Happiness is defined as a state of well-being and contentment. This is something I work to embrace every single day. Looking back over my life I have been lucky enough to have made moments of happiness. Some have been the result of fully knowing and understanding the situation I am in, others the result of blissful ignorance.
In childhood, the most blissful moments I recall centre around times spent either alone or with my Mom. She was my safety and my security. She SAW who I was and loved me odd behaviours and 'moods' and all. I do not ever recall her trying to push me into a mould so that I would be more palatable to the rest of the world. Now that I am recognizing that, along with my clear and present ADHD, I am likely also on the autism spectrum, this reality becomes even more magical. I have witnessed the end result of parents imposing their standards and expectations on their children. The results were often an adult child who, out of a recognition that their interaction with their family of origin was not healthy for them, made the difficult choice to go "no contact". At the extreme, the results ended with a funeral and puzzled family members.
When choosing death is preferable to your family, well that speaks volumes. Living in a family system that tells you that you are not acceptable everyday, that you are less and are deeply damaged and flawed steals something from a person's essence. I do not wonder why this choice is made. I experienced this but in the reverse of the typical child and teen -- I was constantly given the message that I just did not measure up but it came from my peers and my 'friends'. At home, I was safe. It was clear to me from early childhood that I was indeed a stranger in a strange land. An alien who had been dropped in the middle of some particularly odd culture to observe and report.
What most of my friends likely do not know about how I survived was that created my own world where I was the 'normal' person and they were the freaks. On one level I knew that I was never going to be part of the 'in crowd', but on another level it did not matter. I was valued and supported in my home. Even now that I am in my early 60s, I rarely meet anyone who felt completely safe and supported in their home growing up. I will take that win. When I had my own child at age 35, it was just normal to work hard to provide a home and a world where they knew they were safe. Where they knew they had a fan club that would always be there. Where they would be cushioned from the negative that our world provides from every direction. Thanks Mom -- for being the example of what a parent should be.
