the fairy godmotherI go on writing…
Miller writes in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free” about a woman, Katya...
I grew up as the oldest of six children coming close… I have three sisters and two brothers.
Miller writes that a woman (man) can reject accusations from grown up children only if she (he) in her (his) youth wasn’t subjected to [utsatt för] extreme corporal punishment [extrem kroppslig bestraffning] and was allowed to make mistakes. She writes that there are also many mothers who were punished for every little thing by their own parents (by both the mom and the dad) and go on blaming themselves or allow themselves to be blamed. They behave like small children trying to be good so as to earn the love of their parents and not be alone.
My comment: and today there is knowledge they too could benefit from… They could also search for information and knowledge and wanting to know. But all don’t want. Why not? Because somewhere they sense that the truth would be too painful? All these things have caused? For themselves, their lives, their relations and for their children and grandchildren in turn and maybe even great grand children? Unable to stop this vicious circle.
They use to say that people survive heart-diseases if they have close relations or close family ties, these have better chances of recovery (Miller mentions Dean Ornish).
But Miller writes that she has found that many patients cling to the very attachments that have played a strong causative role in their illness (they wouldn’t even have became sick if they had lived in better relations?).
And she writes that some of them manage to free themselves from their illness if they have the good fortune (yes, one needs some or a lot of good fortune for this?) to encounter enlightened (truly enlightened) witnesses who can help them dig down and find their own personal truth.
By the way, the Swedish physician Christina Doctare writes about two elderly people (a woman and a man), if I remember right, in her book “Hjärnstress” (“Brainstress”) and the fatal effects their relations had, especially when these persons retired from work and didn’t have work-contacts as moderating factors. In the end leading to death she thinks.
Back to Katya: it was Katya’s job to look after her two younger sisters. And if they failed to live up to their mother’s standards Katya was blamed for this. Miller sees parallels to the tale of Cinderella (Askungen). She thinks that the dynamics of this fairy tale occur more frequently than we might expect in real life.
Miller wonders how Katya was able to develop an average intelligence. How did she contrive [finna medel till, lyckas] to satisfy her mother’s demands (explicit and implicit, outspoken and not outspoken)? At least to the extent of being able to survive and not turn to crime later in life. Who was helping witness in Katya’s case? Hardly her father Miller thinks.
Katya was unable to remember herself.
But when Kaya was about fifty she suddenly met a former playmate from the neighbourhood who told Katya that she admired her so. And reminded Katya about another family's maid, Nicole, who had been very fond of Katya and spoilt her when her mother wasn’t present, because Nicole was afraid of her mother (what about the child then? In my case people had a deep respect for my parents, who had a lot of integrity??).
Thanks to this maid Katya grew into a strong and lovable person. Noone else in her childhood supported her and showed her respect and affection for the person she was except this Nicole.
As an adult Katya was good at her job, but her private life was a succession of mishaps. She was drawn to the wrong men, abusing her trust and at last Katya married a man she didn’t love.
She wanted children but couldn’t love her children as she would have wished. Intent of being different from her own mother in every possible way, she never beat her children, but she was incapable of protecting them from his cruel father. From the outset her relationship to her daughters and sons, the fist born three months after her marriage (three weeks before she was expected to come), was marked by the experiences she had been through. As her own feelings were alien to her, because she had no knowledge of what a child feels, she was unable to relate to her children’s feelings and maybe even less to the first.
In her own life, including her marriage and her relationship with her son, Katya was dogged [jagad, följd i hälarna] by guilt.
Just as she had been blamed for every misfortune [olycka] that befell [hände, skedde] her mother, father, sisters and brothers, she blamed herself for the suffering of her husband and children. Her husband were adept [skicklig i] at exploiting her attitude to delegate [delegera] to her the feelings he had split off from himself – helplessness, anxiety, powerlessness – and thus avoid living with them himself.
Katya was like a sponge [tvättsvamp], she absorbed all those feelings without realizing that it was not in her power to work out other people’s feelings for them. Only her husband could have understood and come to terms with his own emotions. But instead of refusing to take over the feelings he cast upon her, she accepted them without protest because emotionally she was still the little girl who felt responsible for her parents suffering.
This could be a mix of me, my mom – and my dad?? And sisters and brothers? A thought once again; who have own families in this sibling’s crowd? And why? Were they allowed a greater freedom? Allowed to free themselves? Allowed to see through to a higher degree? Or allowed not to idealize as much as other siblings? And what about self-esteem, valuing oneself? What has one been living for? The only option for some of these siblings, because they had no other value, than doing a good job, being good workers, but doing it very modestly, not thinking they were anyone? God forbid.
At last Katya realized and admitted to that she had married a man who strongly resembled [liknade] her mother, a man without the slightest interest in thinking about his own behavior and profoundly incapable [djupt, grundligen oförmögen] of relating to others.
For twenty years she hoped that with kindness and understanding (False hope) she might be able to change things for the better, but the nicer and kinder she was to him, the more aggressive he became (and contemptuous towards such a weakness and lack of strength, the one he had?), because above all he envied [avundades] her for her kindness.
After years spent soliticing [enträget beende om, bjudande ut sig åt, tiggande om], she developed severe internal bleeding. Her uterus was removed.
Katya was blind to the fact that as an adult she had ways of escaping her dilemma, that she could have separated from her husband. Instead she sought ways of living with him without incurring [ådra sig, utsätta sig för] outbursts of anger.
She also taught her children, especially the daughters (and maybe most f all one of them?), being kind and nice, to avoid being badly treated, incurring outbursts of anger (the victim's fault how it is/was treated effectively inoculated, implanted from early childhood).
“One doesn’t have to be aggressive!!”
Do her children have tendencies to that? And who actually have those tendencies (if any of them have)??
She tried to understand how she could live in peace with her husband; the very sight of her appeared to provoke a towering rage [uppstickande vrede?], so there must be something wrong with her of course.
But what she needed would have been help to be the woman she was and to find the courage to live with the truth, her truth. But her feelings of guilt prevented her from setting herself free. She was within herself still the small child who took all the blame for the bad moods and the failures of the people around her in herself.
And never the two meet.
As she had learned as a child from her own mother, the adult Katya forced herself every day to believe what she was told and not to see what she saw. Although this compulsion as a source of immense suffering [ofantligt lidande], she was unable to rid herself of it and desperately sought a solution (in what manners?), yet she still refused to perceive the roots to her troubles in the relationship with her mother, whom she idealized despite this woman was dead since long and despite she in many ways could criticize her.
Katya’s unfulfilled desire for an emotional and intellectual exchange with her parents, sisters, brothers, and schoolmates had survived for so long in an illusory form.
She had turned to perfectionist, unable to forgive herself for her failings.
To confront these questions seriously, Katya should have had to face up to her earliest childhood, when her mother used physical force (for instance by pulling her children’s hair) to make her a good girl deeply ashamed of everything she did wrong and felt and said and thought, and living in a state of constant guilt (for being badly treated).
The lessons she learned retained [behöll] their impact throughout her life. Katya’s potential fort guilt was unlimited, an innate trait, her nature she thought very convinced.
She was able to develop her creativity and establish relationships. And in her work she was able to help others. Some thought this was because her teachers had been strict at school, as her parents had educated her strictly too.
But all her life she was incapable of ridding herself of the guilt her mother had implanted in her at such an early age. The seed thus sown [fröet som såtts på detta sätt] grew into a tall tree and effectively obscured [fördunklade] a view of the facts. And what was the price, not only for her?
All her life Katya had submitted [underkastade sig] herself to well-established [väletablerade] guidelines [förhållningsregler] (following written and unwritten “hand-books” eager to do the right thing and blaming herself harshly if she didn’t do right, but wrong, for being a lousy mother, lousy wife etc.). She had accepted all kinds of laws that played a major role in dictating her behavior. But doing it so intelligently that she fooled both herself and people in the environment?
"We who grew up learning good behaviour, in a fine family!"
the headmaster's wife (who could have been her mum) at the agricultural school the young couple moved to as newly married said to the young wife one of the first years as married. The truth was that she wasn't raised in a "fine family", on the contrary. She grew up in a working-class family. At the bottom of society really (though socially adapted). And was the only one of four siblings who studied further.
As daughter to this mother one can survive by creating a life where the rules aren’t so strict? Where you can be “spontaneous”? Where you can break rules? Live a bit outside the "norms"? And in that way adopt the father’s way of behaving, but in a more “female way”? Not being quite as bulldozer-like as he? Not quite as insensitive?
Unable to question the code of morals her parents had lived under really. Still correcting her children/grandchildren, but in a “kind” way. Actually using manipulation, but in subtle forms? And not noticing it herself?
I have changed some facts in the original story about Katya…
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