Interestingly, if folks like this read their Bibles – especially the Genesis part they love so much – they’d see that the one of the very first commands God gave to humans in there was to tend the earth as a garden. Like, it’s one of the first things ever said to a human in the whole book.

But like a lot of the Bible, right-wing types tend to ignore that because religion is a tool for control for them, not a guiding morality that constrains their unchecked lust for power.

Thanks. It wasn’t the worst thing she did, but it was particularly crystallizing.

I’ve done a lot of work on healing from it since. I’ve got a kid now, and it’s been healing to live every day in a way that shows that you totally can just love your kid and not have to treat them like that.

No.

I might, if what they did were severe enough, express that what they did is disappointing. But that’s different from branding them with the iron of disappointment-as-identity. Everyone does stuff sometimes that is worse than they aspire to be. The trick is coming back from it, learning and growing and changing.

I remember how it felt the day I asked my mom, after she had screamed at me and hit me a bunch for stuff she made up about me, “what did I ever do to you to make you hate me this much?”, and she screamed back “YOU WERE BORN!” And I believed she meant it, because none of this was out of character.

I was 12.

No kid should ever feel the hopelessness and abandonment I felt in that moment.