Sense of Then

Summer 2026

This urge to speak my truth is both an old and incredibly new need to act upon. When I was younger — the original HSKT version of myself — I spoke a lot of truth to people, or at least the truth as I understood it. After my dad died in 1988, I had no idea what that meant. He told my sister and me in the hospital on Valentine’s Day that he was going to die, and then he died two days later. He was also someone who only made promises he could keep. His way of parenting me was consistent, informative, and real. He loved me unconditionally, and I know it. I knew it then, and I know it today.

My 11-year-old brain could not fathom what death meant. I had known of nothing else that died — not even potato bugs, which just curled up, and if you waited long enough, uncurled and went about their lives. The adults would say things like “so sorry you lost your dad,” and I would say “I didn’t lose him, he’s not lost. He’s on a business trip. He’ll come back when his work is finished.” My mother would say, “You need to stop this. Your dad is dead,” and I would say, “I know he is. He died two days after he said he would. Just wait until he comes back; he’s going to fix all of this.”

In Summer 1989, my mother acquired a boyfriend. I hadn’t known married women could have boyfriends. We were a good Catholic family who went to church on Sunday mornings and religious education classes on Wednesday nights. Everyone I knew was some religion or another, and I loved spending the night at friends’ houses on Saturdays so I could go to their churches with them and experience a different set of rituals and roles. I was pretty good at Presbyterian, and loved the individual cups of juice over the Catholic shared vessel of wine. I didn’t understand religion, but I loved its structure and consistency.

As I aged, it became increasingly difficult to explain to myself why my dad was on an almost two-year business trip, so I expanded it to make him on an international one. His employer needed only his help to solve a problem, and he was the only one who could do it. He was very smart and practical, and he explained how things worked in the best way I had ever experienced.

It was around the time my mother had a boyfriend that I became confused and disoriented. She didn’t refer to him as her boyfriend; she called him her friend, but he came into our house and started telling us what to do, how to talk to our mother, and what he thought about everything he wasn’t part of before. None of her other friends acted like that. I remember deciding that when my dad came back, he would need to divorce my mother because she was not acting like a married woman who loved her husband. I decided I would live with my dad, not my mom, even though I figured my mom would get the house and my dad would have to live somewhere else. I’d only ever lived in that house.

Two years later, she married that friend. I was 14 and knew by then that a person could not get married if they were already married. All the grief that hadn’t occurred in the preceding three years came tumbling out of me. As I finished 8th grade, I was also moved out of my childhood home; my mother remarried; my dad was really gone by then; and I had no idea what was happening. No one had helped me understand or even checked that I understood anything.

Shortly after my dad died, in February 1988, I learned in religion class that “god takes people when it’s their time to go.” I had absolutely no idea what that meant, and had asked so many questions that the volunteer teacher asked me to please stop talking. A couple of days later, when my mom asked me if I understood what had happened to my dad, I didn’t want to make her sad; she was always sad then, so I told her what I had just learned. She said, “Oh, good. You understand.”

The pattern of my truth being treated as the problem repeated itself over the next few decades, most recently a couple of weeks ago, when my mother texted me that my recent posts were hurting her feelings. We’ve stayed connected on social media for the last twenty years or so because whenever I’ve unfriended or blocked her, I receive a call, a text, an email, a letter in the mail, or public shaming for upsetting my mother. The same happens if I post something that upsets her. Historically, she hasn’t actually told me I hurt her feelings. Normally, she goes quiet, and the demands that I apologize come from my stepdad. This time, I tried to talk to her about what I’ve been remembering and how it felt to be disoriented and confused all those years ago. Just like every other time I’ve tried to connect with her and feel seen or heard, she told me I needed to get over the past — that forgiveness was the only way to move forward.

Over the last year, I have had enough time with my inner child to really understand her, listen to her, and treat her with the vulnerability I had lost over time. I started realizing how safe I felt in Los Angeles, both physically and emotionally. My therapist has been helping me recognize and name emotions that I feel, and I, in turn, have helped translate old feelings into new words. I have language now that I didn’t have before. With this new language, I have so much information that needs to pour out of me. I first started posting on social media because that’s where bits have pushed out of me over the years, albeit not in a sensical, linear way. Then, the most amazing thing happened: people didn’t punish me for speaking. Once I adjusted my audience, no one told me I was wrong, too sensitive, not allowed to say certain things, or called me to yell at me for hurting my mother’s feelings.