On the Move
This is part of a paywalled series about the life and death of my youngest son, Charlie. For this series of personal stories, I’m putting up a paywall for the Wednesday Substack. I’ll offer stories for free on other days but the Wednesday Substack will focus on Charlie’s story and the space where his story weaves into the stories of others facing challenges with mental health, family estrangement, and addiction. No part may be shared or reproduced in any form. The story begins here.
“You need to move on,” is something I hear way too often. Move on from the past, move on from a failed marriage, move on from an ex-husband who had three more children with two more women including our nanny. I’m told to move on from my dead son. Just move on.”
I’m told to be more positive and to focus on the good. I do my best to move on and end up exhausted from the truth and rage buried in my lungs. And then there are days like yesterday when Dolores Huerta, a respected civil rights leader, at the age of 95 finally speaks the truth about being assaulted in the 1960s. That’s over sixty years of being made to feel like she should stay quiet and move on. That’s sixty years of not feeling fully free. How many of our mothers and grandmothers have stories that they’ve buried? How many of them have been told to, “Just move on?”
During the pandemic, I heard the story of a mother who died and left a note for her adult children that basically said, “I’m sorry I was not a very good mother. I experienced abuse during my life—physical, emotional, mental—that I never shared with anyone. I just moved on but now I see how it impacted me as a mother, I see how I was not able to show up for you as much as I wanted. I made mistakes. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”
I want to move on but I also see how I disappointed Charlie and all my children by not speaking up. I want to be from a family of women who speak up but my legacy is being from a family of women who just moved on.
This story is a way to do both. To speak up and to move on.