Last week, we read quite a number of Mirjam’s sad experiences. This week we take a more analytical look at her life.

Mirjam tells how new life experiences gradually offered her more insight into how serious the situation at home was. She considered cutting the family ties at times, but became anxious about what that would mean for relationships with sisters and other relatives. Would she herself then confirm that she was indeed a difficult child…? “To this very day I notice that I try very hard to earn love, while at the same time I have a lot of trouble receiving love. Am I worth it? After all, what I did for my mother was never, never enough. I feel that because of that, I am still yearning for people who will accept me for who I am, not for what I do. That sometimes makes relationships with others difficult, because you long so intensely for… well… actually to curl up in someone’s lap in loving arms, to experience security… That longing characterises my life.” Together we sit in silence, moved by this candid analysis of what childhood engendered well into adult life.

I talk about the balance we seek as a child between attachment and authenticity and what the consequences can be if a child has to suppress that authenticity for the sake of attachment, that the child loses the connection with their true self – the foundation of trauma.
Mirjam is silent and thinks and then says: “Yes… I recognise that… I have completely lost myself in trying to earn what I never got and at the same time I find it difficult to receive love. The children are an exception; with them it works.”
I ask her if she is proud of how she has been able to break a pattern in her own family. With some modesty, but also determinedly, she answers: “Yes, I am proud of that. I was sometimes unsure about it, but I now see, also with the grandchildren, how different things have gone with us.”
That did not come naturally; sometimes she worked like a lioness to protect the children against the negative influence of her mother, who considered the grandchildren’s music performances embarrassing, immediately after departure threw away crafts made for her, or disapproved of the grandchildren’s study choices. “The faces of the children when their grandmother treated them like that… then my heart broke. She destroyed so much beauty on a structural basis.”

I ask if Mirjam has an idea why she kept ending up in environments that were difficult for her, both privately and in terms of work. “I don’t know… I don’t know… [silence] I don’t know.” She talks about the desire to really be seen and how her mother sometimes even on a birthday in Mirjam’s presence complained about how she looked, that the dress was not modern enough, that the jewelry did not shine enough. “Really everything was seen and commented on, but I, as a human being, was not seen. I was under the impression that she was ashamed of me.”
The constant judging by her mother served as a worrying example. When I ask if she has anything she classifies as a bad habit, she says, “The judging.” She is silent for a moment after this conclusion, before continuing: “More and more, I have learned to look at others with an open mind, but that is a choice I consciously make; it is not yet my default. Not judging is a skill I am still training for.”

Looking back, what does Mirjam see as her saddest and fondest memories?
“One of my saddest memories is the period surrounding my HAVO/high school exam. My grandfather died then; I partly cared for him and was very sad. As a result, I had not been able to prepare properly and I had to re-examine one subject. My father said it did not matter that I failed because I was a girl. My mother said she was sorry I failed; it would not have been necessary, she said, if I had concentrated better. I stiffened and looked at her wide-eyed, whereupon she said: ‘You can cry, if you like’, but she offered me no comfort or acknowledgment of my grief. That made me decide on the spot never to cry at home again. It was not until some twenty years later that I could really cry again, when someone did something very sweet for me to spoil and nurture me; then the tears came.
My fondest memory is the winter when my little brother was born. It was around Christmas; my mother was in childbed.” She smiles and begins to whisper: “We took care of that little baby as children and it was the first time that we did not have to work over the Christmas holidays! There was an air of endearment in the house and we cuddled up with that little fellow.”

When I ask about the essential aspects of her childhood for her development as a human being, she thinks before she searchingly and tentatively formulates her sentences: “What I was very determined to achieve was that I want to do my best to see and recognise the other person as they are because I missed that so much myself. I was constantly told and threatened that there would be severe consequences if I did not behave the way my mother wanted me to. A car, my wedding… the others got paid for it by my parents, but not me, because I had made choices they considered inappropriate. I have often felt very powerless and can really imagine things like self-mutilation and suicide. Those are attempts to be seen and heard. If you have the feeling that at the very core you do not matter, you lose all meaning. Fortunately, what always drew me out of there was my love for our children.”

Although she was greatly affected by the situation at home, deep down she always felt that it was not right. There is more passion in her voice as she says: “That on the day of my seven-year-old sister’s funeral, we had to get up extra early so that the cleaning could still go on… I was twelve, but I definitely felt that was idiotic! I wanted to say goodbye to my deceased sister; my other sister and I stopped cleaning and walked to the door, where we saw and heard the hearse drive away over the gravel. I already said there and then that this was not normal. Anyway… even when I once contacted the GP and said that my mother was completely hysterical and seemed to be going mad, it only led to a shot of valium, not a thorough investigation into how things were going at our home. As children, we were not protected from what was happening and at a  moment like that, my mother was actually kept calm with medication.”

I suggest you could see this as an addiction, both the endless cleaning and the medication. It is said that not everyone with trauma becomes addicted, but addicts almost always have a history of trauma. I share with Mirjam Gabor Maté’s definition of an addiction: everything you do and need to generate temporary relief from pain, behaviour that you cannot part with and which is harmful in the long term and disrupts your life. Mirjam listens attentively, is silent for a while and then asks me to repeat the description. She lets it sink in again and says she can relate to it. “I think my addiction was that I always kept going, not being able to rest, because continuing helped me to not feel the pain.” In recent years she has set aside more time for this, sometimes forced by illness, and she feels progress. For example, she has now decided that she will call in sick for her work, now that another difficult process awaits her for cancer treatment. The interests of the family weigh heavily here, because when it comes to what gives her life meaning and purpose, the children and grandchildren are her number 1 priority. What is also very satisfying is working with patients: “What I myself lacked is what has also made me strong in my job: really seeing people and spending time with them and then seeing the healing effects of genuine attention to people. Then I am very authentic. I listen carefully and see the person in front of me for who he is. I feel comfortable in that. I have nothing to lose and I don’t have to defend myself against anything. The moments when it is not possible to be authentic are the moments when I again fear that my individuality will lead to me losing people – just like it used to be.”

She concludes that it is an art to learn to receive what you did not receive at the beginning of your life: “It is often easier to have compassion for others than for yourself. In this sense, I am also concerned that there seem to be so many children who struggle with life at a young age and lack a basic sense of security. I have the feeling that adults often don’t pay enough attention to this. Children are required to adapt a lot and their basic needs are not always paramount. That basic need is love, in the form of security, safety and attention, and I am grateful that we have been able to give our children a much better start in that regard.”

With that we wrap up. We talked for a long time. In the course of the afternoon the sky has closed. The sun is gone, it is colder than I expected and it drizzles softly as I drive home.

Last week we started the series about Mirjam, who candidly speaks about her childhood experiences. This week we continue her story.

We talk about her father, who she describes as ‘invisible’, often away for all kinds of meetings. She has the idea that he fled the situation at home. Her mother had experienced the war and was very fearful, especially because her father (Mirjam’s grandfather) developed some resistance activities. Her mother’s fear was such that grandpa stopped those activities, fearing that his daughter would unwittingly betray the matter by the expression on her face.
Her fears made her try to keep a firm grip on everything in life: “When we started dating, my mother told my husband-to-be that he needed to know one thing, which was that she had control over all her children. “I’ve got a hold of them all”, she said, and he did not know what to make of such a statement. Like me, however, he has discovered that it was true and that my mother really had a lot of control over us, causing division between us as family members. Recently, uncles and aunts have also indicated that my mother was not an easy one to live with in her family in the past. Her fear that things or clothes would get dirty caused my mother’s presence to regularly be experienced as oppressive. I get it; I, too, would like to be free from her judgment and finally not let it affect me like that anymore.”

Mirjam thinks back to the unhealthy dynamics in her grandparent’s family and illustrates once again something that is so often the case, namely that problems and trauma have an intergenerational history. She recalls painful memories. For example, she once went to the zoo with her sister on a Sunday, which was very exceptional. The loving, childless neighbours wanted to take the girls out for a day, because they always worked so hard at home. Sunday was problematic (the ‘Day of the Lord’), but Saturday, the day of the cleaning, would be even worse, so they went on Sunday. “My mother had warned in advance: ‘Well, then, you can go, but you cannot buy anything, because then you will go to hell.’ My sister and I had decided beforehand not to buy anything, but when we arrived we realised that entrance tickets had to be bought, of course, and later the neighbours wanted to eat and drink something in the restaurant. We tried to prevent that, but it didn’t work. That night we begged God on our knees to make sure we would not be lost. So, all in all, my mother’s cleaning was even more sacred than Sunday, because she would not let us go on Saturday and put us in danger of hell on Sunday for possible misbehaviour. The dear neighbour knew nothing about it. My sister told me that not too long ago she froze at the zoo and the sight of the restaurant. So thoroughly mean, to indoctrinate your children like that…”

She talks about her younger years, how she was cared for by a neighbour, because her mother was busy on the farm or cleaning. She was also often with the living-in grandfather and grandmother from father’s side, who lived in the front house with their handicapped son (her uncle). They were sweet people, whom she loved very much and who sometimes explicitly stood up for her, for example when her mother said several times after she was born that she thought her daughter was so ugly. Her grandmother once said: “You should stop doing that; two eyes are looking at you and they are asking you to be a mother to this child!” Her mother also said this in later and even quite recent years and when Mirjam asked why she thought it was so important to repeat this over and over, she said: “Well, the truth deserves to be told – you were just ugly.”

After high school she moved out and found a room because of her studies and for that reason her parents did not pay for her wedding. They thought she should stay at home, where she had been caring for her grandmother for years and later on also for her grandfather. Mirjam’s limit had been reached, however: she refused to take care of the disabled uncle after the family moved, and considered that as a task of the uncles and aunts. Social workers said that if there was even one person against the uncle staying at home when things were getting worse, he would move to an institution. When Mirjam indicated that she was against him staying at home, however, her wishes were not taken into account. Social work was of the opinion that she was not able to understand the consequences of her choice: “You will regret doing this to your parents”, was their statement. Then she said: “If he comes in, I’ll move out.” So it happened, but her mother was angry about it and said: “Just wait, if you later have a disabled child yourself, you may sometimes think back to this selfish choice.” With every pregnancy she went through, Mirjam thought about that and she felt fear, fear that she would have a handicapped child as ‘punishment for her sin’.

The children developed their own coping strategies; one child regularly held her breath and then fainted – a very adequate method of ensuring she was spared. Another child also had regular physical complaints, such as severe eczema. Only Mirjam was in good health and therefore often had to suffer.
Living on her own was therefore a liberation, but one that was accompanied by lies about her study/work schedule, because if her mother knew she was free, she wanted Mirjam to come home. Mirjam then had a good conversation with the supervisor of her training, in which she indicated that she did not give permission for the passing on of her schedule. Mirjam thinks her mother was ashamed that her daughter chose to move into rooms. Like her sisters, Mirjam was offered a car if she would continue to live at home, but Mirjam declined the offer. As a result, she had to pay for her own education and, unlike the others, did not get a car for traveling back and forth. Nevertheless, her study time was a wonderful time, a period that she would have liked to extend a little longer: a life of her own, with friends and freedom.

“My mother felt that the education I chose was well-suited: I would probably find work in it quickly and that was necessary, because I was so difficult and critical that I probably would not get married. With a permanent job in care that also required me to work on holidays and weekends, nobody would be stuck with me.”
But she did get married, at 24, and when the eldest child was born, she realised that the freedom of those studying years would not come back that way and that her childhood was really over. She was overjoyed with the children and was determined to give them a different childhood than the one she had had. Nevertheless, she felt: “You can always make all kinds of beautiful choices later, but the open-mindedness that you should be able to experience in childhood or study years will then be over.”

We are talking about an aspect that is often overlooked, namely that trauma experts are increasingly emphasising that not receiving what they expect to receive (namely loving attention and safety) is often more harmful to children than being given something they have to find a way of dealing with. The lack of loving attention makes it more difficult to love yourself and that has a huge impact on how you approach life and whether you feel that you matter. Mirjam recognizes this: “I still find it very difficult to go a beauty salon or to buy something for myself, or to let myself be pampered. I am very generous towards the children, but towards myself… really very difficult.”
She tells how she, with respect to the children, has always looked at what they needed. That was her intrinsic attitude: asking and probin, also regarding feelings and experiences, and looking for the best for that specific child. “That is not comparable to how my mother dealt with things. When I got cancer twelve years ago, the first thing she said was: “Then you come to me even less often? That something like this must now happen to me again. And what a shame, for your employer, that you cannot work now.’ All those kinds of situations are still very sharp in my mind and they continue to hurt…”

We talk about possible causes of such family dynamics. “Our home was very much about what other people would say about us. The bar for judging ourselves was even higher than for judging others. As a result, everyone was constantly on their toes. The biblical ‘honour thy father and thy mother’ was leading, but my mother forgot that it also says ‘do not embitter your children’. My mother was in the victim role; throwing and visiting birthday parties, being waved goodbye on a school trip, being brought and encouraged at diploma swimming… no time was made for it: work always came first. On Sunday, the day of rest, we were allowed to read, do puzzles or do homework for our religion class, but not play outside or do anything that could make you dirty. Only later, with friends, did I discover the cosiness that can be present in families and I really eagerly drank it in.”

Next week you will read the last part in the series about Mirjam.