Stories Matter
I’m a memoir junkie. I confess. I read not only the words of famous people (am excited to dive into Viola Davis’ new book Finding Me: A Memoir) but also more obscure authors like Dr. Thomas F. Linde’s I Am Not What I Am; A Psychologist’s Memoir, Notes on Managing Personal Misfortune. I like hearing and reading other peoples’ perspective on life, how they navigated and view our common “human condition.” There’s a takeaway for me in everyone’s personal story.
Take Linde, for example. He was born with severe cerebral palsy in the 1930s which left him unable to walk, use his hands or speak clearly, yet he went on to a satisfying life as a psychologist. Why did I find his story so compelling? What do I—a healthy, female Gen Xer—have in common with him? Our common human struggle to overcome.
Linde’s parents rationally taught him to understand his limitations and find other ways of getting around and communicating, so he did. Not without trials and setbacks, of course, and that is what his story is about. But in one revelation, Linde reveals that while his parents were matter of fact about his physical disabilities, their “…insistently logical approach to problem solving helped me gloss over a bundle of unresolved matters for many years. It did not allow for the caring exploration of feeling.” Now THIS I could relate to.
In the early research phase of writing my book, I checked out a half-dozen or so books about mother-daughter relationships, the mother-wound, the mother-complex, the divine feminine. I eventually came across Dr. Jonice Webb’s book Running on Empty which introduced me to a term she calls “childhood emotional neglect” or CEN. I write in my book:
“A parent’s failure to validate or respond enough to a child’s emotional needs is called childhood emotional neglect (CEN). It’s not something that happens to a child but something that fails to happen for a child, sending the message that feelings are not important or welcome. CEN isn’t from one specific traumatic event. It occurs daily and silently, and it’s often unnoticed until adulthood when the desire to run away and feelings of inferiority, emotional numbness, and depression become overwhelming. I was blind to the that realization and learned the hard way that going through the motions is not okay. Feeling unfulfilled is not okay, and low-grade daily depression is not okay. This was not the way I was meant to live. I had lived most of my life exhibiting dysfunctional symptoms of CEN—being emotionally numb, questioning the meaning of life, attempting to need no one, living with depression, having difficulty discerning my own talents, and feeling like a misfit wherever I went. Understanding this has been liberating for me and showed me a path out of my suffering.”
I wanted to share this for a couple of reasons: 1) to affirm my belief that personal stories matter—telling them, listening to them, reading them—and connect us as mere human beings sharing similar struggles no matter what it looks like on the outside; 2) to raise awareness of CEN, an invisible force complicating many of our lives.
We all might not have a bestselling story--that the masses find compelling enough for a blockbuster movie starring Meryl Streep or Leonardo DiCaprio—but it’s yours and it matters. Maybe only to you, but I’ll bet it’s worth telling.
