Letting it into the Light is the First Step in Letting it Go

When I was four years old, I more or less lived with my Grandparents. My parents lived in town and I did go home from time to time, but more often than not, I was at Nanny and Grampy’s house. It was a small house but it seemed big. Two of my aunts and one of my uncles still lived there. The other siblings came and went on a daily basis. I was just one, small character in a lively daily story.

Then the night of my sister’s birth happened. On that night, my grandmother, returning home from visiting my aunt, was struck and killed by a speeding car. My mother came home from the hospital with a newborn and a new preschooler to feed and care for with only my father and her grieving family to help.

Needless to say, she prioritized.

I don’t think my mother was prepared for how much and how often a four year old eats. I know she had neglected to plan the budget around feeding me. After all, my Grandmother was young, not yet sixty, and she cooked for the whole family every day. When my mother went into the hospital to have my sister, she was a woman who rarely cooked and never bought groceries. When she came out she was faced with cooking, shopping and feeding her children like other parents do. She was shocked and angry at the effort required of her. She took it out on me.

You see, I kept eating just as though I was at Nanny’s table. I went outside and played, I ran, I learned to ride my little bike, I climbed trees, I built up an appetite…