Who Was Taking Care of the Child?
Welcome to Sacred Pages blog. This is a space where I process my thoughts and feelings and share them with you, the reader. Stay a while, read. If this offering resonates, I invite you to journal until your heart is full. Again, welcome and thank you for being here.
Recently, while reflecting on my experiences as a psychiatric nurse practitioner student, I found myself thinking about a young client. He was thirteen years old. Tall for his age. Nearly six feet already, with a baby face that reminded everyone he was still very much a child. His mother would leave town for weekends at a time. She called it self-care. Time to decompress. Time to spend with other partners and pursue her own interests. When I casually asked him who stayed with him while she was away, he shrugged and told me that her boyfriend checked in on him from time to time. Something about that answer stayed with me. Not because I wanted to judge his mother. Parenting is difficult. Life is complicated. We all have limits. But I found myself wondering: Who was taking care of the child? As I sat with that question, I realized it was the same question I had been asking my entire life.
Who was taking care of the child?
The more I thought about it, the more faces appeared. My clients. My son. My younger self. When I was a little girl, I developed a nervous habit. I constantly licked my upper lip until the skin became cracked, raw, and painful. The area above my lip was perpetually red and crusted over. I remember taking school pictures that way. My grandmother told my mother to take me to a psychiatrist. Looking back now, I don’t wonder what was wrong with me. I wonder what was happening around me. Children do not always have words for stress, loneliness, fear, or confusion. Sometimes those feelings emerge through behavior instead. Sometimes they become anxious. Sometimes they become angry. Sometimes they become inattentive. Sometimes they lick their lips until they bleed. The behavior gets noticed. The pain underneath often does not. Years later, I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office with my own son, wondering if he had ADHD.
He struggled in school. He could not focus. He forgot instructions. He seemed disconnected from academics in ways that deeply worried me. At the time, I was exhausted. I was working full-time. I was raising a child. I was living with my mother. I was being criticized constantly. I was lonely. I was overwhelmed. And like many parents, I was searching for answers in my child because I did not yet understand how much the environment affects everyone living within it. Today, with more education, more life experience, and more self-awareness, I can see something I could not see then. Sometimes the identified patient is not the source of the problem. Sometimes they are simply expressing it. That realization has led me to another uncomfortable truth. I have spent much of my life trying to be a daughter. Not a perfect daughter. Not a wealthy daughter. Not a successful daughter. Just a daughter. Someone loved by her mother. Someone accepted by her mother. Someone chosen by her mother. The painful reality is that no matter how many times I approached my mother with love, patience, understanding, forgiveness, and grace, the relationship remained what it always was. One-sided. And I think that is why grief has become such an important teacher for me. Because grief is not always about losing what you had.
Sometimes grief is about accepting what you never had. The mother you needed. The partner you hoped for. The friendship you deserved. The family you imagined. The future you expected. I spent years believing that if I loved enough, tried hard enough, waited long enough, healed enough, or became enough, someone would eventually recognize my worth. But love does not work that way. You cannot love enough for two people. Not in romance. Not in friendship. Not in family relationships. Not anywhere. That lesson cost me dearly, but it also set me free. Today, when I think about healing, I no longer think of becoming immune to pain. Healing is not forgetting. Healing is not becoming perfectly regulated. Healing is not reaching some enlightened state where nothing hurts anymore. Healing is returning to yourself. Again and again. Healing is remembering who you are beneath the conditioning, the disappointments, the abandonment, and the stories you learned about your worth.
For me, healing often looks like imagining five-year-old Kimberly. Kimmy Sue. The little girl riding her Big Wheel. Playing with Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Laughing in the sunshine. Trusting the world. When I picture her, something changes. I suddenly know exactly what I will and will not tolerate. I would never allow someone to manipulate her. I would never allow someone to steal from her. I would never allow someone to use her, humiliate her, neglect her, or convince her she was unworthy of love. And so I have begun extending that same protection to myself. Not because I am broken. Not because I am weak. But because I finally understand that I am responsible for protecting the child who still lives within me. The beautiful thing is that even after all of this, I still believe in love. Not because I need someone to complete me. Not because I need validation. Not because I need applause. I simply recognize that I have a tremendous capacity for friendship, devotion, affection, and connection. The difference now is that I no longer believe I must earn reciprocity. I no longer believe I must audition for love. I no longer believe that loving someone is enough. Love must be returned.
Care must be mutual. Interest must be genuine. And perhaps that is what healing has given me. Not certainty. Not perfection. Not immunity from grief. Just the courage to stop abandoning myself while waiting for someone else to choose me. Because at the end of the day, the question remains the same. Who is taking care of the child?
Today, finally, the answer is:
I am.
By Kimberly!
