Allowing others to become the hero in their own lives

My daughter Olivia is a gem. She's beautiful, smart and talented.

She can be a little prickly at times but I know that has a lot to do with the hand life dealt her at a very early age.

She was born into a marriage that was taking its dying gasps by the time she got there. (She hasn’t complained about a lot. But there have been a few instances when she’s noted that she doesn’t have any birthday, deb ball or graduation pictures with her father, myself and her in the same frame. In fact, the number of photos she has of us all together can be counted on one hand.)

She lost my second husband not long after I did. And I watched her world collapse as he walked away.

We went from from a family of five to just Olivia and I overnight and it was devastating for her. When we moved into our home, she didn’t unpack her boxes for almost a month.

When I asked her why, she replied, “I just keep hoping this is all a nightmare and I’ll wake up and Jeff will come pick me up and take me back home again.”

For a kid that once declared, “People should get given one house and that’s it! That’s what they should live in their whole lives,” it was very nearly too much to live with.

I remember feeling a whole lot of guilt about these situations. (And later ones as well). About the fact that my misadventures with men and relationships had resulted in a barrage of emotional shrapnel hitting the one person I wanted to protect the most.

I remember loads of psychologist’s appointments as she fought depression and anxiety. I blamed myself for them and the struggle she was engaged in, against the demons of the mind I felt responsible for planting there. I wished I could remove every hurt, every ounce of suffering from her life and have her grow up happy, popular and confident, not the struggling teenager who drew pictures of broken hearts and beautiful doll-like creatures with limbs cut off.

I remember working hard to mitigate those feelings. I tried to do fun things with her, listen to her, and at times to buy her happiness, although I couldn’t do that a lot.

Money was often a struggle. As a single parent, you are consistently on the back foot. So, any time Olivia asked for something or to do something, the first question out of my budget obsessed mouth was often, “How much will it cost?”

I did my best to give her everything I could. Piano lessons, school play opportunities, calisthenics club memberships. And once in a blue moon, I made exceptions to my penny-pinching rules.

I remember her senior year of high school. We were out shopping for the perfect ball dress in Chadstone. She spotted this beautiful embroidered red gown with a flowing skirt. I remember asking if we could peel it out of its protective plastic jacket and try it on.

To which the snobby sales assistant replied, “Are you sure you want to do that? It costs eight-hundred dollars.”

“Yes. My daughter deserves the best,” I shot back and Olivia almost skipped into the changing rooms.

She emerged twirling around in a state of joy. She looked like Grace Kelly, like Cinderella dressed in the magical threads wrought for her by her fairy godmother. Within five minutes of seeing her, every other young girl in the shop was trying on that red dress.

I had eight hundred and fifty-six dollars in my bank account at the time, but there was no way I couldn’t buy it for her. I wanted to give her the knowledge that she was worth it. An experience of money being no object, because that is where I wanted both of us to be headed in our lives.

I think when we have a child, most of us want them to grow up with every advantage we felt we missed out on in our own youth. And we want to shield our offspring from pain and the uglier aspects of life. Blaming ourselves when we can’t.

But what I’ve noticed about my daughter is that the pain she has suffered, (despite the red dress and the trips to Philip Island), seems to have made her, rather than broken her.

She moved back to New Zealand when she was nineteen, got herself a career, formed wonderful friendships and encouraged my family over there to get together more often. Recently she added a lovely partner to the mix and things seemed to be going really well for her. I noticed she had a resilience born of overcoming her own personal challenges and a kindness born of empathising with others’ suffering. I was proud of her.

Then another disaster hit. She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.

I was devastated. I had to leave work that day to cry and process the myriad of emotions I felt around Olivia’s illness.

However, when I talked to her, she seemed to be taking things in stride. She was putting one foot in front of the other. Getting her diagnosis, exploring then availing herself of various treatment options. Talking to her workplace openly and organising a schedule that she could cope with. She was taking charge.

That’s when it hit me. I was raised as the eldest child of five, invariably taking care of everyone around me. But my daughter didn’t need me to take care of her anymore.

She had become the hero in her own life story.

I have often tried to hold things together for everyone, long after toxic relationships should probably have been abandoned, or the limit of my own endurance has been reached.

In doing a lot, sometimes unnecessarily, for others, I have prevented them from exercising their own resourcefulness and resilience. When we constantly play the rescuer, the rescuee doesn’t get to become the hero.

It's an opportunity lost.

The hero’s journey is the pathway to self-respect and self-belief.

I should have realised my daughter was more than capable of taking care of herself and others way back in kindergarten when, long after the other children had abandoned the facility’s dollies, Olivia wrapped them up, put them to bed and sang them lullabies until they were safely ‘asleep.’

So now, at last, I am learning to let go and let my daughter be all she can be in her own right. Of course, she will always have my love and support. But I must admit, I watch in awe as she forges deep relationships, cares for herself and others, makes enthralling creative content and generally becomes the amazing human being she was always destined to be.

My daughter Olivia in her red bass dress.

#proudmama #heroesjourney