to his guns about visitation rights. In his eyes, she had been guilty, and we had been in danger. He didn't trust her with us, end of story. After she'd been released from the hospital, my mom's sister reached out to my dad on behalf of the rest of the family and asked if the visitation rights could be given to them instead of my mom. They understood his position, but felt it was unfair to keep us from the entire family. And because my dad still loved my mom's family, he agreed. We would stay the night with my aunt, and everyone would come there to visit, or she would take us to see her parents, my grandparents. We never told my dad, but during those visits, my mom was always present. He did eventually soften his stance, and we were allowed to resume the twice-a-month schedule from before the accident with my mom. And during the same time, I remember my mom telling me that she felt her role in my life was to be my friend, not my mom. I felt totally confused by this. All I could think was, "Do you get to decide this? How do you just say you're not my mom anymore? This can't be right. I don't need another friend. I need my mom." It felt like she was abandoning me again. But as much as that hurt, I still felt lucky to get to go and visit with her on the weekends because when my sister and I were with her, it was a package deal. We were always with her extended family. We were loved unconditionally. Nobody was in trouble. We were just normal kids playing with our cousins and being doted on by grandparents and aunts and uncles, which was truly a respite from what we were experiencing at home Two years later, my mom moved in with the man she was in love with, and together they had my little brother. Mom hid her pregnancy from my dad because she was worried that he'd hold it against her. She was unmarried and was now going to have a baby out of wedlock, as they used to say. She used to get out of the car but hide her body behind the car door as we came running out of the house. She'd hug us and then quickly back... get back in the car. But really, I think her pregnancy worked in her favor. I think my dad realized she had settled down and believed that she could now be a different kind of mom than she had been before, more attentive and present. The relationship with the boyfriend didn't last long, and my mom moved into an apartment with my baby brother. She struggled with severe depression and pain from her car accident. The pain and weakness meant she could no longer hold a tray of drinks or food, so instead of waiting tables and running her father's restaurant, she survived on welfare. Who knows? Maybe my dad felt sorry for her, like she had finally gotten what she deserved, or just enough time had passed that he softened a bit. He and my mom still didn't like each other, but by the time I was a junior in high school, they could at least be cordial. And as I've mentioned before, by this time, the stepmother was no longer living with us and things calmed down a lot at home I remember that although I was always a little afraid of getting in trouble for not doing the exact right thing, if I asked specific questions or raised concerns when things were calm, my dad was always willing to discuss things with me. Some of that was out of necessity, and some of it was just because we'd end up in the kitchen together late at night and end up talking. And I think that for me, living with a dad with no mom or older sister around meant I learned to be less self-conscious about the things I would eventually need to talk about. For example, I had to tell my dad when I started my period. I had to ask him to stop at the gas station on the way out to the lake, and then I had to figure out what to do while in the bathroom. I remember that we had conversations about boys when I started dating at sixteen. He basically said that the fact was boys just wanted to get in girls' pants, and I should know that. His words, not mine. I remember complaining that I was short. I was five feet tall and three-quarters of an inch, and he was six two. His response was, "Your size doesn't matter. You can do whatever you put your mind to. Just remember that big things come in small packages, like dynamite." And I remember asking him what a penile implant was, which he explained. I also shared that I just wanted to be a B cup by the time I graduated. That one he didn't really have an answer for. But the stress in our house definitely completely didn't go away just because my stepmom had moved out, because my dad needed me to pick up the slack. We never had a conversation about it, but at sixteen I knew that I could and should help wherever possible, so I took it upon myself to step up and fill the gap, to be the token woman of the house. I cleaned, cooked, and watched after my sister when my dad had to travel for work. I was even listed on the checking account so I could do the grocery shopping and take care of emergencies. And I remember feeling so responsible, in charge, and independent, like I was an adult. I was proud that my dad seemed to believe I could do the job, but the reality was I was still just a teenager. Inevitably, I made mistakes, and things happened where I didn't have the maturity to know how to manage them My dad always talked as if we didn't have enough money for anything. At my stepmother's insistence, we had acquired over the years a built-in pool, a trampoline, and a Cadillac. She was making good money at the time with her own business catering weddings, but when she left, my dad was left holding all the bills. Um, because my dad never talked to me about how he would manage on his own or that it was going to even be difficult, I didn't understand the enormity of what he was dealing with. Instead, he just put up a brave face and forced himself to keep moving forward, and he just expected me to know what to spend or not spend. I guess he thought it was common sense, but sadly, it wasn't common sense to me. One day I went to the grocery store to buy groceries and decided I should stock up on things 'cause that meant I didn't have to go to the grocery stores as often. I thought this was a good plan. I spent $200. In today's money, that would be almost $700, and I thought my dad was going to blow a gasket. He was so upset, and rightly so. Something else would have to wait to be paid because he had a limited income. I just hadn't known there was a limit to what I could spend in a certain amount of time Another time, while my dad was out of town for work, our refrigerator freezer broke down. So I took everything out of it and put it in coolers. I asked a neighbor if I could store things at their house that, you know, didn't fit in the coolers, and I really thought I was doing the exact right thing. I felt pretty proud of myself. But when my dad came home, he was so angry that that was all I had done, and he yelled at me, "Why didn't you call the electrician to fix it?" There were no kudos or pats on the back for what I did correctly or any explanation on what I could do the next time something like this happened. Instead, I was berated and then grounded for not calling someone to come out and fix the problem. Even though I was trying my best, it wasn't enough. I was still just a teenager pretending to be a grownup. The anxiety of always trying but never quite feeling like I was getting it right at home pushed me to stay at school as much as possible. My sister was in junior high by this time and able to stay at home by herself after school, so she didn't need me to babysit her anymore. Instead, I got involved at school. I was popular with the other kids, and my teachers liked me. I was on the gymnastics and cheer teams and for a while, student council, and I ran track, and gymnastics and cheer really became my life. I spent a lot of time at the school building and gymnastics gym practicing before and after school, and it was truly my happy place. My friends were there, and I received positive feedback for my efforts in class and on the sports teams. Plus, my teachers and especially my gymnastics coach supported me and made me feel loved. I truly don't know what I would have done without school Although school was a saving grace, and the stepmother no longer lived with us, she was still like this insidious force of nature continuing to creep back into the picture at times. She and my dad had not formally divorced, and every so often they would try to date again. This went on for almost two years, and it was agonizing. Just when my sister and I would start to feel safe from her, she'd waltz back into our lives being so friendly and agreeable, and it felt like an awful charade. So my sister and I made a pact that no matter what, if she came back to live with us, we would share a room and always stick together. We would refuse to be separated, and we would not allow the stepmother to bully or abuse us anymore. We were just kids, but somewhere in that promise, don't separate, always stick together, I was learning something about sisters that I wouldn't fully understand for another 20 years. Dear listener, I grew up with three very different parents, and they all helped to shape me in ways I didn't fully understand until I was deep in the trenches of raising my own kids. My dad taught me that love looks like showing up and providing, even when it doesn't look like softness or acknowledgment. My mom taught me that presence matters more than perfection. But I also learned from her that checking out, even with good intentions, leaves a mark. From my ex-stepmother, I learned what fear does to a child's nervous system. All of this worked together to create in me a parenting style that was controlling and hypervigilant. I was desperately determined to get it right and to do so without ever asking for help. Of course, I didn't know any of that as a teenager. I was just trying to survive the chaos long enough to get out of my house and start my own story. It would be a long time before I realized just how much of my parents I had brought along with me. Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you're finding value in these conversations, it would mean the world to me if you'd take a moment to follow or subscribe wherever you listen and leave a review. It helps other parents who need this find their way here. You can find resources related to today's episode in the show notes. I'm Brettne Shootman, and this is Not Fit for the Feed, where we say the hard things out loud so they lose their power over us. See you next time