An open letter to my parents, in case anyone still in their orbits cares enough to ensure that it gets to them and that they read it:
Hi Dad, Hi Mom.
Off the bat let me address why I did this publicly: Neither of you will speak to me one on one and allow my voice to be heard - your track records prove that. Dad, we haven't talked in over a decade. Mom, you repeatedly shush me, constantly, when I say something you don't like or can't control. Frankly, I'm done trying to communicate with either of you through both barriers, and I can think of no other way to do this because I refuse to speak to either of you alone again without a person of my choosing there.
A fact, I would add, that most people I talk to find deeply upsetting when I mention it casually. We won't talk about the emotional labor required on my part to be able to do so, because it used to be that when I mentioned that it ripped me to shreds every time. I'm doing better, though.
It occurs to me, given the lack of communication between us, that you may not know your kid. Sure, you know the kid you raised and the image you have of me then and your dream of what you wanted me to be. Again, see how the word “you” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Because the reality of it is at the end of the day, I am an entirely separate human being with different experiences and thoughts and values. I am not discounting the way you raised me, nor am I forgetting where I came from.
So, let me tell you a little bit about who I am today. I am happily married for over ten years now to my lifelong devoted partner, who no matter how much I “screw up” around, has yet to do anything but come at me from a place of love and compassion and support and wanting to understand. We have disagreements. We talk through them. Nothing we have encountered over the course of the last decade has changed our minds about who we married or how much we love them. It is a beautiful, healthy marriage.
We don't have human kids. Neither of us want them. We both have complex neurological conditions that require an immense amount of fortitude to navigate any given day through. Schatzi, Baelish, and Finn, our three cats, are our babies and we spoil them as such.
I am working as a Research and Instruction Librarian. I love the core of what I do, getting to teach students how to use the library to research and how to evaluate the material they do find. It's somewhat painfully ironic to me that I teach information literacy every day, and yet I can reach neither of you with the same message. But I pour my heart and soul into my work approaching everything I do, whether it be teaching in a classroom or writing informational guides, or brainstorming and creating new ways to reach my students, with clear intention and empathy and compassion and understanding. Because perhaps the failure, the need comes from a lack of communication or understanding, or perhaps they simply don't know what they need to know. Either way, I encourage help seeking behavior with no value judgement attached, other than to serve their own curiosity in whichever way they will. I don't ask the political affiliation or religious thoughts of my students, I don't judge when they tell me what topics they are looking for information on. I simply help them find it, and let them make their own conclusions.
Personally and professionally, I try to live by a very simple set of tenets: learning is paramount, asking questions is necessary and never to be judged, communication is essential, curiosity is beautiful and healthy, and tolerance is a cornerstone. Because I have traveled across the world and I promise you, all humans are the same with the same wishes and worries and problems, and at the end of the day if we treat everyone the way we'd like to be treated life turns out a lot better.
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