All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [133]
The morning was identical to every Monday in a family week. I enjoyed the welcomes, outlay of facts, ground rules, and explanation of the program being done on my behalf. I felt important in my family for perhaps the first time in my life. This week, these lessons, this work, was about me. Oh, I had been the center of attention before, but not like this, not when it was about my reality growing up, how I had been affected and impacted, without someone either hijacking the story, because they’d had it worse, or trying to minimize or deny it or tell me I really needed to just get over it. I knew I could neither predict nor control how it would go, how folks would react, but I would give myself the dignity of my process, and I knew there were miracles waiting for me, in spite of and no matter what others would do with these five days.
Ironically, my dad—the one who had bravely crowed, “Anything for my girls,” when he attended Sister’s family week—and I had a near miss on that Monday. Because he had attended before, he had felt he did not need to be there for the Monday morning group. The treatment team had been firm and clear: You come for the entire thing. This is Ashley’s. It is similar … and different. He walked in rather late, and a scandal erupted. The treatment team was not amused. They read him the riot act and told me their suggestion was that he leave and not be permitted to participate given his apparent unwillingness to respect the center’s policies. I plummeted into my helpless Lost Child place, registering how quickly I could still free-fall through that trapdoor. I thought about my choices, and while I knew and was scared of that part of my dad that was “terminally unique” and did not follow rules (the “hip, slick, and cool” syndrome), I also knew this week could be phenomenally powerful in helping us turn around our relationship. I spoke up and said I wanted him to stay. I was proud of myself for taking charge of what my week would look like, and we settled down to business.
Reading my written work was a pivotal component of my family week. To be given the space, with advocates present who would help protect me and others, to share my childhood truth was simultaneously terrifying and liberating. Giving voice to my reality, such a powerful theme in feminism, was the empowering part. The scary part was that I had to accept, and yet take the risk anyway, that some people who were listening might never be safe or healthy and therefore might never be able to regard my story for what it was: my story, something to which we each inherently had a God given right. I knew that particular parts of the pain I was in growing up, and the thoughts and behavior born of that pain, would be ridiculed, rejected, pathologized, and held against me, maybe until the day I died. Unfortunately, I was right: Certain things I said were isolated and thrown back at me in the years since that day. But I do not regret standing up and saying, “This is what it was like for me.” I owed that to the small child I had been, for whom I am now responsible, whose advocate I am and must continue to be. A lot of people weren’t there for me while I was growing up, but by God, I am here for myself now. Not at the expense of others, mind you: Reading such work is but one stage of family of origin work. It’s not about staying stuck in it. It’s about having my story straight, so I can genuinely, finally arrive at the place where I can say, “That was then, this is now. So what? Now what?” But believe me, there are no shortcuts to arriving at this place. I had tried them all. They do not work. They can seem an easier, softer way, but in fact they are not.
My sculpt was another intense and revealing experience. The family was re-created, with obvious similarities to how it appeared to my sister, but it was actually also very different. Siblings often have vastly incongruent experiences growing up, as if they are being raised in different families. I asked my family