I heard this with Sarah Silverman, comedian and author, in an interview on NPR today.
She was describing her father.
I also was thinking about this about my brother as well.
I have been thinking about my brother a lot, lately.
I was speaking with my cousin and we were reflecting on Jeremie’s life and story.
He said - his story was tragic.
And it really was.
I also thought about my brother the other day because I was reading about the significant and long-reaching and all-encompassing impact that emotional neglect and abuse has on a child.
My brother was my sibling but we didn’t have the same parents, nor the same childhoods.
When my brother was born, my mother was 25.
She spent the first year of his life with severe post-partum depression and in a chronic state of insomnia. She was unable to sleep - like at all - minus a few 15 minute increments during the first year of my brother’s life.
Her chemical imbalance/hormone disruption coupled with her own trauma and abandonment and depression reached chronic levels.
I know that that must have rendered her in a perpetually zombie-like state.
I have spent a few days in that state.
My mother spent years of her life that way.
I’ve always thought about that and how it must have been for her -
But, more recently, I’ve started to wonder about the ways in which that affected my brother.
When infants don’t feel have that connection established with their mother, because they are not able to be there - whether through direct and intentional neglect and abuse, or through their own mental and physical conditions - the results on an infant are catastrophic.
I have read how a child’s nervous system is directly wired to that of their mother’s.
Emotional abuse and neglect, when that hard-wiring isn’t there will affect a child for the rest of their life - as they grow into an adult.
I have thought about this with Jeremie.
I thought about how my mother wasn’t yet old enough when he was born to raise him with the understanding that our father was an alcoholic and that it was not his —Jeremie’s fault — However, he needed to know that, because of this, his father would be unable to give him the love, support, emotional validation that he needed.
My brother went on to become sensitive and craving male affirmation.
He was bullied in schools.
He was susceptible to being talked into things -
He craved validation from college, from God, and so later in life, he pursued those things - hard.
I hope that he was able to find that peace, at points.
The happiest I’ve ever seen him is when his daughter was born.
Sometimes it is still hard for me, even, to understand that he exited this world in the same way that my father did -
Especially because he was so angry about my father’s suicide.
But - it is a reminder that - we are not in our right minds when we have major depression, suicidal ideation , that culminates in plans and attempts for suicide.
I also thought about my brother the other day because I was reading how when siblings are raised in a chaotic, unsafe, dysfunctional household - they often times do not lean into and trust one another.
This makes sense - it made me think about my brother and my relationship.
We fought like cats and dogs, always.
We never got along.
At points we hated each other and my mother was afraid to leave us alone together.
Our personalities were different - we rubbed each other the wrong way.
We differed in ideologies, politics, and even in our interpretations of how to follow religious teachings and God’s word.
I don’t know if we would ever have been close -
But I also realize now —thinking about how when there is abuse that children and the siblings don’t often times connect to/with one another. Instead, they see each other as competition, to blame, or further extensions of a member of a family that is untrustworthy.
In reparenting myself and tending to my own inner child and her wounds -
And listening to my friend as she learns to address her own -
I have started to think more about how damaging and scary my brother’s infancy and early childhood must have been.
My mother would have wanted to provide for him the love and emotional support and calming that she did for me.
But, as she always said - her postpartum was horrible with Jeremie, and that it wasn’t as bad as with me.
I am sure that even if children can’t know what is happening, we intuit -
We need people to help us, long before we can self soothe.
I remember once, visiting my brother when my niece was a baby, he was trying to comfort her and also trying to write his sermon and get some work done, he said —
“Oh—-you’ve got to learn to self soothe.”
I think about that now, and I think -
Oh, dear Jeremie - did you ever learn to do that - ? Self soothing?
I was often frustrated with him - he could be selfish and emotionally immature and obnoxious.
But he was also very, very wounded. Traumatized.
He was certainly - a man in pain.