Real Love
Love is Love
I was doing a crossword the other day and I was asked to write in a Mary J. Blige chart-topper from 1992. Having gotten deep into Mary J. in the early 2000s, I racked my brain. The answer turned out to be “real love.” I’ve been turning that phrase and the song around in my head ever since.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have celebrated Pride and Dads and all the forms of love that exist out there in the world. We have reflected on how Love is Love, no matter what gender or sex, and no matter what family formation or origin story, no matter what generation or relation.
I want to take a moment at the end of this special month to both echo and clarify this sentiment for families with kids. The one thing a child needs more than anything is real authentic unconditional love from at least one grownup in their life. Whether a child is fortunate enough to have a dad or a mom, a grandpa or an auntie, two moms and a “boppa” (biological poppa) or two stepparents, a mom, and a dad, no matter which way it comes, real love is the root of all healthy growth. Gender, sex, and biology are not requisites for real love. Authenticity and unconditionality are.
My Dad
My dad is a case in point. He was drug-addled, tormented his whole life by his own lack of emotional safety, from a childhood of abuse in a stultifying nuclear home. His father wounded him and caused irreparable damage. His mother stood by and numbed the pain with alcohol. He was left to grow in an echo chamber of trauma and shame.
There was an aunt who helped my dad whenever he was knocked-out unconscious. She would take him to her house next door, tend to his tiny body and nurse him back to strength. But even she didn’t feel like she could outright wrest him from his home. After all, to anyone outside the walls of that house, my war hero grandfather was a respectable man. My college-educated, politically active grandmother was someone to envy. With such a sparkling clean picture of a nuclear family, my dad seemingly could not have had it better. Gender, sex, and biology made up all that they were supposed to be. And yet authenticity and unconditionality were nowhere to be found.
Me
My story is quite different. Due to my dad’s addiction, my mom had to flee and make a new home for just us. Though she had to work night and day, and as a result had little time with me, my mom made the choice to shelter me with the real love that I needed to grow.
My mom chose the path of struggle, to turn away from a nuclear lie, so that I wouldn’t be traumatized and so she could ensure I got the real love that I needed. Within our own household, having that threshold so clear, my mom was able to limit when and in what condition I would engage with my dad.
I could write volumes about how that played out and the relationship I developed with my dad. But for now, I want to share that, despite his suffering, and despite the ongoing fallout from his addiction which made me and my mom suffer greatly, he still found a way to give me real love. He couldn’t put me before his trauma and his menacing self-abusive needs, but he knew inside him that our connection was a pure thing worth nurturing.
As my dad got older and sicker, and then infirmed and isolated, the real love we shared grew to eclipse much of his pain. From our unconventional family, I grew into a giver of real love who was able to heal some of that intergenerational trauma and forge a brighter future. I loved him with my own standard of love, and I didn’t pin my love on him living a different life or becoming a different person. I prioritized authenticity and unconditionality and returned to him some of that real love that he should have gotten in the first place.