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Now that you’re on board, I’ve got a few starter tips. Read this book at your own pace. If you want to laugh, cry a bit, or even put me down for a while, please do. I’ll dust myself off. (In this book you’ll learn how easy it is not to take things personally!)
Remember — this life thing is supposed to be fun. So let’s go at it big-time, shall we?
Oh, and a final request, if you please. Put your phone away while you read on. Your likes can wait. Your freedom can’t.
As you complete each chapter, you may notice your shoulders relaxing and a feeling of lightness expanding. Creative ideas might flow rapidly. You might feel more loving and accepting of others. Mini pings of euphoria are normal. This means you’re on the right course. It means you’re giving it all you’ve got...and you’ve got this.
Yours in love,
Susie
XO
Your Parents Effed You Up...Go for It Anyway
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to, but they do.They fill you with the faults they had.And add some extra, just for you.
PHILIP LARKIN, “This Be the Verse”
My sister is named after my dad’s mistress. He demanded it and my mom was too tired and depressed to fight him on it.
“That’s a pretty name!” she hears a lot.
“Thanks. I’m named after a family friend,” she answers.
I mean, it’s not a lie. Lovers are friends, too, right?
We were born into a love triangle. My dad was in love with Rita, a wealthy Polish woman, who was married and had no intention of leaving or divorcing her husband. To keep my dad “occupied” while she was with her husband, she would procure and manage girlfriends for him. She’d then swiftly cut them off if she felt like she had lost control when he appeared to develop a genuine interest in them. She even booked and paid for an abortion for one girlfriend.
She introduced my (also Polish) mom to my dad. My mom didn’t have money and wasn’t glamorous and so wasn’t considered threatening.
Both times my mom was pregnant — once with my sister and once with me — my dad’s “best friend” Rita insisted that she get abortions. My mom refused. And so, here we are. Here I am.
There are many strange things about my childhood, but I don’t think I’ve heard of this happening before, in any other family. Whenever I confide in someone about it, the response is a pretty unanimously, “What the??!!”
Yep.
This response has shown up in my life a fair amount, in fact. You’ll read lots of peculiar stories in this book, and there’s just one reason why I feel confident telling them: if you think any human, or family, is “normal,” you simply don’t know them well enough.
It’s not their fault, but every parent has messed up their kid(s) in some way. We forget that our parents are just humans who were kids like us once, too. And they certainly aren’t perfect. They have a lot of their own approval seeking going on within them, too. And hey, they had parents, too. And their parents had parents. It didn’t start with them. If you think you may have escaped this, think for a second how a parent’s praise and validation can really lift you up. And how being reprimanded or rejected by a parent can fill you with unease and shame. We care what they think. They shape how we feel about ourselves and the world. And it’s very easy to think this isn’t even happening.
In my coaching sessions — and in life — I avoid asking, “So what’s wrong with this person?” The real question we wanna ask is, “What’s happened to this person?”
As adults, we’re constantly projecting the environment we were put into, the things that happened to us, and the beliefs we inherited during our most formative years.
It all starts early, my friend.
This isn’t to hate on our parents. They’re just doing their best — we all are. This fact cannot be overstated. And the truth is, even the least praiseworthy parent can bestow great gifts on their kids. We treasure those and enjoy them throughout our life. This is true of my family, too.
Parental Lessons
My mom was born in war-torn Nazi-Soviet occupied Poland in 1942, into complete poverty. She grew up fighting for whatever rations of bread, potatoes, and water her family could find. She remembers most clearly the daily hunger and bitter cold in the winter, made worse by the lack of warm clothes and shoes. And it wasn’t until she was in her early twenties that she managed to flee to England.
In England she had a failed marriage to a Mauritian man, with whom she had three daughters (my three eldest sisters), and another failed relationship with my father (who never married her and had violent, unpredictable outbursts and multiple other women), with whom she had two daughters. Her life experiences have shaped in her the following beliefs that she projects:
•Hardship is necessary.
•Rich people can be very miserable (and evil).
•Don’t trust others too readily because it’s shocking what people can be capable of, even those closest to you.
She’s never felt truly worthy of many of the good things that we all deserve as human beings. But she was essentially a single mom of five girls, so I learned independence, resilience, and inner strength from her. I also learned how to move from country to country with ease (so far, I’ve lived in five). My mom also taught me never to be jealous of another person. To love people who love me. To never cling to a man. To take a chance. To love reading autobiographies. To save. To relax more. To be kind. To always look for a bargain. To not be ashamed of my poor and unstable upbringing. To not worry about pleasing everyone. To not be afraid to ask. To enjoy simple pleasures (the bird! the trees! the raindrops on the leaves!).
My late dad was a complicated person. He was paradoxically incredibly smart and loving yet completely scary and abusive at times. It was like he was two totally unrelated people. In his youth he had knee surgery for an injury he sustained from playing rugby and became addicted to painkillers, which turned into a full-blown drug and alcohol addiction (he actually kept ecstasy pills in his socks). Back then there was no talk of an opioid epidemic that leads to lifetime addiction. His struggle followed him to the end, when he died at age fifty-nine from heart failure.
My mom left him for the first time when I was six months old because she wouldn’t give him our last ten pounds for a bottle of Smirnoff. We needed the cash for the electricity meter (back then, people used to feed the meter with coins to pay their utility bill). He was so desperate for booze that he lit a lighter and held it to my head, threatening
