A Message for my Inner Child

I have so much love and compassion for the little girl in this photo. It is absolutely incredible to look back at how small I am. I’m nine years old, but I feel so grown up.

It’s 2001, my dad is in active addiction, and my parents are in a divorce so contentious that it will escalate to the Supreme Court of Canada. My dad will have a restraining order filed against him. I don’t know about this, but my best friend at school has been told by her parents that if she sees my dad while she is with me, she is to tell the nearest adult to call the police.

When my dad is not in jail and can afford it, a social worker picks my brother and I up from our house and takes us to an office where we have a 60 minute supervised visit with dad. The social worker comments to us that we are very considerate and polite children as we drive home. I remember rolling up the window in the back seat before I got out of the car, so she wouldn’t have to.

My mom recalls that my brother and I are eerily well-behaved during this time. At 9 and 7, we sense that any additional stress for her could absolutely send her over the edge, so we don’t bicker, we don’t yell, we don’t fight. We sit on the couch, shoes on, backpacks ready, waiting for her to take us to daycare.

At school, I am thriving. I read voraciously, I get straight A’s, I love my teacher. I have announced to my parents that next year I will attend a different school, because I want to be in French immersion so that I will be bilingual. Somewhere between the phone calls with the lawyers and the court appearances, they make sure I am registered at my new school.

I love my parents, and I know they did the best they could with what they had. I so badly want to hug that little girl in the photo and let her know that she is doing a great job, and that absolutely none of this is normal. That she is so strong, and one day things will be far less tumultuous. And that her strength impresses me to this day.