Chapter 2: Watching Women Stay

After that summer at Wingaersheek, my mother’s world did grow smaller, but it did not grow quieter.

The beach disappeared first. Then the bathing suit. Then the ease. What replaced them was pain that refused to stay contained. Chronic pain became the atmosphere in our house, not as something unspoken or politely endured, but as something that announced itself again and again, loudly.

The rhythm I learned.

Pain surged.
Voices rose.
Life resumed.

There was no language for processing what had happened, no repair, no reflection, no pause to ask what the pain was doing to her or to the rest of us. The expectation was that everyone would absorb it and move on.

She could laugh, deeply, genuinely, especially with Gracie and me, and the absurdities of life. Humor was real, but it wasn’t a bridge to intimacy. It was a release valve. Feelings weren’t explored; they were discharged.

I learned early that staying did not mean quiet endurance.  It meant enduring volatility. 

You stayed in the room after the yelling.
You stayed in the family after the flip outs.
You stayed without asking for anything to change.

This wasn’t taught explicitly.  It was absorbed.

I watched my mother remain in a life that hurt her while expressing that hurt in ways that overwhelmed everyone around her, including herself. Her strength was admired. Her outbursts were excused. Her pain was treated as both unavoidable and untouchable.

I learned that love meant persistence through chaos. That loyalty meant remaining even when nothing improved. That strength meant feeling deeply and expressing it urgently, without knowing how to turn expression into connection.  Most of all, I learned how women stayed.

Not always in marriages, but in roles. In bodies that hurt. In family systems that required them to absorb pain and keep moving. Staying didn’t mean remaining physically, it meant holding what no one else would hold and calling it strength.  By the time I grew up, this way of living felt familiar. Normal. Almost comforting. Why would I question it? It was the only blueprint I had.

When I eventually chose a life that required me to stay, long after joy had thinned and conflict had taken its place, I believed I was doing something noble. Something mature.  Something strong.

I didn’t yet know the difference between expression and connection.  Between release and repair.  Between endurance and love.

But I would learn.

By the time I reached my early twenties, staying no longer felt like a choice. It felt like responsibility. I believed commitment was proof of character and that wanting more was something you outgrew. I trusted that if I stayed long enough, if I expressed myself clearly and forcefully enough, if I made my feelings impossible to ignore, something would eventually shift. I believed effort created intimacy. That persistence would be met. That love, once activated, could be argued into existence. I didn’t yet understand that some decisions don’t reveal their cost right away. They announce themselves disguised as maturity and only later show you what they’ve taken.