That sounds a little like the schoolyard retort we used in our childhood, when someone said something mean to us. But the one from ‘the good ol’ days’ touted that “words would ‘never hurt me:’”
Sure, we flung that ditty back at our tormentors, but those nasty words did hurt! Our retort was our childish bravado; the chant an immature deflection for actually being hurt—by words, as well as sticks and stones. We probably were too young even to acknowledge that the words hurt us. We just wanted to convince ourselves that saying was true…words will never hurt me!
But, we’ve evolved from ‘the good ol’ days.’ We’ve grown in our understanding of ourselves; we’ve learned from the experience of many lives, even generations of lives, examined. And the new and improved understanding is:
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt forever.”
Shortly after I had my first daughter, I found a class called PET—Parent Effectiveness Training (By Dr. Thomas Gordon–I still have that book, too.) I wanted to be the best parent possible so I enrolled. I took away several things from the class, tried to incorporate and use them in bringing up what became two girls 13 months later. I remember the impact of understanding ‘active listening’—hearing what your child is telling you (or acting out) even though the words are completely different.
Another memorable one was an example about words. The instructors (it was a woman and her husband) were illustrating how we had been talked to as children and how we, thusly, talked to our children. How words can hurt; and they illustrated, perhaps there was a better way.
The example was…you (the parents) just bought a brand new beautiful white couch. It was a dream come true. You’d always wanted a gorgeous white couch. A neighbor came over to admire your new couch and, lo, and behold, they tucked their legs up under them with their dusty shoes resting on your beautiful new white couch! Did you react outwardly like you did inwardly and yell at them, ‘Get your shoes (or damn shoes) off my couch right this minute or I’ll blister your behind”? (Or worse?) No, you probably asked them rather kindly if they would please not put their shoes on your new couch—if you said anything at all! You might even have laughingly offered an explanation for your request, saying it was new and meant a lot to you to keep it that way.
Then think about your child running in from playing in the dirt outdoors and throwing him/herself onto the new white couch. Reaction! Do you imagine a much different scenario of words? More than likely it was the one you’d had yelled at you as a child. If we’re being honest…
Are Only Hard Lessons the Ones We Learn From?
My early writing came out as what I learned were called ‘epigrams. Short, concise capsulations of many times large ideas. Here’s one I wrote long before I read the new version of sticks and stones hurting forever:
Children are like clean, pure slates
And we mark upon them
With chalk
With china marker
With chisel.
To children, especially, but adults too, our words can be chalk–lightly written and easily erased or washed away, even rewritten.
Or our words can be like a china marker, indelible, leaving a permanent mark.
But the worst words can be as damaging as a chisel on stone, harsh and cutting, chipping away parts of a young psyche and self-esteem. These do damage and can remain carved into the heart of a young psyche forever.
I, of course, had to learn that the hard way. How else could I write the words I wrote if not from my experience?
It was way back in the heated atmosphere and stress of a husband and a wife in the midst of a family about to be split asunder. An early morning before school, everyone rushing around to get ready for their daily duties, school, a job. Something occurred which set the two parents into fight or flight mode, and neither one fled. In the midst of that anger, frustration, and distrust, an innocent little 8-year old daughter asked some question of the day. Lost in the frustration I was in, I snapped an answer. And I saw it. Even if it took much later to recognize what I saw, my subconscious registered that look on her beautiful sweet face.
A light went out in that sweet little girl’s eyes. Even in the heated atmosphere of that fleeting moment, I registered that look. I didn’t process it til later, but I am grateful that my subconscious did register it. I can see it still today. And feel it. It breaks my heart just as surely as a mother broke her daughter’s heart that day. Just with words. And when I visit it in my mind, I want to cry for that sweet, sweet, giving, loving little girl.
My words had hurt. Deeply. Have they hurt forever?
In that flicker, she felt she had disappointed. She had received disapproval, not approval. One sentence and words had chiseled into that pure little heart as if I had wielded the cold metal object. Did she, at that moment, tear off an inquisitive little part of her and throw it into the Bloody Room so that she could be accepted and continue to be loved by mom? The Bloody Room holds those bright, inquisitive, talented, generous, humorous parts of our psyche that we tear out and toss in order to be valued and loved and fit in with the authority figures, family and peers that mold us in our early years. The Bloody Room is sequestered in the Unconscious which is where all repressed emotions are locked up—and cry always, always to be recognized. (Post 11).
I have apologized to my daughter, the woman, many times. But can that truly fill the cleft of a chisel even after years of weathering?
I have used this experience to explain to others why the words we say to our children can hurt forever; and, moreso, how they shape or mis-shape them for a responsible and caring, giving, loving adulthood.
Yet, there are many of us who have had chisel words cleaved upon us. In her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” author Estes tells of an exercise she does with women. She has each make a material Scapecoat. “A scapecoat is a coat that details in painting, writing, and with all manner of things pinned and stitched to it all the name-calling a woman has endured in her life, all the insults, all the slurs, all the traumas, all the wounds, all the scars.” Through the exercise comes the lancing and draining of stifled, oft-times long-buried pain. Dr. Estes continues, “Sometimes we also call them battlecoats, for they are proof of the endurance, the failures, and the victories of individual women and their kinswomen.” A woman comes to see how strong she is and has been.
The Continuum
Life is a continuum, perhaps The Continuum (Post 1). The definition of a continuum is “the line that progresses between two opposites,” like the continuum of life, from birth to death. Some have described it as ‘the whole made up of many parts.’ Its elements are always interconnected. It marches ever on. It changes unperceptively as it grows its way toward the opposite, until it has changed from cold to hot, or from spring-to-winter, from baby to crone, from birth to death. A continuous whole made up of elements that are both affected by the element before it and affects the element after it. (How can you separate the warm water from the cold water on the continuum from cold to hot?)
The psychological application—the Life application—is that in order to grow an adult with peak physical, emotional, and mental health on the continuum, you must treat the beginning of that life continuum with great care—during infancy, childhood, even challenging teendom. And words count.
All words count.
Actions speak louder.
All along the continuum.
From birth to death.
