Conquering Chaos (16 page)

Although we’ve had to take an honest look at how our family dysfunction affected our
lives, we never once questioned the love and good intentions of the people who raised
us. No one gets to design a perfect life. There are many amazing, wonderful parents
out there who are doing the best they can for their children while struggling with
poverty, family addiction, and other circumstances beyond their control.

We talk a lot about escaping the legacies of our backgrounds, and how our family troubles
showed us what not to do. But we also have to acknowledge the positive. After all,
can we really take all the credit for breaking the cycle? So many teenagers — including
some of our parents and grandparents before us — have walked the same line we walked
and fallen onto the wrong side. What made us different? Was it just luck that gave
us the strength to make the decisions we made? Were we just born with a different
attitude? We don’t know the answers to those questions. But we do know that at least
in part, we are products of our environment. Just like our parents were products of
their environments, and their parents were before that. Carly’s environment will have
a hand in shaping who she becomes, and when we have our next child, the environment
we provide for her will impact the person she becomes.

With every generation, families teach children lessons good and bad. What lessons
have we learned? What did we inherit from our parents that we want to pass down? Are
we safe now from the flaws and faults that have held back so many generations of our
family? What new insights can we bring to our turn of the cycle? How will we build
and protect our dream of a happy home?

Catelynn:

Let’s make one thing absolutely clear. Poverty was a factor in our decision to place
Carly in adoption, but being poor does
not
make you a bad parent. Money problems can happen to anyone, and when you’re born
into them, they’re even harder to escape. My mom never had anyone to turn to for backup
when money was tight. But she worked her ass off to take care of us. And whatever
luxury we didn’t have, she made up for in love. We have all the respect and love in
the world for the parents out there who are living paycheck to paycheck, pouring all
their energy into providing for their kids.

Tyler:

Being a single mom is the hardest job in the world. End of story. (The second hardest
job, by the way, is just being a mom at all!) Cate and I are both children of single
moms who basically came from nothing, got pregnant unexpectedly, and struggled for
the rest of their lives to make ends meet while providing for their children.

When I was really little, my mom and sister and I were living in a dilapidated trailer
park in the back of a dead end street. That place was full of poverty-stricken families,
and our family was one of them. It was so destitute that our playground was a rusted-out
broken tractor at the east end of the trailer park.

My mom worked herself to the bone to get us out of there. She worked day and night,
saving up all the tips from her bartending job at a local golf course, until she had
enough money to move us into this tiny seven-hundred square foot cottage that just
barely passed as a house. My mom worked her ass off for that place.

Catelynn:

For my mom, the big thing was being financially independent. That was an advantage
she fought for. For a lot of young moms who grew up in bad environments, it’s easy
to fall into the trap of having to rely on a man for money. And that can lead to all
kinds of bad situations. Just look what happened with Detroit. When she didn’t have
her own place to go back to, she got sucked into a nightmare it took her a year to
escape. For a lot of women like her, that nightmare never ends. But for my mom it
was a wrong turn that she knew she had to make right. Before and after that, my mom
always worked hard to have her own house and pay her own bills. And even though she
had a habit of letting guys mooch off her, I remember her kicking out at least one
boyfriend who wouldn’t pay his half of the bills. She really did the best she could
to stay in control of what little money she had. Sure, her house was a trailer, but
it was hers and hers alone. And no matter how bad her addiction was, it never kept
her home from work. I can remember waking up two hours before school so she could
drop us off with a babysitter and get to her job. She worked her butt off every day
to take care of us the best way she knew how, and that’s something I’ll always admire.

Tyler:

My mom was really open about our finances. If I said I wanted something and we couldn’t
afford it, she’d say no. And when I asked why, she’d tell me. “That’s ten dollars,
and I only have five dollars right now.” Some parents don’t like to talk about money
with their kids, so in that situation, they would say, “You can’t have it, because
I said so.” But my mom’s honesty helped me understand: I want this, but I can’t have
it because my mom doesn’t have money. I agree that you should never burden your kids
with financial stress, and my mom never walked around the house crying and ranting
about being able to pay the bills. But if I asked for something we couldn’t have,
she told me the truth.

But we always had Christmas, and we also got treats and splurges. Sometimes even when
money was tight, my mom would turn to my sister and me and say, “We’re going to Olive
Garden tonight. We’re going to have a nice dinner and spend time as a family.” We’d
ask, how are you going to afford that? And she’d say, “I don’t care if I’m broke for
the rest of the week. We’re not going to worry about money tonight.” She was careful
with finances, but never at the cost of spending quality time with us or making a
happy memory. In her eyes, money was nothing compared to that.

Catelynn:

I had a rough childhood. We’ve already established that. But no matter which busted-up
trailer park we were living in, there was always love in our house. My mom was always
loving. She always gave us hugs, telling us we were beautiful, and making sure we
knew how much she cared about us. No matter what’s happened, I’ve never doubted that
my mom loved me.

That was something she never had. My mom grew up being treated like an unwanted piece
of trash. No one hugged her or built up her self-esteem. When I hear about it, it
sounds to me like she took a lot of damage for the ugly divorce her parents went through.
All the anger and frustration got taken out on her. She’s told me stories of trying
to go up and give one of her parents a hug, and just being pushed away. She’d get
punished for the dumbest things, just basically being bullied as a scapegoat for an
unhappy house. That left a really deep mark on her. I think that’s the reason for
a lot of the problems she’s struggled with in her adult life. How is a young girl
supposed to cope with feeling unloved and unwanted? Drinking probably helped her detach
from those problems so she could have fun and act like a normal, outgoing person.
I don’t blame her for that.

I don’t know what I would have been like if I’d gone all my life feeling unloved.
And the reason I never found out was because my mom knew how it affected her, and
she made sure she made up for it with her own kids. We got hugs. We got kindness.
We got those expressions of love. And in a way, even though she wasn’t able to break
the cycle herself, sometimes I wonder if those changes she made paved the way for
me to do it. I know they definitely meant something.

Tyler:

Growing up, there was never a single day when my mom didn’t tell me she loved me.
Even when we got in fights, she’d find a way to work it in there that she was only
upset because she loved me and she wanted the best for me. There were times when we’d
argue on the phone and hang up really mad, and then I’d realized we’d forgotten to
say it. I’d almost be in tears until I called her back to say I loved her. There was
an unspoken rule that we could never leave anything negative hanging without making
that expression. You never know what could happen. So no matter what the situation
was, the final note was always love.

Tyler:

One of the many things Cate and I have in common is we both have parents who are total
opposites, so we got really mixed influences growing up.

Catelynn:

I think I was about nine months old when my mom and dad split up, and my mom’s party
lifestyle had a lot to do it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with a little
partying! It’s cool if you never party, but lots of people have their wild and crazy
phase when they’re young. We did, and we don’t regret it. But when I was born my dad
thought differently about what he was doing. Obviously my mom did too but they were
both still young parents, and it was all a learning process.

My dad stayed close to me, though. We spent a lot of time together until I was twelve,
when he had to move out of state. My dad’s cool. He’s the most normal person in the
world. I have no memories of my dad being under the influence of anything. There was
never any chaos where he was concerned. He’s just a naturally chill, laid-back person,
like me.

I was definitely a daddy’s girl when I was a kid. He was the type of guy who never
missed a visit with me. Every Wednesday we’d get lunch after school, and every other
weekend I’d go over to his house. We’d go on drives and go tromping around in the
woods together, just spending time together and talking. Back in those days, I wasn’t
acting up yet. But later, even though he was all the way down in Florida, he always
tried to talk to me about doing well in school and how important my education was.

I always looked at him and his parents as the biggest positive influence in my life.
They weren’t there in Michigan with me, but the older I got the more I felt them pushing
me to do good things in my life. It was so important for me to have that, especially
because they were the ones who stepped in when my home life was at its most chaotic.
They took me in when my own home wasn’t safe for awhile, and they supported me all
through my pregnancy. Their love and understanding made it easy to be open to their
guidance, and I really leaned on that positive influence in those years Tyler and
I were fighting to turn our lives around.

Tyler:

My mom generally always had her shit together. She listened to her parents and got
good grades. She might have partied here and there, but just like a normal teenage
girl. She was a good kid who liked to have a good time. She caught my dad’s eye while
he was riding by on his bike one day. And of course he’s always been a smooth talker.
That night he charmed her into climbing onto the back of his bike with him, and eventually
she fell in love. Once they got together, she started going out more to keep up with
him. Even back then, he was into more serious stuff than weed, but my mom never really
got too involved with it. At least not enough to take her life off course.

Their love lost to his hard-partying ways, though. After my sister was born, my mom
spent a lot of time waiting around, staying up all night, wondering where he was or
if he was okay. Eventually she realized there was an addiction in the house, and she
didn’t want that in our lives. So they were already separated before I was born. But
one night my dad went through a crisis and my mom got a little too close as she offered
support. I was conceived during a temporary reunion. They were never together during
my life, and not long after I was born, he was in prison.

Catelynn:

My favorite thing about my mom was that I could talk to her about anything. Our relationship
only got rocky after Carly. Before that, we were very close. I could always tell her
what was going on in my life, and she never judged me. When I lost my virginity and
didn’t tell her right away, she was almost in tears because I hadn’t felt like I could
confide in her. As a young girl, I had just been scared to admit that I’d made that
choice. But she told me, “You could have come to me and talked to me and told me about
it!” She was very open with me, and she wanted me to be open with her. Parents should
give kids that sense that they’re going to listen and give advice and not judge them.

Tyler:

It always meant a lot to me that my mom listened to my side of every story. Like I
explained way back in the beginning of the book, it was important to her that I trusted
her enough to tell me what was happening in my life when she wasn’t there. That was
why when I told her a teacher wasn’t giving the whole story, she never shut me down.
She listened and investigated for herself. Thanks to that, I was never scared she’d
take someone else’s word over mine and she could rest easy knowing no one would do
something bad to her son without her hearing about it.

Catelynn and I both agree that our children have to know, one hundred percent, that
our home is their safe zone. You leave the world at the front door. Home is where
you can be yourself without any judgment. Catelynn and I know that our children will
always have that safety.

Catelynn:

My mom and I got along so well we were like best friends. We never fought, and I never
disrespected her or raised my voice to her. But our relationship might not have been
the best as far as rules and boundaries went. She let me do whatever I wanted! I had
no restrictions at all as a kid, and very little supervision. I’m lucky I turned out
the way I did! The way I was running around and the stuff I was getting away with,
I could have been pregnant at the age of 12. If I had made a few different choices
and gone along with some of the stuff my friends and neighbors did, I could have turned
out just like everybody around me.

My time with my grandparents in Florida balanced that out. They were so strict I didn’t
even know how to take it! Of course, I can understand their motives for it. They were
just taking care of me and trying to keep me out of trouble, and that was some good
instincts on their part considering all the stuff I’d already done! They didn’t know
about all of my wild stuff, though. At least, I don’t think they did. But they knew
what kind of environment I was coming from, and they had front-row seats to how chaotic
my life was getting. They were right to try and lay some boundaries down. I’ve always
had respect for the ways they pushed me to be good.