I still remember an award-winning movie I saw a few years ago, the critics adored it, and reviewers showered it with praise.
I remember a daughter fighting with her mother, and the fierce battle ended with the mother pushing her out of the speeding car and onto a superhighway.
I was startled by the scene; it was excruciating for me, a child who was repeatedly abused, along with my sister, to watch.
The fights between daughter and mother got even uglier in the movie, but at the film’s end, the daughter called her mother from a pay phone thousands of miles away and told her how much she loved her.
I thought this poor child had moved far away from her mother; good for her. But a part of me knew the movie wouldn’t dare and that way.
There was the great American family myth.
All was well; all was forgiven, of course. Family, after all, is the most important thing. No matter what, there must always be a happy ending.
One of the greatest and most tragic American myths was repeated and affirmed once more: family is the most important thing for all of us; it is the place where you go when no one else will take you in.
We must never give up on it.
I know this myth is often false, and so does Maria. It is something we share, something that bonds us.
No producer will fund a movie about a family that does not end. happily. Few publishers will publish a book without the family coming together.
The news loves happy family stories or stories about families affected by trauma and disaster. But they are not interested in families that don’t work and never manage that happy ending.
We are human beings; we never win 100 percent of the time.
This romanticized view nourishes one of the most sacred myths of American life and culture and one of the most profound and tragic lies.
Just as we don’t want to know about race or the suffering of women, we don’t want to know about the families where it doesn’t work out, can’t be worked out – where the family story does not end happily, or with a kiss and a hug and flowing tears and intense hugs.
I have lived all of my life in one of those tragic families, and I can, along with many more people than you might think, testify that it doesn’t always end happily.
We don’t talk much about it, but we know each other when we see each other.
I thought the mother in the movie belonged in jail, not sobbing globs of forgiveness to and from her daughter.
I could hardly believe that not a single review I could find even mentioned the daughter being pushed out of a speeding car on a busy highway, where she would have almost certainly died an awful and bloody death in real life.
To me, it looked like attempted murder. The movie won an Oscar.
Family doesn’t always work out. And guess what? We shall all die one day, family or not.
Maria knows that, and I know that, and so many of our friends know that.
But we will rarely read a best-selling book about it or see reality in a movie or online drama about families.
Children may suffer the worst kind of abuse and neglect, but at the end of the story, they forgive and forget. Everyone they care about tells them they have to work things out.
The family is everything; nothing else comes close. Every ending must be a happy one.
I am happy for people with loving and connected families. I know there are many. I wish them all the luck. I wish I had had one.
But my family story is also part of the family story, even if it is rarely heard or seen.
My parents are dead; I have not spoken to my brother for years and don’t expect to.
My sister called me recently for the first time in three years yesterday – I don’t even know where she is living and do not expect to see her again either, and my family’s tragedy once again struck me.
They were shattered, broken like crystals tossed on the floor.
My sister said she wanted to know how I was doing but wasn’t interested in learning about it. She called for a reason, but I never knew what it was.
I wanted to help and save her all my life, but she didn’t ask for that and wasn’t interested.
And I never really did help her, not once. I just tried.
I can’t recall her ever trying to help me.
I understand she was traumatized, but I only recently realized I was too.
And I need to take care of myself. I can’t help her.
My family did not work out.
They were not around to take me in when nobody else would. And I could never help them.
I was plodding to accept this reality, but I know it to be accurate and that my health and well-being demand the truth.
We will not have a sudden and joyous reunion, forgetting all the pain and suffering.
I’m done with it. It’s over. It’s enough.
I have never been happier than I am now; my family had nothing to do with it. If anything, my happiness is despite them.
Away from them, I could love, feel, and open up to the world’s joys—especially love, which I never encountered for much of my early life.
Now, there is a lot of life and love around me.
I have a wife and partner who is the living embodiment of love and support and who I love beyond words and a therapist who knows me better than any member of my family ever did and cares about me more.
My friends understand me better than my parents and forgive my flaws. I loved my mother but have never once missed her.
I did not love my father and never thought of him.
But I love my flowers and the pictures I take of them; how my father would have hated that. I love my photography and my blog.
The story of my life is a happy one, not a sad one. The story of my family is a tragedy.
I have found family and community, work I love, faith, and a home I love more every day.
My life began early when I realized my family was not a safe or supportive place for me but a dangerous and destructive one.
I said goodbye to them and, for all practical purposes, never returned.
Movies like the one I saw of the mother throwing her child out of a car while critics raved are heartbreaking. What was wrong with me?
They still make me feel like a freak, alone and out of sync with the world.
But as I have grown older, I have learned that I am neither. I am just an average person who knows that family is not as sweet and unbreakable as it is so often portrayed.
Life happens.
But I am here to tell you, fellow broken family people, that you are not alone. Like all family stories, your story is, in so many ways, everybody’s story.
I agree. Hollywood loves the happy ending. All those movies with all of that tragic and sad and painful abuse that somehow end up in forgiveness and love and even happiness are very fake. Real life isn’t like that. And all of those movies and novels make those of us who didn’t find that happy ending, feel more lost and more like freaks then we would otherwise. I wish all of the writers would cut the shit and tell it like it really is. Our stories of survival are beautiful and wondrous in their own, right.
I see you, Jon. We are far from alone. We are beyond fortunate to have finally found the true families we all deserve.
Thank you for writing this post. It brings me comfort to know that I am not alone. “I loved my mother, but I don’t miss her,” really brings it home for me, and many others, I’m sure. So appreciate your flower photos. thanks again.
My family dysfunction made me a liar to coworkers and neighbors because I was ashamed of the way I was ostracized and excluded from family reunions and milestone birthdays. Finding out that my status is not unique was part of my healing. I wonder what my life would have looked like if I had had parental support instead of being “thrown to the wolves” to “fix my wagon”.
The sooner people accept that we do not live in a fairy tale the better. Happily ever after is an illusion for most and it is a lot healthier to face up to reality.
Too true. My guilt over cutting off my sister has finally lifted from my shoulders. Thank you, Jon.
I never had the chance to grow up with a mother or a father…..so am I one of the lucky ones??
I would not call that lucky
When I saw the movie Lady Bird, it seemed to me that during the argument, the girl opened the door and threw herself out of the car, rather than being pushed by her mother. A Wikipedia summary of the movie reports the same thing, so others have seen it that way too. Having her mother throw her out of the car would indeed have been terrible and would have changed my understanding of their relationship, which I saw as difficult but loving (especially on the part of the mother).
I understand mentioning the movie incident was just the spark which inspired your post about broken families and I don’t mean this comment to criticize that at all, since the point of your post is so true. I just want to offer another view of what happened in the movie scene, especially since what you saw was so awful.
Maureen, thanks for your thoughtful message. I don’t remember what movie I saw, I just remember my feeling about it, and that is genuine and accurate. I didn’t mention any movie titles because I see a lot of movies and didn’t need to research my memory. That’s why I didn’t mention any movies.
I know social media enough to know that someone somewhere would have a different interpretation of it, and someone would feel the need to argue with me about it, even while knowing it was not the point of the piece. I spent too much of my life arguing with people about everything I write, so I don’t care to do it here either. I just don’t argue my pieces with people on social media any longer, and it’s much healthier. I appreciate your civility and desire to be accurate, but this has no relevance to what I wrote and I don’t care to talk about it. It isn’t a movie review. Thanks for your kind word about the piece, and for seeing its truth.
(To me it makes no difference whether her mother pushed her out of the car or whether she hated her mother so much she jumped. Why is that better?
As is so often is the case I read your wise words as if they are flowing from my own life. Validating and reaffirming. Thank you
Jon, the tragedy of family – that phrase is accurate. So many wounds have been caused in the name of preserving the venerated idea of family. “Family is all you have.” Nope, not for me. My chosen family is who I have. “Family will always love you.” Nope, I didn’t find that to be true, not in the way I define love. “You have to love your family, no matter what.” Nope, you don’t. If you are treated poorly by someone in your family, or anyone else, it’s your right to cut them out of your life. That’s called boundaries, and those don’t seem to exist in toxic families, as in the movie you wrote about. This is another reason why some people feel like they are broken, wrong or somehow disloyal to their families by cutting them out of their lives – they see this BS in movies.