So if you're just checking this post out and missed yesterdays I suggets checking it out as this is a series within the series and yesterday's was the start. Here is the link. http://nancyk100.blogspot.com/2011/10/anti-bully-blog-series-edition-12-part.html
If You DID catch yesterday's I don't need to go into great detail on today's post. So without further delay here is Part 2 of CATHY OR CATHERINE? THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
Meeting Kendra
I clearly remember meeting Kendra even though I was only two at the time. It was a cool crisp fall day. I remember the leaves blowing around. My father was going up the street to meet the new neighbor, and he brought me with him because the new neighbors had a little girl. As we walked up the street, I noticed a pretty girl with a shiny red tricycle. I knew instantly she would be my friend. Kendra’s dad was working under the hood of the car as my father went over to” talk cars” with this new neighbor. He told me to go and talk to the little girl, who was peddling up and down the walkway on the pretty red tricycle, pretending to be oblivious to my presence. I walked over to her and said, “My name is Cathy. What’s yours?” She told me her name was Kendra. As she said this, she kept on riding. I was frustrated that she would not stop peddling and pay attention to me, after all was I was the center of the world! So, I walked in front of Kendra’s bike and grabbed the handlebars to ask her a question. Kendra acted like she hadn’t heard the question and she rode over my toes and said “mine”(referring to her tricycle). I don’t remember what happened after this, but I do recall that Paula and I started playing with our new neighbor soon after. Although, Paula remained my best friend, I really looked up to Kendra who was a year older, pretty and very smart.
As I reflect on meeting Kendra, I realize that she may have, even then, set in motion some of the circumstances that led to my peer rejection. In my early childhood, Kendra was just another playmate, but as we got older we became best friends. As this early story illustrates, Kendra was a child with a dominant, take charge personality. She was willing to play with me, but only after she had firmly established that the tricycle was hers. Although strong, our friendship was unequal with me taking the submissive role for the first time in my life. Kendra riding over my toes was symbolic of the friendship that was to unfold. I would do anything to please the glamorous Kendra. This submissive role may later have made me an easy target for bullies at school. Bullies like to be seen as having power and holding a dominant role. They tend to pray on weak and submissive children, to compensate for what they see as their inadequacies (Hazler, 1996).
Thus, for the most part, my preschool years were filled with love and acceptance. As the much longed for child, I was the center of my family’s life where I was nurtured and accepted. In my neighborhood, there were plenty of playmates who liked me and I even had a best friend. This happy childhood might have left me unprepared for the world of school where you are not the center of attention and not everyone likes you. “Anyone who has to move out of a group where she belongs in order to join in some other group will be losing self-esteem unless she is easily accepted in the group” (Griffiths,1995, p.116). It was a damaging blow to my self-esteem when I entered school, where I was not accepted.
Helplessness
Oprah: you never told?
Peter: No because I mean the thing is if I told anybody, if I told like my mom, she couldn’t do anything really except, except, tell the teachers and they can’t really do anything either” (Atkinson Hudson, 2000).
Above are the words of a junior high school student telling of the helplessness he felt when he was picked on in school. What is helplessness? The Oxford Dictionary defines helpless this way: lacking help, defenseless; having or showing inability to act without help; unable to help oneself (Allen, 1984, p.342). Helplessness is something that is learned (Harris & Liebert, 1992). After many negative experiences, one learns that no matter what he or she does, the bad situation will not change, so why bother trying to change it? This was how it was for me during my peer rejection. I learned that no matter what I did, it would not stop the other children from picking on me. I was helpless.
The first incidence of rejection in my life that led to helplessness is one I can’t remember, but one which may have sowed the seeds for my future peer rejection. In a sense, I was rejected as soon as I was born. This story is put together with information given to me by my biological mother and government records.
Adoption story
I was born Katherine Joyce Miller in
The pregnancy was a shock to my biological grandmother who was a staunch Catholic, and thus believed premarital sex was a sin. She told Lucy that the only way she would let her keep her baby were if she married Brad and he quit his band and got a job. Both Lucy and Brad claimed they wanted to keep the baby, but Brad was not willing to get married and was especially not ready to quit the band. Lucy claims her mother kept her locked in the house for the next eight months of the pregnancy, so that no one would find out. Nonetheless, Lucy points out that her mother made sure to feed her good nutritional meals. At the end of the eight months, Lucy gave birth to me and gave me up for adoption. This was the beginning of my rejection.
As far back as I can remember, my mother always told me I was adopted and that I was “special’ because they chose me. Although my adopted family made me very happy, part of me felt rejected. I wondered for years why my biological mother didn’t want me. Was there something wrong with me? It plays havoc with one’s self-esteem to know you were unwanted by your creators before you were even born. I needed answers, but it wasn't until age seventeen that I got any. It turns out that it wasn’t my biological mother who didn’t want me, it was her mother who didn’t.
Meeting Lucy
When I was seventeen I set out in search of my biological mother. I had recently found papers in my parents’ room that had my birth name on it. After a bit of a search, I found a phone number, not for my birth mother, Lucy, but for her mother. I phoned and asked the women who answered if she had a daughter named Lucy. She said she did, but when I asked her if this woman could be my biological mother, she would not answer. She just said that she would pass my name and number onto Lucy and hung up. Lucy called me back, confirmed she was my biological mother and arranged a meeting.
When we met, Lucy told me her story of a girl who wanted her baby, but had no means of caring for her, and who caved into the pressure from her mother, out of guilt and shame. After talking with Lucy for many hours, I was feeling both angry and rejected by the women who was my biological grandmother. She deemed my conception a crisis that must be taken care of. I was not about to become the beloved grandchild that, Sean, born to Lucy’s brother and his wife around the same time I was born, would be. After all, Sean was conceived in the confines of a good Catholic marriage. This women, my biological grandmother, had no interest in meeting me.
Nine years later, I attended Lucy’s mother’s funeral. I slipped into the back row, so not to disturb the other mourners. I sat dumbfounded during the service, where I listened to the priest praise this “saintly women” who did so much for the church and her family. I listened intently as he named the children and grandchildren. It was no surprise that I was not named among them. Even in death this women had kept the family’s dirty secret preserved. I burned inside during the funeral because it made me feel like a dirty secret. I looked at the front of the church, where the family sat. I saw people who looked like me, but to whom I did not belong. I felt bitter. Here I sat twenty-six years later, feeling the sting of rejection I was born with. I felt left out by this woman who the priest was practically canonizing, and helpless to do anything about it. Even now, I still feel disdain for this women who made me feel I didn’t belong and that my existence was a sin and a protected secret. I had always known that there was a family out there somewhere who didn’t want me, but I didn’t know why. Even when I did receive answers, it just gave me more detailed reasons to feel rejected. Being given up for adoption was my first rejection, the one I was the most helpless to change, the one that taught me to feel ashamed. From a very young age, it may have made me vulnerable to peer rejection, for as Hazler (1996) notes, bullies seek out those who are vulnerable. Until I started school however, this vulnerability was not put to the test.
Kindergarten is where I remember first experiencing peer rejection and the feelings of helplessness that accompanied it. At first, I was very excited about starting kindergarten. Paula and I were attending the same kindergarten that Kendra had attended the previous year. Kendra had made it sound like a fun place. I was excited about meeting the other students, reading books, and playing games. But kindergarten was not all fun and games as I thought it would be. Indeed, it is where I first clearly remember rejection
Logo Credit to Nate
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