When You Don't Have the Words

The perils of swallowing your rage

On a long-ago sunny Saturday in 1987, I was walking south on Columbus Avenue with my dad. We had just walked by this giant flea market that was held every weekend on 77th Street, in the lot of a big public school. There were usually amazing finds there - antiques, clothing, jewelry - but you really had to look. It was a place I loved to go with my friends. There’d be a band playing, usually a really good band, and food trucks … it was easy to spend a whole afternoon wandering around, perusing the stands and people-watching.

The noise from the flea market carried out onto the street, and this was the kind of ambient noise that increased my dad’s poor hearing. I wish I could remember what we were chatting about. I know that it was light conversation which my dad wasn’t great at, and to be fair, I think many dads struggle to connect with their teenage daughters. My dad had been struggling to a more pointed degree, though, ever since my therapist told him to immediately stop sharing the intimate details of his very grown-up problems with me. She told him I was not his wife, nor was I his therapist, and he’d been burdening me for far too long with problems way too big for any child. The assignment to cease that kind of conversation was issued to my dad by the therapist when I was thirteen, and it was almost as though my dad didn’t know how to talk to me at all if it wasn’t going to be about all his troubles with women. So while I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about, I know that it was an inconsequential enough conversation that I was stunned when my father suddenly hit me upside the head, hard. Hard enough that I instantly covered my ear which was ringing, and asked him through tears why he had hit me.

He repeated what he’d thought I had said to him. He’d misheard me, and believed I’d said something disrespectful, and when I repeated what I had actually said, my dad looked chagrined, but he didn’t say anything. He just made a noise that I believe people describe as “harumph” and kept walking. My ear and the side of my head were throbbing. He had not hit me lightly. Between the pain and the shock I was really beside myself, but I vividly remember thinking my dad must feel so much worse. That he absolutely must feel so terrible, I wasn’t going to require anything from him. Not a query as to whether I was okay, not an apology, nothing. I was going to walk alongside him and try to behave as though this horrible thing that had happened was really not so bad, and was behind us already. But I can still feel the way my whole body was shaking, the way my knees felt a bit jelly-like, the way my heart pounded for several minutes, and the enormous lump in my throat that formed with the effort of not expressing any of it. That hurt more than anything else.

I was used to shoving my feelings down, it was a way of life. I’d dance my feelings out in ballet class, sometimes to the degree that my teacher would ask if I was okay, and I’d know why when I glanced in the mirror. My cheeks would be flushed and my eyes would be wild, but at least I felt free for a little while. I’d restrict calories to feel some sense of control over something. A lot of the time I felt like I was trapped down a deep well, cut off from my feelings and other people, utterly lost to myself, to my friends, to the world. I didn’t know where to put my feelings, but I knew they weren’t welcome at my mom’s or my dad’s. Certainly not my sadness or rage or anything that would have required any of the grownups in my life to have to feel anything like guilt or concern. My job was to be easy, helpful, organized, responsible. I was good at it. So good at it, I continued down Columbus Avenue for quite some time, responding to my dad’s attempts to keep the conversation going. I didn’t want him to have to feel badly about what he’d done. I wouldn’t have known how to accept a heartfelt apology from him, anyway. I had no frame of reference for that.

My dad had stopped talking to me about his “lady friends” and no longer sobbed in my arms about his inability to commit, his need to be free (which meant his need to screw as many women as possible), but he’d do and say other things that I also swallowed, even as I began to understand what I was swallowing was my rage. By the time I turned sixteen, my dad would enjoy walking down the street with me hoping the men we passed would think we were a couple. I know this, because he’d say it out loud. “See that man checking you out? I bet he’s wondering how an old guy like me snagged a hot young thing like you,” he’d say, draping his arm over my shoulder, and it would make me sick inside. Sick to a degree that is hard to put into words, but suffice it to say the rage I swallowed undoubtedly showed up as the blinding migraines that began to plague me. I had no words for the rage, it didn’t occur to me that I could scream bloody murder at him and tell him most dads do not want other men to think their daughters are their girlfriends. The words swirled around in my body, wreaking havoc.

When I was 29, I moved to Los Angeles. My dad had been living in North Carolina with his fourth wife, his high school sweetheart and undoubtedly the person he should have married in the first place, and I’d only see him once or twice a year for years by then. There were a few years in my early twenties when I tried not having him in my life, but I found that felt harder to me than talking to him, and the geographical distance made it easier. I’d been teaching yoga for about four years, and when I got to L.A. I devoted myself to teaching full-time. I’d moved west thinking I’d pursue acting and teaching, but inside of a year, I’d started to feel bummed out if an audition got in the way of a class I was scheduled to teach, and I realized teaching was really what had my heart. It was the thing that lit me up. The writing I did, I did for myself.

My dad came to visit one weekend. I told him I had a full teaching schedule, but we’d work around it. He’d started sculpting by then. It was a joy he discovered later in life, he was never one to shy away from trying something new. It turned out he was pretty gifted. He told me he had an idea for a sculpture and wondered if I could model for him. He’d seen a photo of me in a backbend, camel pose, and thought it would be beautiful. He said I’d just need to hold the pose long enough for him to take photos from every angle, and then he could sculpt it when he got back home. I was happy enough to do it. So at some point over the weekend, between going to the beach and walking on Main Street, I threw on bike shorts and a tank top and held camel pose for my dad. He took about thirty photos.

A few months went by, and one day my dad called me. He was very excited. He said the sculpture had come out even better than he’d imagined. I was happy to hear it and told him I couldn’t wait to see it. “You know,” he said, “I made your butt a little smaller and your boobs a little bigger and your hair a little longer, but it’s really great.” I remember the wind being knocked out of me. I remember holding the phone away from my ear in some kind of amazement. Did my dad just tell me I’d be better if my ass was smaller and my boobs were bigger and my hair was longer? But I didn’t say anything. Even then, at twenty-nine, having moved across the country, having set myself up with work I was passionate about, having stuck it out in a city where I didn’t know a soul except my dog, I still didn’t have the words.

In 2006, I had my son. By then I was thirty-six. I was leading retreats around the world and teaching full-time at a well-known yoga studio in Santa Monica. I had this precious, unbelievable baby and I had turned into a newer and stronger version of myself. I was determined to be the version of myself my child deserved, whatever it took. I had been doing the work. There was still a lot left to learn, and there will always be a lot left to learn, but I was the strongest me I’d been so far. My dad came to visit. My son was eight months old. Wide-eyed. Loved his mama.

My dad wanted to go to the Promenade and walk around, head to the bookstore. We drove over, my son in his carseat, and parked on the roof of the lot, the only available spot. I put my son in the Ergo, the baby carrier, and the three of us got on the elevator. A young couple was already in there. They smiled at me and asked how old my baby was. They were newly married and trying. I told them to stay relaxed about it if they could. We got to the ground floor and stepped off, waved goodbye cheerfully. My dad turned to me and said, “I bet they were wondering how an old coot like me got a hot young -” “No, Dad,” I interrupted because I literally could not bear to let him finish the sentence, “no, they were not thinking that. They absolutely assumed you were the grandpa.” My dad looked shocked, then embarrassed. “Oh, yeah, I guess so,” he said, “I guess it’s obvious.”

I was furious, and shaking both from being livid, and from the effort of finally letting it out. I walked too quickly for my dad, who was eighty at this point and already struggling with his knees, but I needed a minute. I looked down at my son who was looking up at me with such love, such trust. My eyes welled up. I made myself take several deep breaths. I kissed his head. Slowed down and waited for my dad to catch up. We went to the bookstore, but I’d already found the words.

If you’d like to meet me in real time for a talk about the repercussions of holding things in and how to find the words, I’ll be here on Friday 8/25/23 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are Podcast version. If you’d like to meet me out in the world, I’d love that so much. Here are two upcoming possibilities.