-by ‘Sapphire’
Generational trauma is a new term for me and a heavy burden to carry. My mother took her life when I was 20. Just like her mom did when she was 9. For most of my life, I saw her as weak—someone who chose substances over stability, over me. She couldn’t get her act together and I suffered for it. I was angry. I was resentful. But I was also blinded by anger. I never took the time to understand what led her down that path. I never considered that she might have been running from something bigger than herself.
There was one person, though, who saw things I didn’t— my mom’s friend Jenny. Jenny was in and out of my life since I was a little girl. She helped when she could, stepping in when my mom lost another job, bringing food when the fridge was empty, keeping the electricity on when the bill went unpaid. She was never a constant, but she was there in moments that mattered, when I was too young to understand what was happening.
It was Jenny who first exposed me to Pat Green’s writings. She sent me a link to a collection of Gen X Watch Fem Friday Articles. “Read these, they’re about your mom.” I didn’t and forgot about it for weeks. When I finally read the articles I was confused. It was hard to read about this woman I didn’t know, this version of my mother that felt foreign to me. Harder still was the idea of reaching out to Pat Green. Jenny prompted me to when I tried to ask her questions about the stories. “Here’s his email and phone number. Talk to him! Please.”
Talking to Pat was one of the hardest things I have ever done. A shoe was going to drop at any moment! I expected him to ultimately be like the other men I had known—the ones who dismissed my mother and only saw us as a burden. The ones who had hurt her and hurt me. The ones who saw women as disposable. My mother had been used by men and discarded by society the moment she became “too much.” I had spent my life watching my mother be belittled and I’ve held so much in and wear a mask to avoid the same fate.
But Pat was different. He spoke about my mother with a gentleness I had never heard before. He didn’t talk about her as a failure, as someone who had given up. He talked about her as a fighter who inspired and guided him, as someone who had been dealt an impossible hand and still did her best. He saw her not as a problem, but as a person through the eyes of love. I felt like maybe I could start seeing her that way, too.
Pat’s words painted a picture of my mother with respect, with admiration. Our conversations led me down a path, one that would reshape everything I thought I knew about my family and myself. I started to dig, to learn, to understand. And with every revelation, my heart broke a little more. My mother was so much more; she was a survivor. She was a woman shaped by her own mother’s wounds and her aunt’s anger, by a lineage of pain stretching generations.
She didn’t fail, society and family failed her. They do that to women every day. Don’t they?
Through working with Pat on his book, Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World, as a test reader I unearthed pieces of my mother’s history that had been buried beneath shame and silence. I learned about my grandmother, a woman whose own struggles with mental health and suicide set the stage for my mother’s pain. I learned about my great aunt’s controlling nature and my great grandparent’s abandonment of my mom. Without resources she didn’t stand a chance. I saw the cycles—the unspoken trauma, the generational wounds passed down like demented family heirlooms, the survival tactics that looked like failure to outsiders but were really just desperate attempts to cope. My mother was drowning in a history of pain that no one ever taught her how to escape. Jenny knew. Maybe not the full story, but she knew enough to try to help in the only ways she could.
I wish I had known. I wish my mother had told me. I wish I had asked. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have spent so many years hating her for something that wasn’t entirely her fault. Maybe I would have held her hand instead of pulling away the last time I saw her. Maybe I would have told her that I saw her, that I loved her, that she wasn’t alone. Maybe I would have made space for her to grieve, to heal, instead of assuming she was beyond saving and leaving on my 18th.
Pat tells me that I need to let go of the guilt but it is hard. I joined the military as soon as I turned 18 and ghosted my mom. I wanted out. He says that I did what I had to do for me and that her death wasn’t my fault any more than my grandmother’s suicide wasn’t my mom’s fault. It took some time, but I am understanding the truth.
It’s hard to sit with the regret, the what-ifs, the questions that will never have answers. But the more I learn, the more I realize that my mother was stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She carried so much pain, yet she still showed up the best she knew how. She still tried. And in a world that offered her little grace, she did the best she could with what she had.
I think about how different my life might have been if I had a father like Pat—someone who sees people, really sees them, even in their brokenness. Someone who believes in second chances and in the stories that lie beneath the surface. He gave me a window into my mother’s strength that is part of my own, and for that, I will always be grateful. My father only hurt us and he has been more of a father to me these last few months than I ever had.
I told him once he might be the last good man standing. In my career I’m surrounded by many Alpha males who are not half the man he is. He smiled and said he hoped to be a good man someday. He told me about his broken parts candidly. He’s made mistakes but he didn’t punch out like my mom even though he wanted to. He stayed in blind until he knew he wasn’t alone. Mom couldn’t. She tried. They both never gave up on others. Pat says that is easier than not giving up on yourself. I wish we didn’t give up on ourselves. If you hate someone for their brokenness, know there might be more to them than their mistakes. If you think you are a mistake and not worth decency, you are wrong. The Jennys and Pats and Sapphires around you love you.
I hope everyone reading this supports Hearts of Glass: Living in the Real World. Cassie in the book and my mom aren’t the same woman, but they intersect enough to be her. From all of their tragedies and pain he made something beautiful and even lighthearted. I hope the readers see Cassie not as helpless, but as a woman who fought battles she was never meant to fight alone. I hope they see her as sassy, as funny, as beautiful, as strong, as worthy, as human.
And I hope, in some way, my mom knows that I see her now. That I see the love she had for me, even when she couldn’t love herself. That I understand now. That I forgive her, and that I am trying, every day, to break the cycle she never got the chance to escape.
I hope people read this book and break cycles. Too many are failed, judged, and lost. Yes, this is a fun story, but it is also the real world.
About Hearts if Glass and How to Support it!
Ford is a traumatized former child model. Cassie is the epitome of DIY punk with a life full of poverty and pain serving smoothies at the Orange Julius. Finally there is Jenny, a young preppy with talent and dreams held back by a society not designed for women like her.
As their lives intersect in the late 1980’s at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, there will be love, confusion, and dangerous adversaries with wealth and power. Ford, Cassie and Jenny just have each other. Will it be enough? How do they survive as Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World?
By going to the indiegogo, you can not only secure yourself advance copies of the book, special merch, and experiences, but you get to help provide copies to teens that live in shelters and seek resources in community centers. You also provide opportunities for ASL translators at our speaking events about this wonderful book. Go to the link, get your copy, and help others!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/be-part-of-the-hearts-of-glass-story-and-mission/x/38415051#
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