THE FREEDOM OF ME

TANYA BLOUNT-TROTTER

THE MOMENT I KNEW THAT my parents would never live under the same roof again, I began living on the path of fear. I didn’t know it then, but this was the first of four major life events that would eventually help me realize that the only one holding me back in my life was myself.

I was eight years old when my parents got divorced. The image of my mom telling my dad to leave after his many affairs replayed in my head for years. I vividly remember my brother, sister, and me standing at the front door as my parents said their goodbyes. I was devastated, overwhelmed by a sense of loss and fear.

My dad was the apple of my eye. I could see no wrong in him. He was funny and light-spirited, and despite what was happening between my parents, I knew he loved me and my siblings. His absence and my mother’s depression created anxiety in me. It seemed as though when my father left, the happiness in my mother disappeared too, and then even the happiness in myself. It was as if a part of me had died. It wasn’t a physical death, but this unwanted change sure felt like it.

It didn’t help that my mom didn’t want anyone to know what was going on inside of our home. She was a very private woman who proudly handled things on her own. We couldn’t talk about the divorce, and that was that. In the aftermath, my mother went into serious survival mode. She handled everything. She had no family or friends, and she had to create a life for her three young children. She was from another country (Panama) and in a place that was unfamiliar. The one thing she couldn’t take care of was the feelings inside me—the fear and anxiety that overtook me when my father left. As I look back, I know now that it wasn’t that she wouldn’t, it was simply that she couldn’t. She had her own pain to deal with.

Here I was, an eight-year-old girl, crazy about her dad who was now gone. What would I do with that emotion? Who could I talk to? My parents’ divorce was the beginning of my feelings of powerlessness, being unheard and devalued. I felt stuck, and in return I became angry. I allowed this anger to dominate me because I didn’t know any other way.

The second life-changing event was being pregnant with my son in my late thirties. My pregnancy brought up so many emotions. Pregnancy made me feel out of control. The hormones, the changes to my body, the fears that ran through my mind, and the health of my unborn child were constant reminders that I was not in control. Those fears had me overeating, working out way too much in my second trimester, and calling my doctor for any little thing that felt wrong. I was simply a drama queen.

I listened to all of the crazy stories about having a child in your thirties. I read all of the negative comments in pregnancy chat rooms about putting your kid in school. Fear dominated me in what was supposed to be one of my life’s most amazing experiences. I was petrified. I was having a child at an older age than I’d expected, and I allowed my fear to rule my life and pregnancy.

The third event that turned my life upside down was the unexpected death of my mother. It made me feel completely out of control. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like surprises. Actually, I hate surprises. Surprises make me feel out of control. I always need to know what is going on and why. But death didn’t care about any of my idiosyncrasies. Death came with a vengeance. No apologies and no preparation. It was in control and it came to teach me about myself.

The final event had to do with my marriage to my husband, Michael. When we got married, I didn’t know that after serving in the U.S. Army and going to war, he was suffering from combat PTSD. Finding all of this out three years into our marriage made me very, very angry. I was angry at myself for not knowing how to respond and for not having the knowledge I needed to support him the best that I could, and furious at the lack of help offered to him by the federal system. As a kid I was angry at my parents for getting a divorce but didn’t know how to say it. Now, as an adult, I was once again overwhelmed with intense anger I was not prepared to process, involving another man I loved.

These were the four events that shaped me, and how I viewed them almost ruined the life I was meant to live.

My parents’ divorce left me in fear, a fear the birth of my son heightened. The death of my mother left me feeling out of control. Finally, finding out that my marriage had an unwanted visitor called PTSD made me feel angry and powerless. This vicious cycle kept appearing in my life—fear, feeling out of control, and anger.

After my parents’ divorce, living with the anxiety of “what if?” was the norm for me. Then, having my son in my late thirties made me further descend into a world of terrifying what-ifs. That negativity always loomed over me. What if this relationship doesn’t work out? What if my son doesn’t make it? What if I’m not successful? These thoughts controlled me, and I completely bought into the saying “Plan for the best but expect the worst.” That became my mantra.

Ruled by fear and anger, I was always judging, always comparing, always feeling like I had to dim my light to allow someone else’s to shine. I was skilled at seeing the beauty that lies inside of others, skilled at giving space to others to express how they felt, but too afraid to see the beauty inside of me. I was not fair to myself. I was too afraid to ask to be seen. I was too afraid to confront my own beauty because, to the person inside of me, not feeling seen or heard felt normal.

The burden of carrying around fear, depression, negative thoughts, loss of control and power, and guilt coupled with the inability to share these feelings left me completely exhausted. I grew tired of the drama controlling every thought in my head. I so desperately wanted to change the narrative I had created about myself and my life. As the great Maya Angelou said, “Every storm runs out of rain.” I wanted to believe one day the storm would run out for me, too.

My path toward freedom began one sunny Friday in Maryland in 2010, before the last three major events in my life had happened. A tumultuous relationship had landed me back living in my mother’s house. I was at rock bottom with no coping skills to deal with my pain, and decided to start seeing a therapist. I had no car and even had to borrow money from my parents to pay for therapy. I remember sitting in her office while she looked at my paperwork and hearing her say, “Why are you so angry?” She was not trying to fix me. She wasn’t trying to change who I was or take away my feelings—she was just trying to help me explore who I was and what was going on with me. It was the first time in my life I felt like someone was listening, like someone actually saw me.

Week after week she would ask questions, and after a while, I started to see how the pain of my parents’ divorce negatively controlled every decision I made. I started to wonder if I might be able to value my own opinion. I started to reconnect with the positive voice inside of me that had been hidden for so many years. I wanted to partner with that voice for the rest of my life. I no longer wanted to hide my uniqueness. My confidence grew, and I started to feel secure in my own greatness. But three of my major life events were still in my future, and my brand-new beliefs about myself and my place in the world would be put to the test.

Ten years later, my mother passed. After the pain, shock, and loneliness started to melt away, I began to remember what I had learned in therapy to help deal with my grief. People were telling me the pain would subside and I had to get on with my life because that’s what my mom would have wanted. I found myself getting angry and, once again, feeling unheard and devalued. But then I remembered how my therapist had taught me to be curious about my feelings, not ignore them. When I was eight, I had felt I needed to hide my feelings about my parents and their divorce. But now I was no longer a child. I was a woman with her own thoughts. I had a voice. I mattered. After three weeks of trying to shove down my emotions rather than processing them, I decided to surround myself with people who would listen and understand. It was okay for me to not be okay. Unlike with the divorce of my parents, it was okay for me to come undone and share how I felt with others.

I continued to try to apply this new narrative to challenges as they came. I found peace with the PTSD in my marriage once I realized that while our marriage might be affected by episodes and occasional blow-ups, those things didn’t have to define the marriage. I couldn’t control my husband’s PTSD, but I could control how it impacted us. I knew I wasn’t powerless because I had the power of love guiding me.

Most of my life I believed everything that was holding me back was external. I convinced myself the reason I wasn’t moving forward was because of the people affecting my life. “Look at what they did to me” used to be the excuse I used when any situation didn’t work out in my favor. “Opportunities never come my way” is what I told myself. Other people were the reason why nothing in my home, career, or anywhere else was working.

After these four major life events—and realizing that I had not only survived them but gotten through them with a broader, truer understanding of myself—I started to see the world with different eyes. I apologized to myself for accepting these mental and emotional constraints for three decades. I began to practice self-care and acceptance. I allowed myself the grace to make mistakes. I had to learn how to be free again. Free like I was before that devastating day on the front steps of our home when my parents decided their marriage was over. I came to the realization that in times where I feel vulnerable or weak, I am beautiful and my experiences, even though they can be painful, also offer beauty.

Experiencing the pain of PTSD with my family made me vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, I found strength. I could show other wives and husbands and mothers and fathers how to care for their loved ones who were suffering. I could show them a marriage that had been tested by the disease yet still thrives. My experience mattered, and I could use it to help others.

The death of my mother taught me that everything I had ever learned about death was wrong, including how I grieved. My grief did not need to be rushed. And the fragility of my grief was rooted in unconditional love. On the day that she died, my father waited in the car until she took her last breath before coming into the hospital room with tears in his eyes. It made me realize that despite my misconceptions about their relationship, they had already made their peace, and in turn, that helped me find mine. We are all just passing through this journey called life, and we had better live and love like there’s no tomorrow because there may never be a tomorrow.

Death taught me to make my existence count and, more importantly, to find a reason for it to count. There is a legacy greater than any material object or idea, and that legacy is love. It transcends money, success, and power. Like the air we breathe, we all need it and we all know that we cannot survive without it.

Greatness does not lie in depression, fear, uncertainty, and pain. I’ve had to face those things when they weighed me down. I’ve had to own up to my part in it all even if it wasn’t my fault. When I was old enough to know that I needed help, it was up to me to get the help. No one was going to do it for me. My greatness lies inside of me. Through these four experiences, I have learned that when I am standing inside of my own greatness, I shine a light on everyone around me: my husband, my children, my family, my friends, and everyone involved in my career. Everyone reaps the benefits of me being who I am.

The most courageous thing I have ever done is change the way I thought about myself and the major events in my life that helped shape me. It took me a while to get there, but eventually I did. I had to think differently about myself and circumstances, and with that understanding came freedom. Freedom is a birthright, and I am grateful that I’m no longer enslaved by a life of mediocrity. I am no longer a burden to myself. I am free to be me.