Tri­cia St John

If some­one had asked Mar­tine be­fore Jil­lanne’s out­burst if she had a good re­la­tion­ship with her daugh­ters, she would have eas­i­ly and con­fi­dent­ly said yes.

She had nev­er giv­en any thought to ei­ther of them hav­ing any un­der­ly­ing is­sues that would cause so much doubt, wor­ry, and feel­ings of fail­ure to en­ter in­to her men­tal space and dis­rupt what for her was the nat­ur­al or­der of things. It was two days af­ter the in­ci­dent, and she was still try­ing to un­der­stand what could have caused or con­tributed to Jil­lanne’s be­hav­iour.

Un­der­stand­ing oth­ers helps us to pre­dict how peo­ple may feel in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, but it al­so helps us to make sense of how peo­ple re­act. What Mar­tine didn’t get was what Jil­lanne was re­act­ing to too.

Was it the fact that her fa­ther had nev­er been present or ac­tive in her life? Mar­tine wasn’t even sure if she re­mem­bered him, as he had left when she was bare­ly two years old.

Was it the pres­ence of Steven, who eas­i­ly and will­ing­ly took on some of the roles of a fa­ther in their lives?

Was it that a lot of times Mar­tine had spent so much time deal­ing with Lynne’s con­fronta­tion­al be­hav­iour, es­pe­cial­ly in school, that Jil­lanne al­ways seemed to get less at­ten­tion? It had just seemed that as a child/teen/young adult, she need­ed less.

Mar­tine had been do­ing some read­ing and was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that in psy­chol­o­gy, anger is of­ten a re­ac­tion to and dis­trac­tion from suf­fer­ing. From feel­ings such as sad­ness, pow­er­less­ness, shame, anx­i­ety, in­ad­e­qua­cy, and iso­la­tion.

She would not have as­so­ci­at­ed any of those emo­tions with Jil­lanne, and now try­ing to dis­cuss any­thing with her was near im­pos­si­ble. She hadn’t said two words to Mar­tine, and when she did, all she said was that Mar­tine did not de­serve an apol­o­gy, so she was not go­ing to get one. Lynne was go­ing to school and work­ing from their aunt, and Mar­tine had ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion to Steven but asked him to stay away.

He wasn’t com­fort­able with her be­ing alone with Jil­lanne, but she didn’t be­lieve for a minute that Jil­lanne would try to harm her. On the third day, Mar­tine, who had tak­en the day off, was sit­ting by the din­ing ta­ble when Jil­lanne came in through the door. She felt like things had been al­lowed to drag on long enough, and if Jil­lanne would apol­o­gise, Lynne would come home, and things could go back to nor­mal.

As she sat there watch­ing Jil­lanne un­pack her lunch bag, she de­cid­ed to fi­nal­ly try to en­gage her in con­ver­sa­tion.

‘Jil­lanne, do you want to talk about what hap­pened?’ Her re­sponse was a mum­ble as she dropped her wares care­less­ly in­to the sink.

‘Don’t you at least think you should apol­o­gise?’ ‘For what? You don’t de­serve an apol­o­gy be­cause you’re use­less as a mom.

‘Why would you say some­thing like that? I’ve done the best I knew to do’. Yeah, well, your best is no good, and I’m mov­ing out by the week­end. ‘You want us to find some­one to talk to about this?’’

I’m not talk­ing to any­one. That’s like such a huge waste of time!’ Mar­tine watched as Jil­lianne walked out of the room.

She was at a to­tal loss as to what had hap­pened in the last cou­ple of days. Even as she sat there try­ing to be ob­jec­tive and look at things from Jil­lanne’s view­point, she couldn’t see how any of her de­ci­sions con­cern­ing both her daugh­ters could have re­sult­ed in such an out­burst.

She didn’t think she should be the one to apol­o­gise, but af­ter the con­ver­sa­tion, they’d just had and her meet­ing with the church coun­sel­lor yes­ter­day, she recog­nised that she would have to take the first step and apol­o­gise to Jil­lanne, if on­ly for the sake of re­solv­ing what­ev­er hurt and mis­un­der­stand­ing she may be feel­ing.

Some­times chil­dren say hurt­ful things and/or act out be­cause they need help and sup­port to man­age some emo­tions and nav­i­gate dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. They may be deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion that the par­ent knows noth­ing about, and al­though it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult most times not to take things per­son­al­ly, a child’s hurt­ful be­hav­iour is usu­al­ly not a re­flec­tion of their love and re­spect for their par­ent.

To Mar­tine, al­though it made her feel sad and some­what like she had failed, it seemed best to al­low Jil­lanne to move out with­out putting up any op­po­si­tion.

She had been ready to ar­gue the dif­fi­cul­ties in Jil­lanne’s de­ci­sion to con­vince her to stay, but she recog­nised the dis­com­fort she would be sen­tenc­ing her­self to as she al­so felt like the sit­u­a­tion would on­ly get worse if they didn’t get some space away from each oth­er.

At first, she had thought that Jil­lanne apol­o­gised, but now she hon­est­ly doesn’t think that would be enough. Lynne was still afraid to come home, and be­cause of this, Mar­tine recog­nised it would take more than an apol­o­gy for them to be okay again.