Bio for Jane Kerschner - sibs & parents

Am putting together bits & pieces of my bio for Jane Kerschner, my well-being coach (praise be for the blessings of Skype & phone, since she is outside D.C. while I'm over the border from Philadelphia).  

Years ago, I heard Marianne Williamson say that if we all took down our masks, we'd realize how alike we all are.  I quite agree, because family secrets only make us feel isolated - like we're the only one(s) who messes up, like other people are relatively flawless - & because I believe in my heart that all of us did our best with what we had.  That being said, here goes.

DEEV's (Elsa Beth Lockhart Murphy) 

totally subjective autobiography*

SIBLINGS

I am the youngest of five children.  My surviving siblings are Peter, who’s 77, and Mike, who’s 74.  Mim, my only sister, died this past July, at 71.  Ian was killed in 1959, at age 11.  I turn 64 tomorrow.  

Several interesting dynamics tie back to that 8, 10 & 14 year age difference.  

First, there’s the difference itself – all of them shared years in the same small elementary school, went every morning to the same building, shared the same teachers.  When Peter went onto high school, it was right next door to Mike & Mim’s school.  Not just next door – connected by a walk way. 

They all frolicked in the creek & enjoyed swimming activities in the pond, both deemed polluted in the mid-1950s & replaced with a community swimming pool.  Mike followed Peter as a sport star in high school, both were proud that Mim was a great softball player.  They were aware of each other as children, interacted, shared childhood memories.  

All three of them graduated before the Kennedy assassination.  I graduated the year after the Summer of Love.   

They were rooted in the unquestioning ‘50s; my feet were planted firmly in the Therapeutic Age.

They were all older than Ian; I was the only one younger.

Peter & Mim are both non-verbal, while Mike was garrulous.  

Peter was always full of himself, certain of his superiority – the family joked that he thought that a prince had been switched with a changeling at birth, that he was the prince & we were the changeling’s family;  Mike was hyper social, outgoing & class clownish;  Mim was quiet, reserved, super shy, leery of others, inspiring a strong sense of protectiveness.  

From an early age, I was struck with how all three seemed to lack any genuine sense of self-confidence.  Well, Mike might have had a natural sense of self-confidence, but Peter took care of that, just as Mim did with me.

Ian was a tender-hearted boy.  He loved animals & they loved him back, reading, helping others.  He could have been friends with anyone, but chose to be best friends with possibly the most troubled boy in his class. 

Mom said that when she was sick & in bed when we headed out for school, Mike, Ian & I would always stop in first to see if she needed anything;  Peter & Mim tried to get out the door without being noticed.

PARENTS

Raymond (Pete) Lewis Lockhart & Katharine Reynolds Lockhart

I started with my siblings, because Peter & Mim – not Mom & Dad - were the dominant forces in the family.

My parents were a devoted, tenderly loving couple.  And they were a bust at being parents.   Those two observations are closely tied together.  Both were in their teens when they lost an adored other-sex parent; both were left with a horror story in the surviving mother or father.

Dad’s mother died when he was 14.  My paternal grandmother was RHneg.   As often happened in the early 1900s, the first child survived while the others were delivered but died soon after.  Dad was the first born.  His mother bore several children after him; all died soon after delivery.  Lillian herself died soon after giving birth.  

Although doctors said her death was due to complications following childbirth, Dad believed his beloved mother died of a broken heart.  Gar, his father, was having an affair.  It wasn’t open, but Lillian knew.  So did Dad.

A year after Lillian died, Gar married his mistress, Dad’s stepmother.  Small wonder Dad swore he’d be a loving, loyal & supportive husband, which he was to his early death, at 63.

Mom’s father died when she was 19.  From what I can piece together, he'd been declining for several years with disease - Mom recalled being in her mid-teens when he switched from the violin to the autoharp, which could be played on his lap (less risk of heart attack).   

This part is funky, so bear with me.  When Mom was a high school senior & her baby sister was a sophomore, the girls lived in Bryn Athyn (PA), as their father had long planned, going to a private school.  They lived in a rented house, where until near the end their father was tended by the community nurse.  Her mother was back home in Baltimore, doing her best to hold onto their father’s job as an estate manager for a local wealthy family.  

To her dying day, Mom talked about helping care for her father as an honor – she adored him, his tender nature & loving spirit.

 

When my grandfather died in 1929, the family moved in with my grandmother’s father, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.  Mom & Aunt Betty went from living in their Baltimore home, from their occasional home in Bryn Athyn - homes filled with music & merriment - to living in an unfamiliar neighborhood, in a strict Methodist household. No card playing, no dancing, absolutely no drinking.  No fun. 

After her father's death, Mom was the person my grandmother turned to for support.  The consequences were disastrous.  I can’t say it was all due to Gran, but she played a huge role in Mom’s view of herself as worthless, a view she transferred later to me.  The woman was a horror.  Until Mom’s final years, when she was more open to seeing things as they appeared to be rather than as she wished them, Mom never slammed Gran, but her “humorous” stories told their own tale.   

I was blessed to have collaborating testimony from Miss Phoebe Bostock, who was quite old when I cleaned houses in college, who shared her images of my grandparents over cups of tea & cookies between washing floors & changing sheets.  Miss Phoebe had been the community nurse, so she knew plenty!  My cousin, Peggy, was another source of collaborating information – as I learned after Mom died, Gran had dirty dealings with Peggy’s father, in exactly the same way she stole Mom’s wedding money. 

The way I see it, Mom had to make her mother's horrific behavior (just the other night, Peter, described Gran, a woman I never knew, as “evil”) acceptable, because there was no getting away from her.  Mom – the 4^th youngest of 5 – had sole responsibility for her mother until Gran’s death in 1955.  The only way she could make it work was to make what Gran did okay.   

What does it say that taking that approach worked for all of Gran’s life, but soon after she died, Mom had a breakdown that required weeks & weeks of hospitalization at a mental hospital, with treatment involving shock therapy.  

Just let that sink in.  Burying her natural feelings about Gran’s unspeakable nature helped keep Mom stay on an artificial even keel during Gran’s lifetime, but once she was gone, she fell apart.   

Over the time Mom was hospitalized & recovering, the five children were farmed out to five different families.  Until this morning, hadn't thought about the impact that must have had on the older kids, especially on Peter, Mike & Mim, who were 18, 14, & 12 at the time.  Their mother in the loony bin (which was how it was thought of back then) while they were separated from each other & their father.  Staggering.

Mom was genuinely her best self with Dad.  I totally understand.  Dad saw in Mom what John saw in me – a better self we never imagined.  Mom’s challenge was that once Dad died, so did her good opinion of herself.   Until she was in her late 80s, when she came to have greater faith in herself & a clearer view of what was happening around her, Mom continued to see what she wanted, not what was right in front of her.  

My sister-in-laws were united in telling Mom that she’d fantasized her relationship with Dad, that he’d actually dominated & her true role had been as submissive female.  Seems to me that they couldn't recognize a genuine partnership when it was right in front of them, because that is what my parents had.  They were, to steal from Paul Child speaking to Julia, the butter to each other’s bread.  They were from the moment they met.  I can understand, because John & I have much the same relationship – except indelible.   

Dad saw in Mom something she never imagined, while she did the same with him.  They both sought to have a true partnership within their marriage & most who knew them would say they succeeded.  

Dad was a far better parent than Mom, but even he had his head in the clouds when it came to Mim.  Mim could do no wrong.  Dad always took her word over Mom’s, certainly over mine.   As I experienced it, Dad loved Mim sentimentally, while I had his respect.  Praise be, I'll always take earning someone’s respect to automatically having their affection.  

Most people think of me as being like my mother, but I am actually my father’s daughter – and proud of it.  He was a clear thinker, could see something unpleasant without falling to pieces.  He actually disciplined me – with good cause – twice, something Mom could never have done.  

Mom’s way of dealing with family unpleasantness was to either tune it out, retranslate it into something acceptable to her core beliefs, or literally leave the room.  If something turned out in a way she hadn’t expected, she simply forgot it had happened.  Went clean out of her mind.   She either remembered it in a way that never happened or it simply never happened at all.  

Fascinating, in an appalling way.

Although both Mom & Dad basically threw Mike & me to the wolves, the ones they really didn’t serve well as parents were Peter & Mim, both gifted people who ended up with spectacularly wretched lives.  My sister died destitute, basically a ward of the state.  Peter is not much better off.  These are the two who always & forever were held up by themselves & our parents as exemplars of what Mike & I could only, in our best dreams, dream of being.  Which was always & forever the opposite of reality.

Between Peter, Mim & our parents, Mike & I were pretty well beaten down in our expectations of ourselves.  I was the luckier of the two – being the much younger sister, I could see the effect on Mike, who was clearly more intelligent & talented than portrayed.  But he fell for it – hook, line & sinker.  

Peter’s wife summed it up perfectly when she observed to me, “Peter & Mim are the smart ones, while you & Mike are the social ones.”   Which I translated as they were intelligent while Mike & I were dim bulbs.  And that was how we were seen & treated within the family.  

Tragically, it was also how we saw & treated ourselves.  Neither Mike nor I made any effort in school.  Why bother?  We already knew we’d fail.  Because we never gave our work any effort, we never discovered that we were actually very intelligent.  Intentionally or not, Peter, Mim & our parents mentally & emotionally kneecapped both of us.  

Bottom line:  I can mentally & even emotionally understand how wildly ridiculous it is to see myself as incapable of attaining mediocrity let alone greatness, but that was part of my warp & woof for DECADES.  

Time & time & time again, my experience says I am bright, capable & accomplished, with a host of quantifiable achievements from years teaching & in the corporate world.  Time & time again, my ability to connect & work with others - children & adults, students & clients - brought me accolades, advancement & even pretty nifty rewards.  But something deep deep deep inside my tissues still RESISTS making the effort to do the things that most call out to be done. 

 

It just dawned on me, writing this.  I don’t need help uncovering the pathology of my problem.  I don’t need support in believing I am capable & worthy of achieving more, much more.  I don’t need a life coach – I have a life & in most ways it’s happy & rewarding.  I need a well-being coach, someone by my side as I take the final steps down into the root cellar where my truest self has been waiting all this time.  I need Jane Kerschner.        

 


* I tried to stay as close to objective as possible, to flag where it's my opinion or assessment.