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Will you ever love me?
For many children, to be born into a Soviet family meant life in a stale air of archaic traditions with voluminous patriarchy interlinked with cruel matriarchy, powdered with inhumane totalitarianism that seemed normal for many generations, that followed it without any criticism, glueing their family relations by fear, physical punishment and emotional coldness. Patriarchal models obliged women to obedience, hard work and effectiveness at realising their natural aim – incubating babies; while men in matriarchy existed in suppressive relationships that built their belief in the inferiority of a woman – the stereotype caused by early trauma done by female parenting. That subconsciously influenced the style people brought to adult life, even after the USSR collapsed, and fresh air blew into the room. In the family where I was born, the situation looked quite “classical” – with a limitless power in the hand of a traumatised man who had a monopoly of untruth and punishment and never of true love. This classical setting pushed a competition for the prize of father’s admiration – the contest in which unloved children always fail, forming their broken self-perception. The impossibility of feeling loved makes you ask many questions that stay unanswered, jump higher than you can, dealing with your father’s emotional coldness that he considers encouraging, father’s aggression that he finds motivating. But you get no acceptance and no love. I am seeking to make a farewell with my hurting past and to untwist the knots in my memory cloth forever, forget the participation in an unachievable "prize" and live freely just the way I am, without nurturing the past wounds, not asking father about anything. But... Dad, will you ever love me?
Many of us were born into a world where the love that should have been freely given was withheld like a precious commodity to be rationed out only in small doses. Many of the “fortunate” find it an enormous surprise that there are many others, who have similar experiences, who were also ignored, dismissed, put down or marginalised by the very individual who was supposed to love them unconditionally.
Most of these “daughters” grew up with a strong concern that they are the only children on the planet singled out in this way with their hurt amplified by a code of silence that surrounds this taboo subject. And too, they tend to keep silent themselves. Why is that?
For those who are not familiar with the issue of “unloved daughter syndrome” I wish to mention that this is a term to describe the lack of emotional connection or love between a mother and a daughter or a father and a daughter. This disconnect can lead to uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, mistrust of other people, inability to set long-term relationships, difficulty with trusting others and inability to fully express themselves healthily. Among the potential causes of the disconnection are: parenting abuse, neglect, emotional coldness or voidness and many more.
One of the greatest challenges facing the unloved daughter, having grown up without a healthy model of sustaining relationships, is making her private adult relationships function normally. At the same time, many of these daughters are starved for love and validation, which can be a recipe for disaster, especially during the early years of adulthood and sometimes decades longer. The shadow of a father who is stingy with love penetrates the daughter's thinking and affects her mental models and relations, resulting in behaviour, emotional needs and attachment style.
We all gravitate toward what we know in close relationships, or on the contrary - strive to abandon the negative experience of the relationships and build our own. But many of us take abusive or uncaring behaviours in our childhood as part of coping, while we come into adult life with an evil assumption, which does not stand in good stead. Those who have grown up with loving and attuned parents feel building relationships is like a fine kind of homecoming, while unloved children end up marrying people who treat them as their fathers or mothers did. However, there is a slight possibility to make some change through personal discoveries, therapy, or support in the relationships that make them healed.
Each time you deal with a critical period of the relationship with a parent who doesn't love you there come some thoughts. You wrap yourself and agree that such ties are not uncommon. You understand that the problem was always about them, not you. Too, you discover that “father” is actually versus “fathering”, and that he cannot give what he does not have. Every day you look at healthy models, mould your inner parent and finally you stop yourself from being worried every time father imitates passing away, manipulates, or treats you unfairly, without getting impressed or taking it too personally. You leave his “suitcase” stuffed with all the tricks and walk on.
Honesty with yourself is crucial to separate from an ancestor or societal judgement and mythology depicted in literature. Through the series of sessions of therapy I have visited some secret rooms in my memory that led me to touch the questions I was scared to ask my father – the questions I will never ask him, not because physically it is impossible, I figured out that asking questions has no sense. The answers are never found – the same as love, that has not existed.
This series of embroideries emphasises the questions I underlined for myself through the hypnosis, following the “Seven Rooms” method, suggested by M. Ginzburg – the questions I wanted to ask my father, but will never do. In my imaginary walk, I go through the rooms where I meet my father recalling the most unpleasant events. I shed tears and wipe my face with the kerchief which he gives me, as always with an arrogant look. The tears develop the lines in the textile – all that I wanted to ask, but my lips did not pronounce. To give a handkerchief in many cultures is a sign of separation and farewell. I stitched on the handkerchiefs to visualise all that I saw in my hypnotic walk, to collect and farewell with it.
