The following is an excerpt from Katherine Mayfield’s book, The Box of Daughter.
After my parents died, I spent a lot of time sorting through the facets of my identity as I’d known them up to that point, trying to discern which values and beliefs were truly mine, and which ones I had unthinkingly adopted from my parents. I wanted to discern how much of my worldview was based on my own experience, and how much was mindless mimicry.
Because my parents created the façade of a fine, upstanding family in public while the dysfunction raged behind closed doors, I had a difficult time exposing the dysfunction and deception, even to myself. I was so well trained to keep my family’s secrets hidden that I even hid them from myself. But I kept at it, discovering one secret after another, until they began to fit together into a massive, crazy psychological jigsaw puzzle.
I paid particular attention to beliefs that were nearly invisible, like the belief that I always had to be “good.” That belief was extremely difficult to unravel, because the real me is a conscientious person who believes in and practices kindness and non-judgment as much as I can. But where is the line between that and being a Good Little Girl, a doormat who allows everyone to walk all over her? Whenever I had an urge to do something good, I’d ask myself, “Is it real, or is it Memorex?”
I asked myself how much of my identity was a reflection of who my parents were—which aspects of myself I had developed merely to provide the psychological mirror for them that they needed in order to feel okay about themselves. Pondering the possibilities helped me to comprehend whether certain aspects of my personality were truly a reflection of who I am, and I eventually discovered that many of them were not. Understanding how deep the mirroring process had been was extremely enlightening, and I began to feel as if shards of assumed identities were falling away, bits and pieces of who I thought I had been that I had only believed were “myself” because my parents needed me to be a certain way. The sifting and sorting process was massive, and the more I proceeded, the more I came to see that there had not been very much of “myself” throughout my life. Most of my living had taken place through my parents’ framework and expectations, in the box of daughter they had built for me.
But my mother was right in one sense: I am sensitive. Dr. Elaine Aron describes me to a T in her book, The Highly Sensitive Person. I may be more sensitive than is good for me, but I would rather be aware of my feelings than wander through life without being much affected by what goes on around me. I would rather revel in a beautiful sunset and be able to relate to someone else’s pain than be immune to feeling. I would rather do battle with the ghosts of the past than live a life of quiet desperation or develop a disease because my body can’t take the repression any longer. I was born with the urge to grab life with both hands and gobble it up, just like my mother. She gave me the gifts of intensity of feeling and passion for life, and I would not be the same person without those gifts….
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This is an excerpt from Katherine Mayfield’s new memoir, The Box of Daughter: Overcoming a Legacy of Emotional Abuse. She’s also authored two books on the acting business, and a book of poetry, The Box of Daughter and Other Poems, which was written as part of her process of healing from an abusive childhood. She has written for local and national magazines, and blogs on Dysfunctional Families on her website, www.TheBoxofDaughter.com.
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