Lots of people use the term codependency, but what is it If you've ever felt responsible for the happiness of another person or an incessant need to fix people's problems so you can be loved. Stay tuned on this episode of Navigating Narcissism. I am welcoming gifted author doctor Priscilla Gilman, whose beautiful memoir The Critic's Daughter is a roadmap of what she calls her codependent journey. Though her childhood appeared happy from the outside, Priscilla was tasked with her family's emotional burdens from a very young age. At the age of nine, she took on the impossible responsibility of her dad's well being after he told her he would have taken his life if not for her and her sister. Priscilla's journey is an important reminder we never know what's happening behind closed door of what may look like the most loving families, and ultimately, none of us can be responsible for another person's happiness or sadness. From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses suicidal ideation, which may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Priscilla Gillman, Welcome to Navigating Narcissism. It is such a pleasure to have you. I've had the exquisite pleasure of reading your book, The Critic's Daughter. What I really love about it is there is a subtlety and a relatability to it. Because this show, as you know, Priscilla, is called Navigating Narcissism, right, But that's a very, very vast umbrella. And I think one of the hardest things about any kind of story about a family and what happens with parents. Yes, yes, it's not black and white, and when people find themselves in the gray, they often don't know how to see what went wrong. But also, most importantly, how all of that shaped them. For anyone who doesn't know you and hasn't read the book, can can you tell us who your parents are?

Lots of people use the term codependency, but what is it If you've ever felt responsible for the happiness of another person or an incessant need to fix people's problems so you can be loved. Stay tuned on this episode of Navigating Narcissism. I am welcoming gifted author doctor Priscilla Gilman, whose beautiful memoir The Critic's Daughter is a roadmap of what she calls her codependent journey. Though her childhood appeared happy from the outside, Priscilla was tasked with her family's emotional burdens from a very young age. At the age of nine, she took on the impossible responsibility of her dad's well being after he told her he would have taken his life if not for her and her sister. Priscilla's journey is an important reminder we never know what's happening behind closed door of what may look like the most loving families, and ultimately, none of us can be responsible for another person's happiness or sadness. From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses suicidal ideation, which may be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Priscilla Gillman, Welcome to Navigating Narcissism. It is such a pleasure to have you. I've had the exquisite pleasure of reading your book, The Critic's Daughter. What I really love about it is there is a subtlety and a relatability to it. Because this show, as you know, Priscilla, is called Navigating Narcissism, right, But that's a very, very vast umbrella. And I think one of the hardest things about any kind of story about a family and what happens with parents. Yes, yes, it's not black and white, and when people find themselves in the gray, they often don't know how to see what went wrong. But also, most importantly, how all of that shaped them. For anyone who doesn't know you and hasn't read the book, can can you tell us who your parents are?

So, my father, Richard Gilman, was a professor at the Yale School of Drama for thirty years. He was the drama critic for Newsweek in the sixties. He was a literary editor of The New Republic in the sixties, the theater critic for The Nation in the eighties, the President of pen America but didn't even have a BA. So a self made, self taught person. And my mother, Lynnezbud, who is still alive, is a very prominent literary agent. Her clients when I was a child included Tony Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Michael Crichton, and Rice Now, Robert Caro, Jimmy Carter, a whole host of incredible writers and people.

So, my father, Richard Gilman, was a professor at the Yale School of Drama for thirty years. He was the drama critic for Newsweek in the sixties. He was a literary editor of The New Republic in the sixties, the theater critic for The Nation in the eighties, the President of pen America but didn't even have a BA. So a self made, self taught person. And my mother, Lynnezbud, who is still alive, is a very prominent literary agent. Her clients when I was a child included Tony Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Michael Crichton, and Rice Now, Robert Caro, Jimmy Carter, a whole host of incredible writers and people.

As I read your book, Going to be honest, I envied you, you know, because I had a very different experience of these kinds of parental relationships and certainly of early childhood. But there was an envy. And here you were sort of hanging out with, you know, people that are my personal heroes Tony Morrison, Joan Didion, the kinds of people who are giving you dolls, so you know you were playing make believe with your father. I think the thing that struck me, though, most about the story of your father is how attentive he was. He would watch you perform, He was interested in what you did. He asked you questions about yourself. He took delight in what you were learning about. Most kids never would get a parent ever in their lives to be interested in sitting down and watching them do a play that doesn't happen to them once in their childhood, right, and that happened to you almost every day in the same breath. There was this remarkable strictness about what you especially small children, what you ate, the kinds of media you watched, you know everything, the music you listened to. So could you paint a picture of the complexity of who your father was, especially when you were a young child.

As I read your book, Going to be honest, I envied you, you know, because I had a very different experience of these kinds of parental relationships and certainly of early childhood. But there was an envy. And here you were sort of hanging out with, you know, people that are my personal heroes Tony Morrison, Joan Didion, the kinds of people who are giving you dolls, so you know you were playing make believe with your father. I think the thing that struck me, though, most about the story of your father is how attentive he was. He would watch you perform, He was interested in what you did. He asked you questions about yourself. He took delight in what you were learning about. Most kids never would get a parent ever in their lives to be interested in sitting down and watching them do a play that doesn't happen to them once in their childhood, right, and that happened to you almost every day in the same breath. There was this remarkable strictness about what you especially small children, what you ate, the kinds of media you watched, you know everything, the music you listened to. So could you paint a picture of the complexity of who your father was, especially when you were a young child.

I love how you started Dr Romeny by talking about shades of Gray. And I had one reader say to me, You've written a book about human beings and all their complexity and all their messiness in a world that wants to look at things in terms of black and white, and my father was this massive contradictions, which is part of what made him so fascinating and so compelling. He was exceptionally attentive to me and my younger sister. I have a sister who's fourteen months younger. My best friends still really invested in our imaginative play, would ask us questions about what our dolls or our Paddington's were doing that day, would come in and watch. We would have auditions for doll and stuffed animal productions of Westside Story or Oklahoma, and he would come in and assess them, and he would read to us for hours on end, and he was just clearly in love with our world. He was invested in us as children, but also in the realm of childhood per se. He took genuine enjoyment. He would sit down and watch Esme Street and Zoom and you know, all these shows Doctor Rothin, watch Mister Rogers. But you're so right that he was very strict. We were not allowed to watch any television except PBS, and you did not allow us to listen to any pop music. When Greece came out, you probably remember this. All my friends at school were going to see Greece, they had their grease cast albums. We were not allowed to listen to that. My father did support me in reading, like the Hardy Boys series and the Nancy Drew series, but a lot of other sort of popular mass market stuff we would never be allowed to have, like Sweet Valley High or Babysitters Club or anything like that.

I love how you started Dr Romeny by talking about shades of Gray. And I had one reader say to me, You've written a book about human beings and all their complexity and all their messiness in a world that wants to look at things in terms of black and white, and my father was this massive contradictions, which is part of what made him so fascinating and so compelling. He was exceptionally attentive to me and my younger sister. I have a sister who's fourteen months younger. My best friends still really invested in our imaginative play, would ask us questions about what our dolls or our Paddington's were doing that day, would come in and watch. We would have auditions for doll and stuffed animal productions of Westside Story or Oklahoma, and he would come in and assess them, and he would read to us for hours on end, and he was just clearly in love with our world. He was invested in us as children, but also in the realm of childhood per se. He took genuine enjoyment. He would sit down and watch Esme Street and Zoom and you know, all these shows Doctor Rothin, watch Mister Rogers. But you're so right that he was very strict. We were not allowed to watch any television except PBS, and you did not allow us to listen to any pop music. When Greece came out, you probably remember this. All my friends at school were going to see Greece, they had their grease cast albums. We were not allowed to listen to that. My father did support me in reading, like the Hardy Boys series and the Nancy Drew series, but a lot of other sort of popular mass market stuff we would never be allowed to have, like Sweet Valley High or Babysitters Club or anything like that.

What I hear though, was it was a childhood and at least in the broad strokes. Yeah, it was safe, it was predictable, it was comforting. You were seen, you were heard, you were valued. Yes, when did things start to change?

What I hear though, was it was a childhood and at least in the broad strokes. Yeah, it was safe, it was predictable, it was comforting. You were seen, you were heard, you were valued. Yes, when did things start to change?

So the fishers that I saw, these slight fishers almost imperceptible. I agree with you. My father, I could tell was prone to depression from writer's block. He smoked compulsively. I could sense when he needed a cigarette. He started to get irritable, He had a temper, he would get angry, and it was rare, and I always felt that I was the one who was best able to coax him out of a bad mood dr rominy, and so from a very young age, I felt that my role in the family. My sister was a little bit more difficult. She didn't sleep through the night. She would have temper tantrums, and my role always in the family unit was to be the good girl, the cheerful girl, the smiling girl, the helpful one, the one who steadied everybody else. And then I also always sensed that my parents didn't love each other the way married couples in movies or books that I was reading, or even some of my friend's parents loved each other. There was no physical affection between them. My father always seemed to crave my mother's good opinion. My mother seemed a little distant from my father. She was very warm with me and my sister, but not with my father. My father was a very funny person, but he never made her laugh the way he made other people laugh. So I started thinking, something just doesn't feel right. But we would ask them again and again are you going to get divorced? If they would have a fight, or we would hear about a family friend getting divorced, and they would always say, we will never ever get divorced. And then, as you know, vidd but it took a long time. So when I was ten, in the fall of nineteen eighty, my mother announced that she was ending the marriage. And it was a night in October I will never forget. Vividly, sitting in my room, I heard my parents talking in the kitchen. I couldn't really hear the words, and I'm writing in my journal. I have a holly hobby journal, and I have the puppy that we've just gotten, and that was another source of stress because my mother didn't want a dog. So I was thinking, oh, are they fighting about the dog? That my mother is not happy that we have this puppy now. And then my mother summoned to me and my sister into the kitchen and my father had left, and she announced to us that my parents were going to do what they called a trial separation. My sister immediately gets very upset, and I try to stay calm, and I'm digging my nails into my tights to keep from crying. And I knew that it wasn't a trial separation. I knew this was false comfort that was being given to us, that this was not an experiment, that there was something definitive, and my mother looked at peace in a way that I had never seen her before.

So the fishers that I saw, these slight fishers almost imperceptible. I agree with you. My father, I could tell was prone to depression from writer's block. He smoked compulsively. I could sense when he needed a cigarette. He started to get irritable, He had a temper, he would get angry, and it was rare, and I always felt that I was the one who was best able to coax him out of a bad mood dr rominy, and so from a very young age, I felt that my role in the family. My sister was a little bit more difficult. She didn't sleep through the night. She would have temper tantrums, and my role always in the family unit was to be the good girl, the cheerful girl, the smiling girl, the helpful one, the one who steadied everybody else. And then I also always sensed that my parents didn't love each other the way married couples in movies or books that I was reading, or even some of my friend's parents loved each other. There was no physical affection between them. My father always seemed to crave my mother's good opinion. My mother seemed a little distant from my father. She was very warm with me and my sister, but not with my father. My father was a very funny person, but he never made her laugh the way he made other people laugh. So I started thinking, something just doesn't feel right. But we would ask them again and again are you going to get divorced? If they would have a fight, or we would hear about a family friend getting divorced, and they would always say, we will never ever get divorced. And then, as you know, vidd but it took a long time. So when I was ten, in the fall of nineteen eighty, my mother announced that she was ending the marriage. And it was a night in October I will never forget. Vividly, sitting in my room, I heard my parents talking in the kitchen. I couldn't really hear the words, and I'm writing in my journal. I have a holly hobby journal, and I have the puppy that we've just gotten, and that was another source of stress because my mother didn't want a dog. So I was thinking, oh, are they fighting about the dog? That my mother is not happy that we have this puppy now. And then my mother summoned to me and my sister into the kitchen and my father had left, and she announced to us that my parents were going to do what they called a trial separation. My sister immediately gets very upset, and I try to stay calm, and I'm digging my nails into my tights to keep from crying. And I knew that it wasn't a trial separation. I knew this was false comfort that was being given to us, that this was not an experiment, that there was something definitive, and my mother looked at peace in a way that I had never seen her before.

I want to ask you a few questions about that entire sequence you said. I dug my fingers into my tights. To keep from crying. What would have happened if you did cry and they saw you cry.

I want to ask you a few questions about that entire sequence you said. I dug my fingers into my tights. To keep from crying. What would have happened if you did cry and they saw you cry.

That's such a great question. I never cried as a kid. It was kind of legendary in the family that I was the baby who never cried and my sister was a baby who cried. And I, you know, I think that my father suffered from untreated clinical depression, for sure, and I was blessed. I was lucky that I had this naturally kind of optimistic, buoyant temperament. But I also think that I leaned into that and I was cast in the role of the happy one who doesn't cry, who makes other people feel better. And I think that if I had cried in that moment, it would have disconcerted my mom and my sister, and my sister would have cried more if I had started to cry. But it's just it's so interesting. I don't know. I wouldn't have been able to go and comfort my dad, which is what I did next.

That's such a great question. I never cried as a kid. It was kind of legendary in the family that I was the baby who never cried and my sister was a baby who cried. And I, you know, I think that my father suffered from untreated clinical depression, for sure, and I was blessed. I was lucky that I had this naturally kind of optimistic, buoyant temperament. But I also think that I leaned into that and I was cast in the role of the happy one who doesn't cry, who makes other people feel better. And I think that if I had cried in that moment, it would have disconcerted my mom and my sister, and my sister would have cried more if I had started to cry. But it's just it's so interesting. I don't know. I wouldn't have been able to go and comfort my dad, which is what I did next.

Now you've taken to another interesting place. And this is something we often see in any family system. Right, children do get cast into roles based on their temperaments, right, Yes, And that child with the easy temperament the well sleeping, not crying, optimistic, constantly cheerful child. They perceive that that is a very valued role, like that's a good part to have landed in this play called this family, and so it's a safe role. To cry would have been to violate that role. But even as we're talking here, you can see the danger of that role, right, because now what's being rewarded is emotional constraint number one, exactly, And number two is that your value comes from displacing your emotion in favor of a caregiving role and not inconveniencing anyone. Right, And no one ever sat you down, Priscilla and said, hey, Priscilla, we need you to not cry and not inconvenience us. It was a perception, but these roles can give a child a sense of place and safety and your temperament work. Now, I want to go to this next piece here, which is I knew that I didn't want my sister to cry. More so, you felt responsible for your sister's emotion. I can understand that siblings feel that. However, your father a grown man, you really were trying to protect him. Can you talk about your role as you're the protector of your father's emotion and frankly, your father, and when did that role kick in for you.

Now you've taken to another interesting place. And this is something we often see in any family system. Right, children do get cast into roles based on their temperaments, right, Yes, And that child with the easy temperament the well sleeping, not crying, optimistic, constantly cheerful child. They perceive that that is a very valued role, like that's a good part to have landed in this play called this family, and so it's a safe role. To cry would have been to violate that role. But even as we're talking here, you can see the danger of that role, right, because now what's being rewarded is emotional constraint number one, exactly, And number two is that your value comes from displacing your emotion in favor of a caregiving role and not inconveniencing anyone. Right, And no one ever sat you down, Priscilla and said, hey, Priscilla, we need you to not cry and not inconvenience us. It was a perception, but these roles can give a child a sense of place and safety and your temperament work. Now, I want to go to this next piece here, which is I knew that I didn't want my sister to cry. More so, you felt responsible for your sister's emotion. I can understand that siblings feel that. However, your father a grown man, you really were trying to protect him. Can you talk about your role as you're the protector of your father's emotion and frankly, your father, and when did that role kick in for you.

It's so interesting parallel to my sense of being completely seen and safe and accepted and loved from my true and best self by my father. I always felt that my father's well being, his emotional wellbeing, even his physical wellbeing, was precarious. And I always worried about the smoking from a very young age. And he would drink, not excessively, but he would have to have his drink every day at a certain time when his moods started to potentially go south. And I talk in the book about becoming a football fan to give my father company. I wrote a letter to a football player when I was nine years old, after we had seen the Giants lose and the football player, Harry Carson, had his head in his hands and looked like he was sobbing on the sidelines, and I wrote a letter and I said, don't be sad. You're a wonderful player and a wonderful man. We'll all be happy again. And I realize now that I was writing this to Harry Carson, but I was also writing this to my father, and this was a year before the separation. But I was already sensing my father is somebody who's prone to sadness, prone to depression.

It's so interesting parallel to my sense of being completely seen and safe and accepted and loved from my true and best self by my father. I always felt that my father's well being, his emotional wellbeing, even his physical wellbeing, was precarious. And I always worried about the smoking from a very young age. And he would drink, not excessively, but he would have to have his drink every day at a certain time when his moods started to potentially go south. And I talk in the book about becoming a football fan to give my father company. I wrote a letter to a football player when I was nine years old, after we had seen the Giants lose and the football player, Harry Carson, had his head in his hands and looked like he was sobbing on the sidelines, and I wrote a letter and I said, don't be sad. You're a wonderful player and a wonderful man. We'll all be happy again. And I realize now that I was writing this to Harry Carson, but I was also writing this to my father, and this was a year before the separation. But I was already sensing my father is somebody who's prone to sadness, prone to depression.

And I also want to call you out on something else here, Priscilla. It was a word usage you adduced. Okay, said doctor Robiney. Moment here when we're calling you out the doctor roy Okay. So you know that letter you wrote to the football player really hit me hard. And in fact, if I remember correctly, he'd even sent you a photo of him or something that you hung over your bed and he.

And I also want to call you out on something else here, Priscilla. It was a word usage you adduced. Okay, said doctor Robiney. Moment here when we're calling you out the doctor roy Okay. So you know that letter you wrote to the football player really hit me hard. And in fact, if I remember correctly, he'd even sent you a photo of him or something that you hung over your bed and he.

Said, God bless you always old fifty three.

Said, God bless you always old fifty three.

Yes, but what you wrote to you said you mustn't be sad.

Yes, but what you wrote to you said you mustn't be sad.

Oh.

Oh.

So that's very different, weighing in much more heavily trying to kind of run the emotional sort of show. And you were very invested in this man's emotional state. You didn't even know him, but I do think he was a representation of your father, someone who was He played for the Giants. The love of the Giants was something that was really shared between you and your dad in many ways, an interest you took on to facilitate a greater closeness with your father. And that's something we will see with children who come from environments where they do sort of take emotional responsibility for their parents. They start to cultivate interests that are in line with what their parents like. They'll take up a sport their parent likes, they will read books their parent likes. In this case, you watched sports the way your father likes, and it really created a lifelong sort of point of connection. It was a wonderful thing, but once again, you were chasing what mattered to him.

So that's very different, weighing in much more heavily trying to kind of run the emotional sort of show. And you were very invested in this man's emotional state. You didn't even know him, but I do think he was a representation of your father, someone who was He played for the Giants. The love of the Giants was something that was really shared between you and your dad in many ways, an interest you took on to facilitate a greater closeness with your father. And that's something we will see with children who come from environments where they do sort of take emotional responsibility for their parents. They start to cultivate interests that are in line with what their parents like. They'll take up a sport their parent likes, they will read books their parent likes. In this case, you watched sports the way your father likes, and it really created a lifelong sort of point of connection. It was a wonderful thing, but once again, you were chasing what mattered to him.

Maybe I was perceiving a big shock, a big sadness is about to come, and I'm going to get you through this. We're going to solder through this, and I'm going to make sure that we get out on the other side and we're happy. I didn't focus on how these things affected me because I was so plugged into Oh my gosh, Clary. My sister, she's more vulnerable, she's little. I have to protect her. I don't want her to upset my parents more by crying, because her crying would upset them. And then my mother, you know, she sort of ends the scene and says he's going to be here for a few more months, and you know, it's not happening immediately, and she takes my sister off to bed, and I saw my father with his shoulder shaking from the back, walking down the hall, and I went after him, and I thought, I have to because what's going to happen if I don't. And I walk into his office and I kept thinking, he's about to be expelled from this he's about to be literally expelled from this apartment, literally expelled from this office, and he's about to lose our family. And he was crying, and he beckoned me to him, and I had not seen him cry very often at all, and he was crying and he said, I don't want this, but I don't want to lose our family. And he was crying and crying and crying, and I snuffed up my tears. I remember just like aggressively trying to keep the tears from coming out and snuffing them up because I thought that that would make it worse for him.

Maybe I was perceiving a big shock, a big sadness is about to come, and I'm going to get you through this. We're going to solder through this, and I'm going to make sure that we get out on the other side and we're happy. I didn't focus on how these things affected me because I was so plugged into Oh my gosh, Clary. My sister, she's more vulnerable, she's little. I have to protect her. I don't want her to upset my parents more by crying, because her crying would upset them. And then my mother, you know, she sort of ends the scene and says he's going to be here for a few more months, and you know, it's not happening immediately, and she takes my sister off to bed, and I saw my father with his shoulder shaking from the back, walking down the hall, and I went after him, and I thought, I have to because what's going to happen if I don't. And I walk into his office and I kept thinking, he's about to be expelled from this he's about to be literally expelled from this apartment, literally expelled from this office, and he's about to lose our family. And he was crying, and he beckoned me to him, and I had not seen him cry very often at all, and he was crying and he said, I don't want this, but I don't want to lose our family. And he was crying and crying and crying, and I snuffed up my tears. I remember just like aggressively trying to keep the tears from coming out and snuffing them up because I thought that that would make it worse for him.

I mean, that's an incredibly powerful moment and powerful awareness. To think of how young you were. You said you were around ten. I believe right ten, fifth grade, fifth grade, ten years old. You're getting a piece of news which is catastrophic for a child to hear, especially a child who actually was really content in her family's space. Yes, and you are entirely focused on your father's well being, what he's about to lose, watching the heaviness of his hunched over back, picked up on all those physical cues. How did you manage, Priscilla, the juxtaposition between your father's absolute sense of despair and defeat that day you saw all that he was going to lose, and what you saw as your mom's sense of relief. I don't want to quite say happiness, but you definitely saw your mother felt like she put a weight down and felt lighter, and your father took on the weight of the world. How did you, at ten years old, negotiate that difference, that tension.

I mean, that's an incredibly powerful moment and powerful awareness. To think of how young you were. You said you were around ten. I believe right ten, fifth grade, fifth grade, ten years old. You're getting a piece of news which is catastrophic for a child to hear, especially a child who actually was really content in her family's space. Yes, and you are entirely focused on your father's well being, what he's about to lose, watching the heaviness of his hunched over back, picked up on all those physical cues. How did you manage, Priscilla, the juxtaposition between your father's absolute sense of despair and defeat that day you saw all that he was going to lose, and what you saw as your mom's sense of relief. I don't want to quite say happiness, but you definitely saw your mother felt like she put a weight down and felt lighter, and your father took on the weight of the world. How did you, at ten years old, negotiate that difference, that tension.

My mother obviously huge trailblazer in publishing in a major career, and was not around as much when I was little as my father was, and was not invested in childhood and playing with children in the way that my father was. But I always felt very protective of my mother. I sensed at a young age that she was a woman in a man's world. She was going out to work, and she was under a lot of pressure. My father was very supportive of her in that and always told us girls like don't make too much noise. She needs to work. He was very ahead of his time in being totally comfortable with the woman's power and going out in the world and working. And my mother was tired a lot, she was stressed a lot. And so I felt happy in a weird way that my mom seemed relieved and she seemed less tired, and she seemed better to me. And I didn't want to make her feel guilty about this decision that she had made, because I could see that she had needed to make it. I just sensed it. There was something about her body language that told me this is something that she had been wanting to do for a while, and this is something she needed to do to save herself in some way.

My mother obviously huge trailblazer in publishing in a major career, and was not around as much when I was little as my father was, and was not invested in childhood and playing with children in the way that my father was. But I always felt very protective of my mother. I sensed at a young age that she was a woman in a man's world. She was going out to work, and she was under a lot of pressure. My father was very supportive of her in that and always told us girls like don't make too much noise. She needs to work. He was very ahead of his time in being totally comfortable with the woman's power and going out in the world and working. And my mother was tired a lot, she was stressed a lot. And so I felt happy in a weird way that my mom seemed relieved and she seemed less tired, and she seemed better to me. And I didn't want to make her feel guilty about this decision that she had made, because I could see that she had needed to make it. I just sensed it. There was something about her body language that told me this is something that she had been wanting to do for a while, and this is something she needed to do to save herself in some way.

So that's a remarkable and I'm like, I'm drawing out that remarkable amount of empathy for a ten year old child. Most adults could not engage in the balance circumspection and would maybe even not balance. You were making allowances for everyone's different position, your mother's relief, your father's despair, your sister's anguish. The only emotion that wasn't being accounted for was yours. But you were simultaneously able to literally make that adjustment. Don't want mom to feel guilty because I can see that she's okay, want dad to feel okay. In adults, we would view that as quite a skill, right, and in fact that's actually a shrink skill. But the difference between a shrink and what you were doing is a shrinks an adult who went to school for many years and is objective. They're not in that family. Most ten year olds would be enraged, upset, devastated and run to their room and cry and would not give a damn about the mental state of either of their parents. And what you did was literally the opposite. You became so invested in your father's emotional world and well being, especially at the point that the trial separation and subse divorce happened. Was he equally plugged into your emotional world and equally aware of your emotional world and responsive to it.

So that's a remarkable and I'm like, I'm drawing out that remarkable amount of empathy for a ten year old child. Most adults could not engage in the balance circumspection and would maybe even not balance. You were making allowances for everyone's different position, your mother's relief, your father's despair, your sister's anguish. The only emotion that wasn't being accounted for was yours. But you were simultaneously able to literally make that adjustment. Don't want mom to feel guilty because I can see that she's okay, want dad to feel okay. In adults, we would view that as quite a skill, right, and in fact that's actually a shrink skill. But the difference between a shrink and what you were doing is a shrinks an adult who went to school for many years and is objective. They're not in that family. Most ten year olds would be enraged, upset, devastated and run to their room and cry and would not give a damn about the mental state of either of their parents. And what you did was literally the opposite. You became so invested in your father's emotional world and well being, especially at the point that the trial separation and subse divorce happened. Was he equally plugged into your emotional world and equally aware of your emotional world and responsive to it.

I don't think he was in those couple of months after this night where my mother breaks the devastating news my father has moved out. I don't know where he's living. We're not told he doesn't have an upsteady apartment where we can come over for sleepovers. We're only seeing him for these like rushed lunches and dinners on the Upper West Side. And then my mother goes to California on business and my father is allowed to come back and stay in the apartment for a few days. And he got upset with my sister one night when she was crying and we were playing a game. She spilled some apple juice on the monopoly board and started to cry, and he got mad and he yelled, and then I went to find him and he was apologizing, essentially for getting angry, and which he always did. And that's the thing about my dad. He had a temper, but he knew he had a temper. He didn't justify it. He felt very guilty about it. And he said to me, you know that I love you girls more than anything in the world. And I said, of course, Daddy, of course, And he said, sometimes I think I'd kill myself if it wasn't for you girls. And that was like a moment where it just was imprinted on me that my father's survival is my responsibility and I'm going to do everything it takes to make sure that he stays alive.

I don't think he was in those couple of months after this night where my mother breaks the devastating news my father has moved out. I don't know where he's living. We're not told he doesn't have an upsteady apartment where we can come over for sleepovers. We're only seeing him for these like rushed lunches and dinners on the Upper West Side. And then my mother goes to California on business and my father is allowed to come back and stay in the apartment for a few days. And he got upset with my sister one night when she was crying and we were playing a game. She spilled some apple juice on the monopoly board and started to cry, and he got mad and he yelled, and then I went to find him and he was apologizing, essentially for getting angry, and which he always did. And that's the thing about my dad. He had a temper, but he knew he had a temper. He didn't justify it. He felt very guilty about it. And he said to me, you know that I love you girls more than anything in the world. And I said, of course, Daddy, of course, And he said, sometimes I think I'd kill myself if it wasn't for you girls. And that was like a moment where it just was imprinted on me that my father's survival is my responsibility and I'm going to do everything it takes to make sure that he stays alive.

My conversation will continue after this break.

My conversation will continue after this break.

And you know, when we would have these lunches and dinners with him. He would get irritable. Sometimes he would rush us through our meals. He was struggling financially, so he would make us split a dish at a restaurant, and my sister would say, but I'm hungry, that's not enough food, and I would kick her to try to get her to be quiet. And once I would see him in McDonald's taking the packets of salt and sugar and ketchup and putting them in his bag, and I thought, this is really alarming, Like he doesn't have enough money to buy these things on his own. He's taking them from the restaurant. And he never asked us how are you handling the split or anything like that. Neither of my parents ever said how do you feel about this? And we were not to talk about our feelings about my dad not being there, so it just didn't come up. And my parents didn't. You know, this was nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one, Cramer versus Kramer generation. You know, there just wasn't any discourse about how to talk about divorce. Very few of my friends at school had parents who had split up. I felt ashamed, so I just didn't talk about it.

And you know, when we would have these lunches and dinners with him. He would get irritable. Sometimes he would rush us through our meals. He was struggling financially, so he would make us split a dish at a restaurant, and my sister would say, but I'm hungry, that's not enough food, and I would kick her to try to get her to be quiet. And once I would see him in McDonald's taking the packets of salt and sugar and ketchup and putting them in his bag, and I thought, this is really alarming, Like he doesn't have enough money to buy these things on his own. He's taking them from the restaurant. And he never asked us how are you handling the split or anything like that. Neither of my parents ever said how do you feel about this? And we were not to talk about our feelings about my dad not being there, so it just didn't come up. And my parents didn't. You know, this was nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one, Cramer versus Kramer generation. You know, there just wasn't any discourse about how to talk about divorce. Very few of my friends at school had parents who had split up. I felt ashamed, so I just didn't talk about it.

It was a different time. But you're a mom, all right, I'm a mom. Yeah, And when do you think about the fact that your parents split up, father goes elsewhere, everything has changed and nobody is checking in on you and your sister. How do you feel about that now?

It was a different time. But you're a mom, all right, I'm a mom. Yeah, And when do you think about the fact that your parents split up, father goes elsewhere, everything has changed and nobody is checking in on you and your sister. How do you feel about that now?

It is completely shocking to me. Like when I looked back at this, my kids are now, they're so old. I am divorced from their father. I did my divorce completely differently. We nested for a few years, we have joint custody. We're good friends. You know. My parents had the most bitter, most vicious divorce that was extended over many years as they fought over money and they could hardly bear to be in the same room with each other. I did it completely differently. But one thing, when I looked back my agent, she said to me, I really want you to realize how little you were, Yes, and thinking, wow, I was so little.

It is completely shocking to me. Like when I looked back at this, my kids are now, they're so old. I am divorced from their father. I did my divorce completely differently. We nested for a few years, we have joint custody. We're good friends. You know. My parents had the most bitter, most vicious divorce that was extended over many years as they fought over money and they could hardly bear to be in the same room with each other. I did it completely differently. But one thing, when I looked back my agent, she said to me, I really want you to realize how little you were, Yes, and thinking, wow, I was so little.

Okay, so I want to build a nine nine years old. I was around nine ten years old that your father, in the midst of his despair, said to you, if it wasn't for you and your sister, I would kill myself. You're a mother, you know what nine looks like from a parental perspective, I know you love your dad, I really do, and I get it after hearing the childhood you have I get it. But when you look at that now, that utterance one line, if it weren't for you and your sister, I would kill myself. You're nine. How do you feel about that now? And more importantly, how did that shape you from that point forward?

Okay, so I want to build a nine nine years old. I was around nine ten years old that your father, in the midst of his despair, said to you, if it wasn't for you and your sister, I would kill myself. You're a mother, you know what nine looks like from a parental perspective, I know you love your dad, I really do, and I get it after hearing the childhood you have I get it. But when you look at that now, that utterance one line, if it weren't for you and your sister, I would kill myself. You're nine. How do you feel about that now? And more importantly, how did that shape you from that point forward?

You know, I still look at it with empathy in the sense that it was a moment where he was just completely broken.

You know, I still look at it with empathy in the sense that it was a moment where he was just completely broken.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I heard that he had been momentarily inserted back into the home while my mother was away, and he was in that space, the same room that she had made the announcement two months earlier. I think he felt so overwhelmed with shame and guilt about having gotten angry at Claire. He probably felt, this is my one chance to be with him, and I screwed it up because I got upset. And I get that, and I think he felt under an enormous amount of pressure, and in that moment he broke and he said something that he should not have said to me, but he was lost. I just looked at his face and there was just anguish scoring his face, and he just blurted it out. And in general he was pretty disciplined around the split, Like he never spoke negatively about my mother ever, he never said a single negative word about her to me. But you know, in terms of how it shaped me, he shaped me to have this kind of pattern, especially in romantic relationships, to completely subordinate my own needs and my own feelings, even in service of somebody who needed boostering, bolstering support. It made me actually positively attracted to people who were struggling, who were depressed, who struggled with substance abews, some of them in their past, because it felt familiar to me. And you know, I write about this moment where I'm dating somebody and we were having a conversation where it became a parent that there were some real incompatibilities between us, and I said, well, maybe you know, this just isn't going to work, maybe we're not right for each other. And this man tried to kill himself in front of me. He tried to jump out a window. He also grabbed a knife and waved it in the air and said, why don't you just take this and stab me with it, because that's what you've just done and it felt like completely surreal, but at the same time there was a weird element of familiarity in it. Yeah, yeah, you know, it was like I'm important to people. I you know, they need.

I heard that he had been momentarily inserted back into the home while my mother was away, and he was in that space, the same room that she had made the announcement two months earlier. I think he felt so overwhelmed with shame and guilt about having gotten angry at Claire. He probably felt, this is my one chance to be with him, and I screwed it up because I got upset. And I get that, and I think he felt under an enormous amount of pressure, and in that moment he broke and he said something that he should not have said to me, but he was lost. I just looked at his face and there was just anguish scoring his face, and he just blurted it out. And in general he was pretty disciplined around the split, Like he never spoke negatively about my mother ever, he never said a single negative word about her to me. But you know, in terms of how it shaped me, he shaped me to have this kind of pattern, especially in romantic relationships, to completely subordinate my own needs and my own feelings, even in service of somebody who needed boostering, bolstering support. It made me actually positively attracted to people who were struggling, who were depressed, who struggled with substance abews, some of them in their past, because it felt familiar to me. And you know, I write about this moment where I'm dating somebody and we were having a conversation where it became a parent that there were some real incompatibilities between us, and I said, well, maybe you know, this just isn't going to work, maybe we're not right for each other. And this man tried to kill himself in front of me. He tried to jump out a window. He also grabbed a knife and waved it in the air and said, why don't you just take this and stab me with it, because that's what you've just done and it felt like completely surreal, but at the same time there was a weird element of familiarity in it. Yeah, yeah, you know, it was like I'm important to people. I you know, they need.

Me, they need you, right, and you have a function. I mean I think listen, you have people sometimes say there's chemistry, I have chemistry with someone. Chemistry really is that sense of ancient familiarity, and if it's unprocessed, right, so if nobody fully processes hey, this was the pattern with your dad, there is this risk. The challenge for you is even as you climbed into adulthood, you retained a very collaborative, loving, supportive relationship with your father, right exactly.

Me, they need you, right, and you have a function. I mean I think listen, you have people sometimes say there's chemistry, I have chemistry with someone. Chemistry really is that sense of ancient familiarity, and if it's unprocessed, right, so if nobody fully processes hey, this was the pattern with your dad, there is this risk. The challenge for you is even as you climbed into adulthood, you retained a very collaborative, loving, supportive relationship with your father, right exactly.

Yep, that's precisely right.

Yep, that's precisely right.

And so you were in a very very sort of unique situation. You know. Philosophically, I will say is as a parent, I think I got about sixty five percent of it right and thirty five percent wrong. Your parents really didn't do it right. They did a lot right, especially your father. Well, the piece that they didn't get right was unloading inappropriate emotional stuff on you and your sister and placing you in a role like not catching themselves. Your father should have never said that, however, Priscilla, and this is where I'm saying it's gray. I have tremendous resonance with what you said about I had an empathy. This was a man, an adult man, in tremendous despair. He loved his daughters more than anything, and he was letting that despair show. He shouldn't have. We know that in terms of chapter he shouldn't have, but he's a human being, and lives get changed over spilled glasses of apple juice, because that's the stuff that pushes us over the edge. Now, I want to go back to something because this affected me a lot. Being in the McDonald's restaurant and your father sort of hoarding the salts and the peppers and the ketchups. I found that to be an incredibly poignant, unsettling, painful scene of a daughter seeing her titan of a father, so respected, so valued, reduced to having to hoard these kinds of condiments. That there's such a complex set of emotions that I was trying to climb in there. I know you said, oh my gosh, I know he's really struggling financially, but can you connect back to other feelings you had at that moment, because that was a lot to see.

And so you were in a very very sort of unique situation. You know. Philosophically, I will say is as a parent, I think I got about sixty five percent of it right and thirty five percent wrong. Your parents really didn't do it right. They did a lot right, especially your father. Well, the piece that they didn't get right was unloading inappropriate emotional stuff on you and your sister and placing you in a role like not catching themselves. Your father should have never said that, however, Priscilla, and this is where I'm saying it's gray. I have tremendous resonance with what you said about I had an empathy. This was a man, an adult man, in tremendous despair. He loved his daughters more than anything, and he was letting that despair show. He shouldn't have. We know that in terms of chapter he shouldn't have, but he's a human being, and lives get changed over spilled glasses of apple juice, because that's the stuff that pushes us over the edge. Now, I want to go back to something because this affected me a lot. Being in the McDonald's restaurant and your father sort of hoarding the salts and the peppers and the ketchups. I found that to be an incredibly poignant, unsettling, painful scene of a daughter seeing her titan of a father, so respected, so valued, reduced to having to hoard these kinds of condiments. That there's such a complex set of emotions that I was trying to climb in there. I know you said, oh my gosh, I know he's really struggling financially, but can you connect back to other feelings you had at that moment, because that was a lot to see.

That was a lot, And you know, and I remember also, even as I'm seeing it, and I'm feeling this pang of wow, he's even worse off than I thought, and this is alarming. I'm thinking to myself, I can't let him see that I noticed, because I don't want him to know that I see him in all of his struggle and shame. Remember the only time that we got together as a family of four after my parents put up, and we go to this musical on Broadway for my sister's birthday and she's turning ten, and I noticed that my father is crying during a love song in the show. And even as I'm feeling tears coming into my eyes because I'm like, it makes me very sad to see my father so sad, I'm thinking, I cannot let my father know that I saw this. And I'm rustling my program to make a noise to cover the noise of my father's crying so that my mother doesn't notice it. And you know, I like that you use the word titan. He was a titan. He was a cultural titan. He was in the literary and theatrical world, of my childhood. He was revered by everybody, and all of a sudden, this titan, this majestic figure who was sort of on the mountaintop with his critical pronouncements, was reduced to tipping over the bin and putting the salt in there, or being reduced to helpless tears during a song in a musical. And even as I noticed it, and I felt these were signs of how far he had fallen. And he was on the pedestal for me, and also in the culture and in the restaurant that night before we went to the theater, my mom and my sister and I were already there and he arrived and he's rushing to the table and he's late, and he misses the chair and he falls on the floor in the restaurant, and it was just this feeling of oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, my gosh, get up, you know, as quickly as you can. And my mom looking at him, and I could see with just a kind of contempt, and I'm just like, Okay, everybody, how many Shirley Temples are me? And you're allowed to get you know, what are we going to order? Oh, let's talk about the show and sort of trying to assuage these feelings of anxiety that everybody around me has, including the waiter, my sister. I'm sort of managing everybody's feelings and quickly pivoting from my own feeling of unease too. I'm going to go into that role of fixing, solving, rescuing all of that stuff.

That was a lot, And you know, and I remember also, even as I'm seeing it, and I'm feeling this pang of wow, he's even worse off than I thought, and this is alarming. I'm thinking to myself, I can't let him see that I noticed, because I don't want him to know that I see him in all of his struggle and shame. Remember the only time that we got together as a family of four after my parents put up, and we go to this musical on Broadway for my sister's birthday and she's turning ten, and I noticed that my father is crying during a love song in the show. And even as I'm feeling tears coming into my eyes because I'm like, it makes me very sad to see my father so sad, I'm thinking, I cannot let my father know that I saw this. And I'm rustling my program to make a noise to cover the noise of my father's crying so that my mother doesn't notice it. And you know, I like that you use the word titan. He was a titan. He was a cultural titan. He was in the literary and theatrical world, of my childhood. He was revered by everybody, and all of a sudden, this titan, this majestic figure who was sort of on the mountaintop with his critical pronouncements, was reduced to tipping over the bin and putting the salt in there, or being reduced to helpless tears during a song in a musical. And even as I noticed it, and I felt these were signs of how far he had fallen. And he was on the pedestal for me, and also in the culture and in the restaurant that night before we went to the theater, my mom and my sister and I were already there and he arrived and he's rushing to the table and he's late, and he misses the chair and he falls on the floor in the restaurant, and it was just this feeling of oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, oh, my gosh, get up, you know, as quickly as you can. And my mom looking at him, and I could see with just a kind of contempt, and I'm just like, Okay, everybody, how many Shirley Temples are me? And you're allowed to get you know, what are we going to order? Oh, let's talk about the show and sort of trying to assuage these feelings of anxiety that everybody around me has, including the waiter, my sister. I'm sort of managing everybody's feelings and quickly pivoting from my own feeling of unease too. I'm going to go into that role of fixing, solving, rescuing all of that stuff.

How did you manage your mom's contempt because it was undisguised. That is a very difficult emotion for a child to decode.

How did you manage your mom's contempt because it was undisguised. That is a very difficult emotion for a child to decode.

It really was. And it was funny because the contrast between how adored and revered my father was by everybody in our orbit and my mother's lack of reverence for him, it was very disconcerting and I didn't know how to handle it, and I couldn't figure it out. I didn't understand and why my mother didn't love and respect and adore my father the way everybody else seemed to. But you know, we haven't gotten to this yet. But after my parents let up, my father said so in appropriate things, my mother said some inappropriate things, and she so I found a letter that my father had written to his first wife brother's mother, in which he asked her to essentially dominate him sexually. And this was when I was ten years old, and today we would say my father had BDSM tendencies. We didn't really know how to talk about it then, especially for a man who wanted to be dominated. I think there was a lot of shame and guilt around it. And I was so confused by this letter that I went to my mom and I said, Mommy, I found this letter and I described it to her, and then the floodgates opened and she started telling me, I've been hiding this kind of stuff from you girls for years. He has these pornography magazines that he was hiding in the cushions of the sofa that you were playing on, and I was always afraid you were going to find them. And then my mom said to me, you know, your father had a lot of affairs during her marriage, and some of them were with his graduate students. And I give her a lot of credit in the sense that she didn't rant and rave and demonize him in saying this. She said she was very explicit about it. She said, he's not a womanizer, he's not a don Juan. I couldn't give him what he wanted, and so he went elsewhere, and so I'm trying to decode what this means, and I'm like, okay, you mean you didn't want to get on top of him and whip him or do whatever it was that he wanted. So I kind of got it. It was the same thing where I had empathy for her and I was like, oh my gosh, But I still didn't understand why she had married my father if they were so sexually incompatible.

It really was. And it was funny because the contrast between how adored and revered my father was by everybody in our orbit and my mother's lack of reverence for him, it was very disconcerting and I didn't know how to handle it, and I couldn't figure it out. I didn't understand and why my mother didn't love and respect and adore my father the way everybody else seemed to. But you know, we haven't gotten to this yet. But after my parents let up, my father said so in appropriate things, my mother said some inappropriate things, and she so I found a letter that my father had written to his first wife brother's mother, in which he asked her to essentially dominate him sexually. And this was when I was ten years old, and today we would say my father had BDSM tendencies. We didn't really know how to talk about it then, especially for a man who wanted to be dominated. I think there was a lot of shame and guilt around it. And I was so confused by this letter that I went to my mom and I said, Mommy, I found this letter and I described it to her, and then the floodgates opened and she started telling me, I've been hiding this kind of stuff from you girls for years. He has these pornography magazines that he was hiding in the cushions of the sofa that you were playing on, and I was always afraid you were going to find them. And then my mom said to me, you know, your father had a lot of affairs during her marriage, and some of them were with his graduate students. And I give her a lot of credit in the sense that she didn't rant and rave and demonize him in saying this. She said she was very explicit about it. She said, he's not a womanizer, he's not a don Juan. I couldn't give him what he wanted, and so he went elsewhere, and so I'm trying to decode what this means, and I'm like, okay, you mean you didn't want to get on top of him and whip him or do whatever it was that he wanted. So I kind of got it. It was the same thing where I had empathy for her and I was like, oh my gosh, But I still didn't understand why she had married my father if they were so sexually incompatible.

PRIs Solla, how old were you when you found that letter and then talked to your mother and then she let you know that he had had multiple affairs and all this other stuff. How old were you at that time?

PRIs Solla, how old were you when you found that letter and then talked to your mother and then she let you know that he had had multiple affairs and all this other stuff. How old were you at that time?

Ten years old?

Ten years old?

Okay, all right? Do you think that wasn't a propriate chair, Absolutely no, it really wasn't. And it's interesting you're even soft pedaling it now. Well, she wasn't saying he was a womaniser. In no universe we occupy would ever have been okay for a child to have been handed that emotional burden to carry. It was interesting to me that she did unburden herself. The only word I could use at that point was I was frustrated when I read that, Like, why are you doing this to this child? She cannot hear this right, And so it's so fascinating because for how much you were seen as a child, let me watch you do your plays with your stuffed animals and watch you perform, and all that you weren't seen, You were simultaneously seen and not seen, which in a way is almost more confusing, because the vast majority of kids who aren't seen are simply not seen. Not only is nobody plugged into their feelings, they're also not watching them do the plays and this, and that they're just not seen.

Okay, all right? Do you think that wasn't a propriate chair, Absolutely no, it really wasn't. And it's interesting you're even soft pedaling it now. Well, she wasn't saying he was a womaniser. In no universe we occupy would ever have been okay for a child to have been handed that emotional burden to carry. It was interesting to me that she did unburden herself. The only word I could use at that point was I was frustrated when I read that, Like, why are you doing this to this child? She cannot hear this right, And so it's so fascinating because for how much you were seen as a child, let me watch you do your plays with your stuffed animals and watch you perform, and all that you weren't seen, You were simultaneously seen and not seen, which in a way is almost more confusing, because the vast majority of kids who aren't seen are simply not seen. Not only is nobody plugged into their feelings, they're also not watching them do the plays and this, and that they're just not seen.

Yeah, yeah, it was so confusing. It was so confusing, And I felt so much love and affirmation from both of my parents and so much recognition of who I truly was. But at the same time, when I discovered this idea later in life of the parentified child and the child who sort of turned into it was interesting. I like the word that you use, that she was unburdening herself, that she had been carrying this for years, and that it must have been really hard for her to watch me and Claire romping around with my father, cavorting around and playing these games, and she knows right under the cushions of that sofa, there's a pornography magazine that we might find, or we think of my father as this kind of innocent, magical being that really he has this kind of double life. When he goes up to Yale, he's with the students, and I think that was frustrating to write.

Yeah, yeah, it was so confusing. It was so confusing, And I felt so much love and affirmation from both of my parents and so much recognition of who I truly was. But at the same time, when I discovered this idea later in life of the parentified child and the child who sort of turned into it was interesting. I like the word that you use, that she was unburdening herself, that she had been carrying this for years, and that it must have been really hard for her to watch me and Claire romping around with my father, cavorting around and playing these games, and she knows right under the cushions of that sofa, there's a pornography magazine that we might find, or we think of my father as this kind of innocent, magical being that really he has this kind of double life. When he goes up to Yale, he's with the students, and I think that was frustrating to write.

There's a pivotal moment when your mother reads to you a passage from the Alice Miller book Drama of the Gifted Child, and she has an epipot. Can you read that passage to us?

There's a pivotal moment when your mother reads to you a passage from the Alice Miller book Drama of the Gifted Child, and she has an epipot. Can you read that passage to us?

This was one of the few things that I couldn't pin down exactly when it happened, but it was in nineteen eighty one or nineteen eighty two, soon after its publication, my mother read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child. She devoured the book, discussed it endlessly with her friends, and scribbled notes in the margins. One evening, she urgently called me into her bedroom and told me she needed to share it with me. It explains so much about your father, she said, and about his relationship with you and Claire. It will help you understand why his love for you isn't real. I was stunned, but I stayed calm and attentive, not betraying at all. How that last sentence had lacerated me. She showed me a passage, And this is from the Alice Miller book. The grandiose person is never really free, first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second because his self respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail. And then my mom says, this is your father. It's why I felt so drained with him. I could never give him enough praise, and Claire refused to cater to him, so he rejected her, I thought to myself, But he didn't reject Claire. She tried his patience, he yelled at her on occasion. He definitely favored me, but did he reject her. Never.

This was one of the few things that I couldn't pin down exactly when it happened, but it was in nineteen eighty one or nineteen eighty two, soon after its publication, my mother read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child. She devoured the book, discussed it endlessly with her friends, and scribbled notes in the margins. One evening, she urgently called me into her bedroom and told me she needed to share it with me. It explains so much about your father, she said, and about his relationship with you and Claire. It will help you understand why his love for you isn't real. I was stunned, but I stayed calm and attentive, not betraying at all. How that last sentence had lacerated me. She showed me a passage, And this is from the Alice Miller book. The grandiose person is never really free, first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second because his self respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail. And then my mom says, this is your father. It's why I felt so drained with him. I could never give him enough praise, and Claire refused to cater to him, so he rejected her, I thought to myself, But he didn't reject Claire. She tried his patience, he yelled at her on occasion. He definitely favored me, but did he reject her. Never.

When she said that to you, what did you take away from that?

When she said that to you, what did you take away from that?

That my mother really didn't get it. That's what I took away from at that. My mother was slotting me and Claire into these roles where I was my father's favorite. Claire was rejected. To use the terms that you started our conversation with, she was looking at it in black and white. She wasn't looking at the shades of gray. She wasn't seeing that my father affirmed and validated Claire and meant just not as much as he did me, And that's not good and you don't want to do that with kids. But it wasn't a rejection. But even as I was sort of like, you're so wrong, you don't get this, I'm thinking to myself, I understand why she's doing this. It's sort of a similar thing to what I was describing with my father when he was so anguished about the I love what you said so much about spilled apple juice changes lives. So Alice Miller is the drug gifted child changed a lot of lives in the early eighties. And you know, and I was thinking to myself, my mom is trying to make sense of her relationship with my father. She's grasping, She's why did I feel so drained? I don't get it. Oh, he needed me to affirm him constantly. And I think also she was trying to lessen her guilt about breaking up the family.

That my mother really didn't get it. That's what I took away from at that. My mother was slotting me and Claire into these roles where I was my father's favorite. Claire was rejected. To use the terms that you started our conversation with, she was looking at it in black and white. She wasn't looking at the shades of gray. She wasn't seeing that my father affirmed and validated Claire and meant just not as much as he did me, And that's not good and you don't want to do that with kids. But it wasn't a rejection. But even as I was sort of like, you're so wrong, you don't get this, I'm thinking to myself, I understand why she's doing this. It's sort of a similar thing to what I was describing with my father when he was so anguished about the I love what you said so much about spilled apple juice changes lives. So Alice Miller is the drug gifted child changed a lot of lives in the early eighties. And you know, and I was thinking to myself, my mom is trying to make sense of her relationship with my father. She's grasping, She's why did I feel so drained? I don't get it. Oh, he needed me to affirm him constantly. And I think also she was trying to lessen her guilt about breaking up the family.

Well, here's the thing that passage you read from Alice Miller, which Alice Miller in many ways is taking on narcissism in that book. If any of you haven't read The Drama of the gifted child. Who are listening to this, it's a classic. The grandiose person is never really free, excessively dependent on admiration from others. His self respect is dependent on qualities and achievements and functions that can suddenly fail. That's a description of a narcissist exactly. That's as good a definition as I've read. But your mother was actually accusing your father of being narcissistic. And then she goes on citing from the same book that your father loved you and your sister for your false selves, which, like you said, was a total misread because from your subjective experience, you do not believe you were loved for your false self. You believe that you were truly seen and heard, and that it's very possible that he was leaning on your mother for different needs to different kinds of validation gratification. That's what we would expect a parent to a parent would relate differently than a parent to a child. And I think something people grapple with, how can somebody be a great parent but not such a great spouse. I'm like, because they're entirely different roles. I mean, I've seen and I've seen it go the other way, where people are actually fantastic spouses and they are absolutely abysmal parents.

Well, here's the thing that passage you read from Alice Miller, which Alice Miller in many ways is taking on narcissism in that book. If any of you haven't read The Drama of the gifted child. Who are listening to this, it's a classic. The grandiose person is never really free, excessively dependent on admiration from others. His self respect is dependent on qualities and achievements and functions that can suddenly fail. That's a description of a narcissist exactly. That's as good a definition as I've read. But your mother was actually accusing your father of being narcissistic. And then she goes on citing from the same book that your father loved you and your sister for your false selves, which, like you said, was a total misread because from your subjective experience, you do not believe you were loved for your false self. You believe that you were truly seen and heard, and that it's very possible that he was leaning on your mother for different needs to different kinds of validation gratification. That's what we would expect a parent to a parent would relate differently than a parent to a child. And I think something people grapple with, how can somebody be a great parent but not such a great spouse. I'm like, because they're entirely different roles. I mean, I've seen and I've seen it go the other way, where people are actually fantastic spouses and they are absolutely abysmal parents.

Yes, I've seen that too, I've seen.

Yes, I've seen that too, I've seen.

You know what I'm saying. They are different roles, and some people are great people are their job and their terrible parents and their great spouses. You said, one thing she shared with you is that your father had affairs, and in an interesting way, I wasn't even hearing that your mom was hurt by them. It was as though it was almost as though she was almost detached from the intimate part of their relationship, but almost that this is an impropriety, this is not what you do. And we see all of that now, exactly, but exactly, and I've said this over and over again, infidelity does not a narcissist make. It's a different question. And in your parents' case, it wasn't even as though it was sort of a sexual competition thing. It was more of a speaking to his character thing and bringing him down in those eyes.

You know what I'm saying. They are different roles, and some people are great people are their job and their terrible parents and their great spouses. You said, one thing she shared with you is that your father had affairs, and in an interesting way, I wasn't even hearing that your mom was hurt by them. It was as though it was almost as though she was almost detached from the intimate part of their relationship, but almost that this is an impropriety, this is not what you do. And we see all of that now, exactly, but exactly, and I've said this over and over again, infidelity does not a narcissist make. It's a different question. And in your parents' case, it wasn't even as though it was sort of a sexual competition thing. It was more of a speaking to his character thing and bringing him down in those eyes.

I was just loving what you were saying about the affairs and how she wasn't personally injured by them at all.

I was just loving what you were saying about the affairs and how she wasn't personally injured by them at all.

No, No, and that I found fascinating because it was a different relationship with it and like I said, I think one of the reflexive things that people will often say is my spouse, partner, husband, wife, whomever had an affair, they're narcissistic. And that's when I usually say, slow down, I need more. I understand they did something that hurts you, that betrayed trust, that you've used questionable, that showed bad judgment. I can agree with all of that. However, I'm not jumping to that next place until we fully understand the depth and the holistic look on this person's personality. But I don't disagree with you. And I think one thing we're struggling with at this sort of time and history is everybody's using the word to describe anyone they have a problem with. And I think you're right. It also helps people feel more steadfast in their decision to distance from someone, to separate from some And she's like, ah, he was just a narcissistic, grandiose, admiration seeking guy. Didn't I make the right decision? And maybe she could do that with her friends. My point is that people go through their processes. Sure, but she was doing it with her kids, and that's what a lot of sallenges. Now you had said that you'd found a diary entry that you found from middle school that you wrote. Could you read what you wrote? Because I think that that was something that was so telling that you not only experienced this, but actually took the time to write it down.

No, No, and that I found fascinating because it was a different relationship with it and like I said, I think one of the reflexive things that people will often say is my spouse, partner, husband, wife, whomever had an affair, they're narcissistic. And that's when I usually say, slow down, I need more. I understand they did something that hurts you, that betrayed trust, that you've used questionable, that showed bad judgment. I can agree with all of that. However, I'm not jumping to that next place until we fully understand the depth and the holistic look on this person's personality. But I don't disagree with you. And I think one thing we're struggling with at this sort of time and history is everybody's using the word to describe anyone they have a problem with. And I think you're right. It also helps people feel more steadfast in their decision to distance from someone, to separate from some And she's like, ah, he was just a narcissistic, grandiose, admiration seeking guy. Didn't I make the right decision? And maybe she could do that with her friends. My point is that people go through their processes. Sure, but she was doing it with her kids, and that's what a lot of sallenges. Now you had said that you'd found a diary entry that you found from middle school that you wrote. Could you read what you wrote? Because I think that that was something that was so telling that you not only experienced this, but actually took the time to write it down.

I know, and I found this in twenty seventeen. I found it in a bin that was in my mother's basement. So it's a page from my diary, and it's titled things not to do when I'm with Daddy. Number one, don't cry. Number two, don't complain, number three, don't be difficult. Number four, don't tell him anything but good news. Number five, I don't mention mommy. Number six, don't expect him to be the daddy of old.