My Relationship with my Dad

In a previous post, I wrote a bit about my Mom. Now I’d like to talk about my Dad.

He was born, Francois Deleon de La Grange but everyone either called him DeLeon or Red (for his red hair). He met Mom when he was on leave from the navy, and they immediately fell in love. Dad, apparently (according to Mom), took some taming. Mom told and re-told dramatic stories of how she almost ended their relationship because of his womanizing.

Dad with his grandmother.

At the time they met, Dad was a bit of a hellion (even Dad said so). He was a weightlifter and very muscular. He had always been a “scrapper,” as Dad termed it. A bit cocky, he never backed away from a fight. That all changed when he hurt his back toward the end of his time in the military. He became less confrontational and—perhaps in Mom’s eyes—less of a man.

I’ll write more about their relationship with each other and with their children in future posts, but here’s a highlight: my parents did not have a smooth relationship. Mom was a drama queen who could go into a rage at the slightest provocation (and we never knew what the trigger would be.) Dad was passive…the calm, level-headed, peace maker, always running after Mom when she’d pretend to be leaving him.

Dad’s explanation of why she treated him so badly? He told me that after he had hurt his back, he became a different man than what Mom thought she had married. Here she thought she had married a hellion (or at least a stallion) just like her. Instead, she ended up with a Caspar Milquetoast (in her opinion). Mom, of course, never saw his calmness as strength. Whether true or not, Dad’s assertion makes sense. Mom had always been attracted to danger, even to violence.

So thus began a relationship that spawned 6 children together and 1 from Mom’s previous marriage (who Dad adopted). I and each of my siblings reacted to their relationship in different ways. But, in time, almost all of us constantly felt sorry for Dad for the way Mom treated him. At times, we even tried to protect him. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that many of us developed co-dependent relationships later on.  

Speaking of later on…I will be back with another installment in a few days.

In the meantime, here’s some thoughts to ponder:

If you’re a woman, how did your childhood relationship with your father influence you?

Was your father dominant or passive and how did this impact you?

Why do you think you chose this father for this lifetime? What were you supposed to learn from him?

Not Blaming my Parents for my Problems

My Mom with her Aunt. (Mom is on the left)

In the first chapter of her book, You can Heal your Life, Louise Hay says that, though our parents are largely responsible for our faulty perceptions of the world, we shouldn’t blame them. They did the best they could. Further, if we look beneath the surface of our parent’s behavior, we’ll find the fears and insecurities (created from their childhoods) that made them behave as they did. Louise Hay also wrote that we chose our parents and the family to which we’re born so that we can learn certain lessons we need in order to continue our spiritual evolution.

I agree with both points.

In a few days, I will blog about why I think I chose my family to advance my spiritual path. Today, however, I want to discuss my parents through my adult eyes for a change. Odd as this may sound, this is the first time that I’ve ever thought about my childhood from my adult perspective. Every time I’ve thought about my childhood, I usually look at it through my confused, scared child’s eyes. Not today.

My Mother
My mother was born WaveJean on November 19, 1938, at the end of the Great Depression.  She was the second eldest of five children born to Virgil and Belva Sears. Virgil worked in the coal mines, I think. (I never called him Grandpa, for reasons that I’ll probably reveal much later in my  blog).

Virgil had been a violent, abusive alcoholic, terrorizing his children and his passive wife. (Back then, this kind of behavior wasn’t considered to be violent, it was probably expected of a husband and father, especially in the hills of West Virginia).  My mother never had many positive things to say about either of her parents. She feared and resented her father and had no respect for her mother who could never stand up to him.

Probably the most disturbing thing about Virgil was his sexual behavior. I don’t remember details, but I have the impression that he was always cheating on his wife. But apparently—and this is even more disturbing—the age of the female didn’t matter. Mom said that every time she brought a girlfriend over to stay the night, Virgil would come into her bedroom and try to molest her. Consequently, her friends never got to spend the entire night with her. They always went home in the middle of the night, crying.

It makes sense to me that if Virgil molested her young girlfriends, he probably molested her. So I asked Mom about it once. She didn’t deny the possibility, but she said she had no memory of it.
On Her Own

Mom said that her mother was very jealous of her. She said that Belva (whom I had never met, for she died before I was born) was constantly telling Mom that she could see the “sex” in her eyes.  This is another reason why I believe that Virgil molested Mom. I think that Belva knew all about it and, as some women do, blamed her daughter for it. This had to be so shameful to Mom. I think they also kicked Mom out of the house many times and she had to go live with relatives.

Becoming an Adult at 15

Mom had been a beautiful woman. She could have been a model, with her shining black hair, brown eyes, hourglass figure and 5’6” tall frame. But, instead, she got married at the age of 15 to a man she didn’t know very well. His name was Cliff Walters and she said she married him to “escape” West Virginia and come to Ohio. She had a child by him, my oldest brother, but the marriage didn’t last very long. Cliff cheated on her constantly, Mom said.

Cliff got custody of Gary, my brother, because her parents wouldn’t go to court with her and help her get custody. (I don’t remember her age at the time, but she wasn’t old enough, back then, to go to court by herself). I can only imagine the feelings of bitterness Mom must have had toward her parents for letting her lose custody of her child.

Several years later, after she had married my dad, they went to court and got custody of Gary. By that time, they had already borne a few children of their own, and Gary felt like a misfit.

Eventually, Mom gave birth to 7 children.  (She actually had something like 10 pregnancies. One was stillborn and the rest were miscarriages). With babies, Mom was loving and protective and nurturing. But when we got old enough to be people, Mom became rejecting. There was little softness in her. Rather, she respected strength. She could show anger much easier than she could ever show tenderness. Vulnerability was dangerous to her sense of self preservation, I suppose.
Though I was the oldest daughter, Mom made it clear that she didn’t respect me. I was sensitive, quiet. I cried easily, wore my “heart on my sleeve” as she put it with heavy disdain in her voice.

I grew to resent and fear Mom, whom I could never seem to please. I felt constantly belittled and betrayed by her. Sometimes I even hated her. But good or bad, this woman has been the major influence on me throughout my life. My intense need to escape her only fused me more tightly to her.

As I got older, I withdrew more and more into myself, into the safety and relative peace of my bedroom.

In a later post, I will talk about my father.

Thoughts to Ponder:

Did you ever think of your parents as people while you were kids?

Do you think of them as people now?

Do you understand your childhood better now that you're an adult?

Negative Beliefs from Childhood



This isn't my entrie family, but most of us are there.  My dad is the one with the camera. My Aunt and Uncle are standing in back. My Aunt is the one with the baby in her arms. I am in the far left with a big round black bag over my arm

In the first chapter of her book, You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay says that our childhoods shape most of our negative beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

When I think about this, I know she’s right. In our childhoods, we are told “no” a lot. We are criticized a lot. We are indoctrinated with our parents’ views of the world.

And what were my parents’ viewpoints? How did they react to the world and to us, their children? How did I experience their behavior to me and to my siblings? How did my parents affect my views of the world and, more importantly, my view of myself?

Being Afraid

My dad was passive and my mom was aggressive. When things got too tranquil around the house, mom apparently felt the need to stir things up. She would wage great, loud, dramatic fights with my dad. My brothers and sisters and I would go to other rooms, trembling and hoping the fight would end soon.

The family was constantly under pressure and today I understand why. My parents had 7 children to feed and clothe on my dad’s meager wages. Although we never went hungry (mom was a great cook and could make a meal out of a combination of almost any ingredients) we were always aware of how precipitous life was.

My parents let us know each time that we were nearly broke (which was almost always). They told us that resources such as school supplies and clothing and food were limited. My grandmother bought our school supplies each year and my mother screamed at us whenever we needed anything extra. My brothers and sisters kept asking for what they wanted until they got it. I withdrew from my mother’s rage.

And I grew up with a deep poverty consciousness and a fear of asking for what I truly wanted. Worse, I came to believe that I did not deserve to go very far in life.