The Shell I Didn't Know I Was Wearing

On unpredictable mothers, inherited patterns, and the day my body decided to grow

Yesterday we were talking about something that stopped me cold.

Somebody was telling us about growing up with her mother. She said she never felt safe — not because of one big thing, exactly, but because she never knew which mom was going to show up. Was it happy mom? Angry mom? The mom who abandoned them, the mom who wouldn’t pay attention? Or caring mom, indifferent mom? Every day was a roll of the dice.

Then Christi mentioned something. One of the officers who’s kept tabs on my daughter through her mental health journey told her the reason he got into the mental health side of law enforcement was his own mother. Same thing. He never knew what to expect growing up either.

And I just — it caught me. I was sitting there listening and I thought: oh my god. Me too.

That was me. That was my mother.

Christi’s heard me talk about my mother before, and she always points out the same thing: my brother and I have completely different takes on her. He has a much better overall opinion of our mother than I do. She’s always wondered about that.

So when I said it out loud, she said, well — maybe you were more sensitive. Maybe you focused on the negative parts of the relationship and forgot about the positive parts.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s the case. I don’t know.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on letting go of stuff in my healing journey. Maybe it’s easier to access this kind of stuff now that I’m cleaning house.

But in that moment, it didn’t matter whether my memory was fair or complete. What hit me was the recognition. And then I broke down — deep sobbing, the kind that comes from way underneath and shakes your whole body, the kind you don’t decide to do.

And right there in the middle of it, another thought landed: that’s also the way my daughter is.

I don’t know if it’s a generational curse or a family trait or something. But it’s a pattern, and it keeps replicating. My mother, then me, then my daughter. And I sat there thinking — I’m not going to let this keep going in the family. I need to work through this.

I’ll be honest, there’s guilt in that too. If it came from my mother and it came into my offspring, then I’m part of the chain. Nobody’s ever told me I was that drastic, so maybe it skips a generation. Who knows.

But here’s the strange part. When I said all of this out loud — when I actually named it — it felt like a giant weight lifted off me. And then I felt this need to stretch, like my body was asking for more room. The phrase that came to me was about a crab. When a crab sheds his shell in order to grow more, you have to let the old shell go.

And I swear, I felt my whole body shift. Like I was taller. Bigger, somehow.

I know if I’m gonna beat this cancer thing, the conditions that created it have to change — which means I have to change. Maybe shedding this shell is a step in that direction.

Live Long and Prosper,

-Dan

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