My oldest child is off having adventures on her own. Separation is great! She loves getting to come home and tell us all about her day. Of course she’s an intense person and she isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and she’s having to deal with social friction. This is important for a lot of reasons and I have no desire to take this experience away from her. She needs to learn who she is.

The trouble is, when someone starts some shit she retaliates just a little enough to keep a slap fight going. She doesn’t want to be perceived as a coward so she feels she must respond but she also doesn’t want to be a bully so she doesn’t want to escalate. We’ve been talking constantly for weeks about how that just encourages the situation to keep going at a simmer and she’s obsessed with talking and thinking about her negative experiences all day long. She feels like when she is at school she never stops looking over her shoulder. She’s developing a lot of anxiety and her stomach hurts most of the time. It’s making it hard to eat.

She keeps telling me that she wants to be a badass like me so she has to respond, she can’t just run away from the issues or people. One of her new buddies at school is the tallest boy in her grade and his response to bullying is to run away 100% of the time. She is very conflicted about watching his response.

I told her that as long as she sits on the fence she is going to encourage the problem to keep happening. Either get in a serious fight and really hurt someone… or decide you are committed to non-violence and start running. I will support you in whatever you decide. Sitting on the fence is going to go really poorly in the long run because it will egg the situation on and it will never improve.

She told me that she feels like she is letting me down if she runs because she wants to be brave like me.

Oh baby.

I fought when I was your age because I had a dad who raped me and a mom who mostly didn’t want to talk to me and I had been in foster situations for most of my life and I had gone to 19 schools and moved like 40 times. I fought because I was a highly traumatized feral animal who was trying to not die.

It didn’t make me a badass. It made me a traumatized feral animal.

She said that sometimes it is hard that she is so exceptional that sometimes I act disappointed when she is only average. I agreed that it sounded very hard. I can’t identify with that struggle. People expected me to be shitty and worthless and were shocked when I demonstrated anything else. I cannot understand what it feels like to let down your parents by not being perfect.

I told her that I don’t ever get to be the judge of whether her life has been highly traumatizing because my perspective is so fucked up and extreme that I am not in any way qualified to decide if her life experiences have been abusive. If she needs to react to the trauma she has experienced with violence… I am going to try hard to not judge. I’ve tried hard to give her stability and love and support so she doesn’t need to but there is the real chance I have failed.

I told her she is heading for a crisis of faith because sometime very soon she is going to figure out that her parents are fucked up assholes and she is better than us and she should not be aspiring to be like us. She has every chance of being so much better than us that we can’t even imagine what it is like to be her.

Aspiring to be like me at her age…. is not #goals. It’s not an improvement over who she is right now. I was worse, and meaner, and less loving, and less caring, and less educated, and less equipped in basically every way.

I told her that I try very hard to be like her. Because I can see which direction is an improvement in this house and it’s not being more like me.

I asked her if she feels I am more brave and badass on days when I lose my temper and scream and I behave like a bully towards helpless little people? Or am I more brave and badass on days when I can redirect and help my kids move towards their own aspirations of who they want to be?

I asked her what things make me a badass at this point in my life? I gave up fistfights more than 25 years ago. She said what makes me a badass is being brave and going on adventures and making things that other people say “I can’t do that”.

I asked her what part of me being a badass is making other people hurt and feel small?

She said none of it.

I asked her if she really wants to be aspiring to be the wounded traumatized part of me that had nothing better to offer the world or if she wants to be working towards the me that had a lot of therapy and a lot of privilege and a lot of time to pick and choose who I want to be and how I want to live in the world.

We cried together and she said that I really see the worst of me and I’m a lot less of an asshole than I think.

I said maybe. I said if I am less of an asshole than I think and I have treated her better than I fear I have then maybe she doesn’t need to lash out at people who are sitting in their own trauma; people who have nothing better to offer the world.

I asked her how she wants to remember this time of her life when she looks in the rear view mirror? Do you want to take pride in hurting people who don’t have a better way of living in the world or do you want to be someone who shows other people a better way?

I will support you and love you as you stumble through either path. I love you. I accept that you are not perfect and you have to make your own mistakes.

On the day that you were born I forgave you for everything you would ever do wrong. Because that is the deal.