Some Seeds Shouldn't Be Allowed To Germinate

I was born delighted. I have no better word to describe my soul’s disposition. To this day, I have a wonder and jubilance to my character that rarely ebbs and almost effortlessly flows. I am not bragging. I am explaining. Trust me, my inherent traits are not always perceived as gifts by others and have not always been celebrated by myself.

My mother always tells me that as a child, I was spirited and cheerful. She recently told me not much had changed in my temperament since then except for now I’m also bossy. I received that as a compliment, and she is not wrong. I was and am energetic, humorous, passionate, stubborn, and nearly always grateful and joyful. Because of this, people are drawn to me like moths to a bright flame.

She has often shared a story with me about when I was a toddler, and she was frustrated with me for one particular round of toddler-level bullshit. I have to tell you, not in defense of my mother but as a reminder to myself, that my mom was the most tired, overworked, and insane-saint-martyr of a woman. I was her fifth child (if you don’t count the grown man she was also dealing with), and she carried more than the lion’s share of the household and general responsibilities of our home. She had countless odd jobs and kept the cleanest home I have ever seen.

I was newly two years old, sitting at the table eating and I was probably trying to make her (or, more likely myself) laugh. I was engaging in some age-appropriate shenanigans and fucking around eating my breakfast and found out that day that Mama was not a morning person. She kept telling me to eat. “Eat, mama.” She grew exasperated. “Domenica!” she yowled. “Stop playing around and eat!”

I did not. I played around more, and she yelled and then belted me across the mouth out of sheer frustration.

I stopped immediately, stunned. I lowered my eyes to my food, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. I raised my gaze to her, tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. With shame and sadness, I said, “Thank you, mama. I love you.” My lips trembled as I attempted a smile and my mother sat steeped in her own deep shame and humility. I continued to look right at her as her face transitioned from anger to sadness.

I reached my hand out to her and asked “Mama? Can I give you a kiss?”

She stood up and kissed me, and I remember her warm, salty tears streaming down onto my lips as I ardently smooched her. She quietly retreated to the sink and said, “Domenica, please finish your breakfast.” Whenever she recounts this story to me, something deep down inside her wells up. Once I became a mom, I understood clearly how that moment awakened something profound and complicated inside her. 

Now when she tells me that story I am her peer. A fellow mother who understands that parents are fallible and hold their failures more closely than their successes.

Why am I sharing this story? Because I believe that we are all (to some extent) born who we are going to eventually be. It’s the nature side of the argument. I am roughly 50% of each of my parents and in that genetic cocktail, enhanced by the divine hand, I was born to be precisely me. What isn’t accounted for at conception or birth, is what your heart, mind, spirit, and soul get fed. Without a doubt, how you are nurtured significantly impacts how you grow.

When we wax philosophical about seeds or do internet searches to research the seed metaphor, we are faced with a lot of kumbaya fodder and toxically positive pop culture, the Tears for Fears anthem-style crap of "sowing the seed of love. You have that song in your head now, don’t you? It's undeniably catchy and truly a call to action to the power and necessity of love.

Here’s the rub. Not all seeds planted inside you are seeds of love. Some are seeds of hostility. Some are seeds of shame. Some are seeds of humiliation. Some are seeds of disgrace. Some are seeds of envy.

My mother is not perfect and she drives me batshit fucking crazy on a day-to-day basis because of who I am and who she is now at 85 years old. Outside that, she’s a remarkable woman whom I hold in the highest regard and she is my one and only hero. Her cape was an apron, and her hero’s headdress was forged in hot rollers and shellacked in Aqua Net. She is Jesus-level heroic. Flawed yet fabled.

She overcame so much trauma and hurt. She consistently rose above her circumstances and shone as the single brightest light I have ever had the honor of appreciating, given her lifelong inheritance of dysfunction and hard knocks.

My mother planted amazing seeds in me. She also planted some colossally shitty ones, like co-dependence and self-sacrifice at the expense of your dignity. She also planted seeds of guilt and avoidance in me. My father? He planted far more garbage seeds in me than my mom ever did. In fact, I have had to unearth the morals buried inside the vitriol he spewed at us to find any redemption in his methods.

My father emerged from the same awful childhood my mother did. Of course, they aren't the same people. I recognize he did the best he could with the crappy cards he was dealt.

I rarely like my father yet, I always--if mournfully--love him.

He did plant some amazing seeds in me. The seed of hard work. The seed of respect. The seed of stubbornness, which I put a pretty polish on and call tenacity. He also planted in me the seed of loyalty.

The shit seeds he planted? Let me list them:

Shame

Guilt

Fear

Ugliness

Deficiency

Degradation

Worry

Control

Abuse

Hate

Envy 

Worthlessness

Manipulation 

Paranoia

Those aren't the "seeds" we write glorious prose and pop songs about. Those are the seeds that blossom into mental disorders and self-destructive behaviors.

He planted those seeds deeply inside his magnificent children. Those seeds were watered and nurtured with efficiency and diligence. By God, my father was a master gardener who grew gorgeous produce, plants and flowers. He could grow something from nothing. But in his children, he grew nothing out of something.

Although he was the master gardener of our backyard, he failed to cultivate our spirits and souls.

I used to hate him for that, because I so desired to be loved by him. I wanted him to plant good seeds and good seeds only because every kid wants that. I wanted my birthright, as a child of God and the Universe.

From the time I was born sparkling and radiant, he did everything in his power to dim my bright light. He envied it. I know that now. To be fair, he loved and loves me dearly…in his fucked up, tragic, and brutally sad way.

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people." —Thich Nhat Hanh

He sowed seeds inside of me and my siblings that had been sown in himself by his own fucked up parents. The sum total of his nature, and the gravity of his nurture produced a man who could not overcome his trauma. Every part of him, body and soul, embraced it and made it his legacy, a curse of intergenerational trauma.

             I will not make that legacy my own.

As the adage claims, “Hurt people, hurt people.” I remember the first time my friend Melissa said that to me. That simple statement neatly summed up my years of trying to make sense of my upbringing and why I was so determined not to become either my mother or my father. In tandem with my typically elated spirit, I also suffer from anxiety and depression, maternal and paternal seeds cultivated in me. My siblings suffer as well. Thank God for pharmaceuticals and therapists."

When you add the slings and arrows of a dysfunctional family to the raw materials of a human being, it's difficult to know where nature ends and nurture begins. I started to study why I am the way I am. I traced my behaviors and my own toxic behaviors back to the bad seeds planted inside me.

Some of the seeds planted inside me are like kudzu of the spirit. They are an invasive species unless I take steps to curb their growth. I began to recognize the parts of me that were in my nature and the parts that were drilled into me that had to be excised.

I set out to find those bad seeds and yank them out. I dug into myself, found the seeds, confronted them and took time to understand them. I then ripped them out by the roots...all the negative seeds my parents had planted in me. I eradicated them from my spirit, one by one. I have never endured such visceral and suffocating pain. I would do it over again in a heartbeat to get the same result. 

I know that no matter how boldly I faced those seeds and how thoroughly I believe I removed the roots from my mind and soul, they're not ever completely gone. Weeds often have a way of returning, regardless of how unwelcome. Now that I know what they look like, I can foist them off far more swiftly.

“Healing generational trauma takes courage and strength. It’s common for dysfunctional families to deny their abuse. They silence victims and dump toxic shame onto them. Complicit families keep abuse alive from generation to generation until one brave survivor boldly ends the cycle of abuse.”― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

While I will always be my parents child, I have now taken charge of that bright-eyed, glittery little girl that was born with a crown of joy. In my mind's eye, I stand as a grown woman and face myself as a child. I do this loving exercise as a means to repair what was broken in her. I hold her against me and feed her words of love and encouragement. I remark upon her brilliant wonderment and eternal delight. I tell her she is beautiful, and beloved.

I am the gardener of my soul. I choose which seeds germinate.