The Emperor reversed, and other profound disappointments

Facing up to parental alienation and the radical Right

I have been feeling Some Kind of Way(tm) the past week or so. I mean, small wonder, given the absolute shitstorm that is life in the United States at the moment. But whereas I had been stewing nicely in a mix of rage, resolve, and rallying cries, something knocked the wind out of me recently, and it’s taken me a bit to put a name to it. This one’s going to be personal as well as political, so get ready for some therapy talk, witches.

I have been estranged from my biological mother and stepfather for almost a year & a half now. It was a long road to get to that point, not one I merrily skipped down, and a process that I’m still, well, processing. The thumbnail sketch, for some context to my larger point, is as follows:

None of my parents, biological or otherwise*, are emotionally healthy individuals. They come from several flavors of the same generational pattern of authoritarian yet avoidant “do as I say, not as I do” parenting, so it’s no surprise that they have struggled mightily in raising their own children. We were all provided for, clothed & housed, taken on various vacations & adventures, and these adults all moved through the world with various kinds of charm and success, so on the proverbial paper, everything was fine.

But after a half a century of struggling to have real, authentic, supportive relationships with these people and failing time after time, I came to the realization that none of them were interested in or capable of doing the hard work from their end. I had been dashing myself to pieces on the rocks, trying to remake & reinvent myself time & again into something that they might finally understand & value. These efforts were met with minimizing, infantilizing, gas lighting, and a maddening cycle of reward & withdrawal as it suited them, consciously or not. They each wanted me to show up as their idealized version of me, and mute or smother the parts they found inconvenient and challenging.

What brought this all to a head was my mother’s failing health, and her & my stepfather’s response to the challenges this brought, both practical & emotional. I understand that fear is a powerful agent for shitty behavior, and I tried my hardest to find resources and options that would ease the pressure on everyone. But these efforts were, to an item, ignored, shot down, or ridiculed, and no amount of being “the capable one” would get through their obstinate defensiveness. The situation deteriorated, then transmogrified, and I suddenly got to see these two people, my parents, who had insisted on being seen & respected as “good”, at their most transparent and unfiltered.

Witches, they were truly shitty, horrible people.

The decades of public service, of pitching in to help their friends & community, of parenting support groups and marriage retreats, of environmental justice and fiscal responsibility, were reduced to ash. They said things about each other, about mutual friends, about the wider family circle, and about me that were like kerosene dumped on a carefully tended meadow. When it came down to the wire, and things got really real, the principles they’d stood by their whole adult lives turned out to be nothing but lip service, and they were happy to let the rest of us panic and burn if it meant they got their way. They lied, distorted the facts, and then just outright told us that they were going to do what they wanted to do, and our feelings didn’t matter. At all.

I think that last paragraph shows you, dear witches, why the current state of things has me particularly in the ditch.

Watching the ease and glee with which our system of checks, balances, benefits and programs has been dismantled in the past few weeks has been an endless queue of gut punches. Seeing in real time how many people, elected & otherwise, see fellow Americans as parasites and liabilities to be expunged is breaking my deeply optimistic heart. Calling my representatives day after day to express my outrage and carefully laid out objections, only to watch them vote YES anyway, has revived the past years of fruitless battle with my parents into full color panorama. It is so easy to slip into the static, to check into Dissociation Station rather than go through all of those fucking hard feelings again.

The Emperor card from This Might Hurt Tarot © Isabella Rotman 2019

I have always associated The Emperor reversed with my biological father, but in recent years have come to see it as the embodiment of all of my parents: authoritarian, self-oriented, top-down, and disinterested in the fallout of their actions beyond how it benefits or affects themselves. A lot of my work in therapy was to see those tendencies in myself, and to find ways to turn them back upright into a self-sovereignty that honored both my own needs and my responsibility for the people, land, and communities around me. It’s hard to find that balance right now, to keep punching while acknowledging the transience and inadequacy of any response I can personally muster.

This weekend is clearly one for rest, reflection, and restoration, which is hard to justify in the face of things. But here I am, and here I’ll continue to be. Some days are harder than others, and that’s okay.

*My parents divorced and remarried people who had also divorced & remarried. I have a LOT of parental figures, none of them fully invested in and present for my upbringing. Good times.