Scene 122: Forging The Chain
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Mom (Me): Good morning, girls.

Libra (The Friend): Good morning Mom.

Bloom (The Survivor): Good morning, new sister!

The Parent (uneasy): I’m still getting used to that…

Bloom (excited): Oh, you need a name! You’re a woman and a parent, so that makes you… Wait, hold on.

Mom: Let’s slow down just a touch. How are you settling in?

The Parent: I have so many questions… Though this name thing feels important; maybe it’s best to start there.

Lark (The Dreamer): Nickname thing, technically. Since we’re all the same person, all of us share the same name.

The Parent: Okay, which is…?

Mom: We’re named Daphne.

The Parent: Daphne… I don’t mind that at all. You named us that, right College Daphne?

Libra (happy): Yes, you remember! But as you’ve just noticed, it would be very confusing if we all tried to use that name, so we all have nicknames that we use instead. Instead of “college Daphne,” I’m Libra: The Friend.

Bloom: I’m Bloom, high school Daphne and The Survivor.

Lark: Lark; The Dreamer.

Aura (The Professional): I’m Aura, the Professional… I’m twenty-ish.

Ivy (The Partner): And I’m The Partner, Ivy… I’m in my early thirties. 

The Parent: I get it. I’m The Parent, I suppose… Late thirties, I think? I feel like we stopped being me at… 39 years old.

Bloom: We can’t just call you The Parent; you need a nickname!

The Parent: Right, right. Is there a process of something, or…?

Libra: Mom usually gives them to us.

Mom: Right. As The Parent, you were quickly adapting to becoming a caregiver. You’re responsible for bringing a new life into the world, and suddenly you’re everything to them; you’re their entire world. You feel like you barely know what you’re doing, and yet you have to be their constant companion, shining like the brightest star in their night sky… How do you feel about Twyla?

Twyla (The Parent): Twyla… That feels right, somehow.

Ivy (smiling): It’s so good to meet you, Twyla.

Twyla: It’s… It’s really good to be here. I feel like I belong here… But I still have so many questions.

Mom: Ask away, dear.

Twyla: Okay… I guess I’ll start with the big one then. Why bring me back here?

Bloom: Because you’re family! That’s reason enough, isn’t it?

Twyla: I suppose, but I feel like there’s more to it than that. Conversing to my past selves isn’t something *I* tried to do, after all.

Lark: None of us did, no. We were all summoned here to the Headspace to help Mom process her past and connect her past life to her present. This series has grown into so much more than that, but that’s how things started.

Twyla: I see. After Ivy, I’m the next link in our past.

Ivy: You are. You’re my older sister. On top of that, Mom has a plan for processing criticism that you’re a key part of.

Mom: Not just processing how we manage criticism… I have a feeling my plan is going to shed light on quite a lot of my life.

Twyla (thoughtful): A plan to manage criticism? I feel like I already manage criticism well enough… I got a lot of it, after all.

Libra (embarrassed): We all did.

Mom: We still do, and always have… As long as we can remember.

Bloom: *Before* we can remember. Every time I try to think back that far it just hurts.

Twyla (confused): So then what makes me special, if I’m having the same troubles as the rest of you? If anything I’m further from that past than just about everyone here.

Mom: Because you’re The Parent. We may not be able to remember our childhood, but by thinking about your time, I think we’ll be able to get a feel for the parent/child relationship… And maybe we can use our relationship to our own child to understand how our relationship to our parents may have worked.

Twyla (focused): The details are fuzzy, but I remember when I started understanding how my parents must have felt when I was little.

Mom: Don’t worry, the details are only fuzzy because you arrived recently. Your memory of your time will feel solid soon enough.

Twyla (proud): Even with fuzzy memories I remember how powerful that realization felt, like I was the latest link in a chain of parents going back generations. I’d finally taken my place at the end of that chain. I felt really connected to my parents. But…

(Twyla falls silent. After several moments I speak up, prompting her to continue.)

Mom: Yes?

Twyla (distressed): There were these upsetting gaps in my connection to them. Things that my parents did with me that I *couldn’t* understand, even after becoming a parent. And the longer I thought about those gaps, the less sense they made.

Mom (gentle): Yes. That feeling only gets stronger as we age, and it gets *especially* stronger after we transition.

Twyla (concerned): Why, what happens when we transition?

Mom: Let me ask you this: Do you think our parents were excited to hear about our transition?

Twyla (uncomfortable): Well… You can never know for sure how someone’s going to react, right? I feel like they’d have trouble with it… That they’d take some time to come around. But I can be patient, you know? I can’t expect them to get my pronouns right on day one!

Lark: That’s a lot of words to avoid saying “yes.”

Twyla (distressed): Well… It’s complicated…

Mom: It’s a story for another time regardless. There’s quite a lot to delve into, but for now, just focus on feeling at home here. Get comfortable; get reacquainted with your sisters. Revisit a favorite memory or three. When you’re ready, we’ll start working through things.

Twyla: Okay… I think I can do that. I’ll try, in any case.

Mom (smiling): That’s all I ask.

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https://familyofme.com/?p=621

Scene 121: Reinforcements
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Bloom (The Survivor): Okay Mom, I’ve gathered the rest of the family!

Libra (The Friend): I’ve been gathered! What’s up?

Mom (Me): In the last scene we talked about my trouble with criticism and how I didn’t think we could manage it alone.

Ivy (The Partner): I used to think my partner criticized me quite often. I feel like I should be the one leading the charge on growing past this, but… Recognizing when it happens is really difficult for me.

Lark (The Dreamer): Even I have a hard time dealing with identifying criticism, honestly. I think we all have a tendency to take uncritical comments as criticism.

Aura (The Professional): Goodness knows I do. Even when someone’s comments don’t feel like criticism, I tend to feel like criticism is just around the corner… And every shortfall is an opportunity to grow.

Mom: This is what I’m talking about. Ordinarily I’d approach a particular hangup of ours by figuring out which of us dealt with it first, or which of us feels it most strongly, and work with that family member to process our emotions. But this issue with identifying criticism is something *all* of us deal with, and it seems to be rooted *deep* in our past… Maybe even before Bloom.

Bloom (worried): My memory doesn’t go back that far… I’ve tried, remember? Trying to remember our childhood really hurts.

Libra: All of us had trouble with that… We all tried back in Scene 77, and it ended in tears for all of us.

Lark: All of us except Mom, anyways.

Mom: Only because I cried all my tears out before bringing it to your attention. It hurts me too.

Aura: So if we can’t work with our youngest self directly, what can we do?

Mom: I have an idea about that. There’s a fact about me that I’ve hinted at in the series, but hasn’t come up very often… I have a child of my own.

Ivy: I’m aware of that because I’ve watched the memories, but parenthood was after my time, and I’m the oldest… Apart from Mom, of course.

Mom: Right, because that’s the event that marks the end of your time and the start of your older sister’s: The birth of our child.

Bloom (excited): Wait… When you said you couldn’t process this criticism stuff alone, you didn’t mean us, did you?

Mom: No, I didn’t. I meant your older sister — the one whose life was completely upended by learning to care for a child every hour of the day. The one who found themselves completely overwhelmed by being “on” 24 hours a day, and had to adapt to one new situation after another as her child grew at an astounding rate. I mean the woman whose life started anew at the age of 34 when she became… The Parent.

The Parent: Whoa, where am I? What is all this?

Bloom (ecstatic): SISTER!

Ivy (tearful): Big sis…

The Parent: Hang on, are you calling *me* sister?

Mom (smiling): Welcome back. You’re me as I was in my late thirties, after I became a parent. We’re all me here — versions of me from different points in our life.

The Parent (overwhelmed): That’s… Nope, I’ll think about that later. Did they call me “sister”?

Mom: Of course… You’re the eldest, apart from me. You’re their big sister.

The Parent: But “sister” is usually used for women and girls…

Mom: Ah yeah, about that. You know how when you were a child, you’d go to sleep each night wishing you were born a girl?

The Parent (shocked): Sure, but what does that… Wait, are we *trans*?

Bloom (surprised): Wow, that was fast.

Mom (happy): You catch on quick! Yes, we’re trans… We transitioned at 40 years old.

The Parent (tearful): Oh my goodness I’m… I could never put the thought out of my head, you know? It just kept taking up more and more space until… Until you, I guess.

Mom: Yup. After years of anguish, I saw myself in a trans woman’s writing, and that was the last straw. Within days I knew I was a woman and I started my transition.

The Parent (crying): I just… Was it worth it? I was worried it would be so hard, or that transition would ruin our life…

(I approach The Parent and put my hands on her upper arms, rubbing them gently with my thumbs.)

Mom (grinning): It was more than worth it. It was better than we could ever imagine.

(The Parent breaks down completely as joyous but overwhelmed sobs rack her body. I pull her into a tight embrace as she cries, letting her tears soak the shoulder of my dress.)

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https://familyofme.com/?p=617