Wrong Paddock

Some children are born into families where they are expected to be appendages. Extensions of individuals, like parents, or of a family name. Ambassadors, if you will. A first name may be all that identifies such a child as her own person, and it is muddled if the child is named after someone who preceded her, especially if that namesake is still alive. Children in any family learn early on how things are done in their family - how to make a sibling mad, how you keep Mom from yelling, what not to say if Dad comes home from work grumpy - and that there is an at-home way to be as well as a way to behave in public. Some children are more astute about these matters or more or less compliant, willing to conduct themselves according to family custom or not. Sometimes it's a matter of self-preservation to do or say certain things in a certain way, if, say, one's parent is a violent alcoholic or one's uncle has abusive proclivities. Fear is a potent motivator. But survival is no less a matter when it is psychological. "We must agree with Mom at least most of the time or she will get mad" is a theory when one is five, but by fifteen it may have become a more sophisticated "We must agree with Mom because she feels threatened if you imply she's wrong." And ten years is a long time to always agree with Mom, if you think she is not always right (no matter what she thinks). It wears you down. It makes you, over time, question your own opinions or your right to express them. And maybe you realized this early on, and you had enough courage to occasionally disagree, gasp, out loud, with Mom. By doing this, you were breaking protocol. Because, like doting on Dad when he was upset, or being polite in public, or not calling Aunt Ethel on her tasteless jokes at the Thanksgiving table, families have rules, spoken or unspoken, that are not similar to the ones about not leaving shoes in the hallway or clearing your own dinner plate. Some rules are all about maintaining the status quo, so that the people with power can keep it. Most families are not democracies. And woe to the person who questions the authority of the ones who presume to have it. That person has now entered anathema-land. That person is now a member of that world-wide club called The Black Sheep.

I had a self-described black sheep come into my mediation practice a while ago. Rachel* came by herself because her family, from whom she described herself as somewhat estranged, were not agreeable to negotiation, which is something I can help facilitate, or to therapy, which is what I felt they sorely needed, if Rachel's perceptions were accurate. She came in alone to do what in mediation we call a "caucus," which is theoretically one side of the mediation equation. It is less than an ideal situation for coming to an agreement, but sometimes it is the only solution available. If one party can learn to articulate her feelings and needs, and to frame the issues in a cogent, concise manner, she is nearer to a solution than she was before she could do these things. While the absence of the other party makes for a less-than-complete approach to problem-solving, sometimes just talking out one side of the problem can actually lead to a greater understanding of the other side, even when the other side is not there to present it in person. In this case, my client felt she was on the other side of the fence from her entire family of origin - both parents and two siblings - in regards to the disposition of her late grandmother's estate. Her literal estate. As in, an estate with a house on it and a working farm.

According to Rachel, she had been very close to her grandmother and had spent many summers and school vacations on the farm when she was growing up. As she grew older, she felt less and less as if she belonged in her family and more and more at home on the farm, where her grandfather taught her to tend livestock, build fences, and run farm equipment. When he died, much of the farm was leased to tenant farmers, but Rachel and her grandmother monitored production, ran the business end of things, and forged relationships with the tenants. Meanwhile, for years, Rachel's nuclear family, she said, became increasingly resentful of the relationship she had with her grandmother - Rachel's mother's mother - and her expanding role on the farm. Her siblings felt she was neglecting her own duties at home and leaving chores to them, and her parents accused her of preferring her grandparents' company to theirs, a dynamic complicated by the fact that her mother had always had a strained relationship with her parents. Rachel had to admit that much of the time she actually did prefer the company of her grandparents. She claimed they just seemed to like her more than her parents did, and to treat her better, like she was valuable the way she was. Also, she felt more in tune with life on a farm than in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. When it became clear to her parents and siblings that she was more suited to a life that was not theirs, she said, they accused her of criticizing and rejecting them because they lived the life that they did. Rachel demurred repeatedly, she said, over years, assuring them that it wasn't them she was rejecting, and she found no fault in their choice of lifestyle. It was just that it wasn't for her. Moreover, life with her nuclear family felt increasingly strained as she got older, because she found over time that her opinions on many things - religion, politics, social issues - differed from theirs, and she was never given any space to have these opinions. She was teased, taunted, and harassed continuously into adulthood for not carrying the family flag on these issues, and for not embracing a lifestyle that included certain social and intellectual customs. She tried, she claimed, to bridge this gap that she felt had not been any of her making, by making concessions now and then of various sorts. But, according to Rachel, these concessions were met with as much derision as if she had never made them, because she never could quite bring herself to go all the way with them.

For instance, she recalled being made to attend cotillion with her sister, a tradition in the suburb where her family lived, whereby middle-school-age children take several weeks of ballroom dancing and etiquette, learning skills their families felt were de rigeur in certain socio-economic circles.  She felt, at thirteen, that she would be better off to accede to her mother's wishes than to outright refuse the lessons, although she found the idea unpalatable and unnecessary, as, at thirteen, she already had a vague idea that the life that included cotillion manners was not necessarily going to be the one for which she was destined. But, although she acquiesced to enduring the lessons, she refused to wear a dress. At that age, she preferred her dungarees and work boots, and considered dress pants and a blazer to be about as fancy as she needed to get. This, she said, caused almost as much consternation at home as if she had refused to attend the lessons at all. She was told she was uncooperative, masculine (which, apparently, was an insult), unattractive, and graceless, both because dancing was not her choice activity (riding a tractor was) and because she was arguing with her mother. This opinion of her had formed earlier, she said, but she cemented it during this period. Her family considered her not only to be a misfit, but her behavior unbecoming.

At this point in her life, Rachel told me, the judgment of her family really stung. She had not yet learned that their opinions were their opinions and not fact. So as the years went by, their continued disapproval - of her as person, she insisted, not just of her behavior - accumulated and not only contributed to her eventual distancing herself from them but her difficulty liking herself. After all, if your own parents and siblings don't like you, you must be pretty bad.

Rachel named several more examples of ways she tried to fit in with her family so that they wouldn't see her as some sort of rebel, because it caused her pain to be at odds with them and to feel like an outsider. She agreed to go on family vacations when she would have rather been at the farm. She allowed her mother to choose clothes for her occasionally. She spent holidays at home rather than at the farm, where, in truth, her heart was, and where she was never scolded, told she was in the way, or chided for expressing her opinion at the dinner table. "My grandmother never told me to keep my voice down when I was excited or laughing," she said. "My dad was always telling me to be quiet." Apparently  having a happy daughter was not important. Having a demure, pretty one was.

She had never thought she would go to college, but had always planned on going to trade school, to study animal husbandry. Her parents were so aghast that they refused to pay for anything other than a four-year college. Unwilling  to cause a permanent rift but also unhappy about refusing a perfectly good offer of money, Rachel went to a state university. But she chose agriculture as a major, as a nod to her own vision for her own life. Fortunately, her parents did not pull the tuition plug. But Rachel knew a barrier had been crossed in the timeline of resistance, and that she would probably never quite be forgiven.

In fact, Rachel said, even into her adult years she remained somewhat anathema to her family. Her sister and brother eventually drifted away from contact, although she saw them at holidays, and was stung by the fact that they seemed to have a close relationship to which she was not invited. Even so, her siblings were never outright cruel to her. They just seemed indifferent. To a woman who had never known how to be close to her own siblings, she wanted it very much for her own three children. When they got old enough to ask for their cousins, Rachel felt helpless to initiate a relationship for them.

Things with her parents remained frosty. They loved their grandchildren, and Rachel discovered one thing they had in common; at least she could discuss her children's activities and interests with them. But her parents' interest, she felt, did not extend to her. One resentment she nursed was that her mother had been present at the births of her siblings' kids, but had not shown up to see Rachel's children until they were each over a month old. This, she decided, was emblematic of their feelings for her. She was not really their child. She was their offspring, yes. But she did not feel like she was theirs. She felt unwanted, and as if her feelings did not matter to them. It was her grandparents who really had given her the love and regard she had needed while growing up. This was how she even knew in the first place that things did not have to be the way they were in her nuclear family. You could be loved and valued just because you existed. There was someone who thought everything you did was wonderful because you were the one doing it. Rachel was sad that this was not her mother or her father. But she wondered who she would have become if it had not been her grandparents.

When Rachel's grandfather had died at Thanksgiving during her third year of college, her grief had been overwhelming. She ended up having to take an extended Christmas break, because, she said, she could not get through a day without crying. Her mother, she said, was upset, and lamented to some degree the fact that she had never really healed the relationship with him. But Rachel perceived that her mother somewhat resented the degree of grief Rachel felt. "It was as if she was worried that I would maybe not be that sad if it had been she who died," she said. Rachel and her mother never discussed this, so she never could confirm it. But it went along with the picture she had already painted of her cold, self-centered mother who had never quite learned to love her daughter the way she needed to be loved, that is, unconditionally.

Now Rachel's grandmother had died. Rachel came to me in the fourth week of her mourning, and she looked like a ghost herself. She said she had barely slept in a month and that there hadn't been a tear-free day since. After all, she said, the woman who loved her most in the world was gone. The person who had made her feel wanted and valuable and necessary, the things her nuclear family - with whom she was left - did not. And there was a problem beyond that. Rachel's grandmother had left the farm to her daughter's family, to use or dispose of as they might agree. Clearly Grandma had not tended to the terms of her will, foreseeing that this would not be a tenable situation. The reasons for this were several and not of use to this writing. Suffice it to say that on top of the already contentious nature of the relationship between Rachel and her family, they now wanted to sell the farm and she, of course, wanted to keep it. This dilemma was what had brought Rachel to my doorstep, and it was what we ultimately discussed. But it was the background story - Rachel's status as a black sheep in her family, or, as she called it, the Whipping Post - that haunted my sleep for the next few days. Although we devised a plan for her to take to the table with her family, it was not the ultimate disposition of the farm that I really got stuck on. It was the fact that this woman, who clearly loved her family, but never felt loved by them in return, was now being asked to get rid of the homestead of the relationships that had taught her love in the first place. Her pain at the idea of jettisoning the farm, the only place where she had ever felt at home, the place where she wanted to move her family and live her life, was actually less than that caused by the fact that her own family would actually demand this of her. It was a relentless refusal to see her as her own person, with needs and dreams of her own, just as valuable as anybody's, even if different from those of everyone around her. It was a rejection of her, judged a failure as standard-bearer for her family. She was not like them, so she was not of them, they seemed to be saying. Therefore, what was important to her was of no importance to them. Such is the fate of the Black Sheep.

A mediator cannot take sides as I have done here, and in a professional capacity I had to consider the possibility that Rachel's family might have a very different view of events and personalities. There might be information she does not have, secrets she is not privy to, and feelings and reasons that have not been made clear to her. One side of a disagreement is not, in a practical way, sufficient basis upon which to form a contract. But aside from my purposes as a problem-solver, I couldn't help feeling for her. At thirty-seven, she was valiantly trying not to be a bitter and resentful person, while understanding that sometimes, while people are usually doing the best they can with what they have, what they have might be very little. Those of us who have more, feel more. Often it is the black sheep who has been born with the sensitivity that the white sheep around him do not seem to have. Which may explain how, as a lamb, he ventured into the wrong paddock to begin with.

It seems to me that the job of a Black Sheep, or a Whipping Post, or a Scapegoat (which is what the one who gets blamed for everything might call himself) is to not fall into the habits of the white sheep around him. That is, if someone hurts you, try not to do the same hurtful thing to him. Feelings are not necessarily justification for behavior. Bad behavior is bad behavior. Lashing out is a poor show no matter who is doing it, whether it's the father who feels his child has disappointed him or the child who feels eternally criticized. Behavior may be understandable. But if you, as the Black Sheep, can behave in a way you will be proud of tomorrow, and not in a way you will have to rationalize later, you will already be ahead. That black wool will keep you warmer in winter when the sun shines on it. Maybe the challenge for a black sheep is remembering that the sun shines on all of us, whether we recognize it or not.




*name changed to protect privacy. Permission was given to tell Rachel's story.