About

I come from a background where low self-esteem and social anxiety were cultivated in children. There was an open disdain from our parents towards other kids in our neighborhood or at school who worked hard and achieved noteworthy success.  If one of my sisters or I exhibited an ounce of self-confidence, we were quickly shot down, unless that confidence existed within a limited set of subjects that our parents considered worthwhile.  In those cases, even our most meager accomplishments received disproportionate praise.

Our mother longed for a strong man to take care of her, yet somehow she ended up with our father who epitomized the opposite of what she desired in a husband.  He was a tremendous underachiever, almost willfully so, with little desire to work towards a better situation for himself or his family.  This forced our mother to take on the role of the strong parent, a characteristic she despised when she observed it in other women.

Our mother rarely took responsibility for her own lot in life.  She often talked of not feeling validation from her parents when she was a child.  She carried this chip on her shoulder throughout her life, and like our father, she achieved very little, other than having children.  She sought meaning by dedicating her life to an intense hatred of all things that threatened her comfort zone and she attempted to instill that darkness in her children.  This came to represent the biggest failure of all for her, because only one of the children she brought into the world held views similar to hers.  This was a son she did not raise herself.  He was adopted by another family when she was a teenager.  They were reunited when he was in his 20s and my sisters and I were just kids.

My sisters and I all found very different ways to deal with our past and we have each done well, all things considered.

I won’t presume to understand my sisters’ struggles well enough to write about them here.  I’m extremely proud of each of them.

I chose to build a life for myself by moving away and seeking out a community of friends and colleagues who are hard-working, intelligent and creative, and who, by association challenge me to be the best I can.  I try to set goals and do the work required to achieve them.  I struggle constantly with self-doubt and I have failed many times, but only because I have tried.  I’m sometimes awkward and I may tend to overcompensate, but I’ve made some progress that I’m proud of.

I’m collecting ongoing and random notes on this subject for my own peace of mind.  Please feel free to visit any time.

Best Wishes,

– CS

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle