Feeling Caged

 If you had met my parents or seen our home when I was a child, you might have thought we were the perfect family.

My mother stayed home and kept the house immaculate. My father was a successful contractor who built a beautiful two-story house that others admired. From the outside, everything looked picture-perfect.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Our home was filled with unspoken rules.

No noise.

No mess.

No disturbing Mom.

No upsetting Dad.

There was little freedom to simply be children.

Fear lived quietly in our house. The threat of punishment was always close by. Looking back, I cannot remember anything I did as a child that would have warranted the fear we lived under. It was never really about us. It was about my mother’s perfectionism and the shame that hid beneath it, and my father’s temper, which, once unleashed, could not be contained.

We learned early that our feelings, needs, and authentic selves were safer hidden away.

When I finally left home, I believed freedom would surely follow. I thought my life would begin the moment I escaped that house.

But the cage came with me.

It had been built long before I knew it existed.

Over the past thirty years, I have done a great deal of healing. Much of that old cage has fallen away. Yet I can still feel the little girl inside me who fears punishment.

Those roots run deep.

But roots can be loosened.

And I trust that, in time, even these will release.