my first legitimate #tbt

Let me preface this post by saying our style in this photo was on point for 1993. Also, how is this 25 years ago?!?

This photo – this is my mom, dad, older brother, and (toothless) me. I have spent a lot of my life trying to reconcile the “picture perfect” family you see here with who each of us is today. My parents divorced in 1996, just three short years after my mom had us all rocking black denim like we were submitting our picture to be featured in an upcoming Gap catalogue.

This photo – it forced me to admit that things were different for my family, but maybe, just maybe, they aren’t as different as it seemed like they were when I was living through it all.

Shortly after my parents divorced, my mom made what I am sure was an incredibly hard decision to sell our house. The house we grew up in was built by her parents and she had been living there since she was just 13. My brother felt completely betrayed by this decision, and as a result decided to go live with our dad. In turn, I felt betrayed by my brother as I navigated a new life on my own. In the beginning, I handled my cards pretty well – but as time went on I hardened.

A couple years after the divorce I learned that my mom was in a relationship with a woman. It was the nineties in Ortonville, MI (population 1,451); homosexuality was not something people were familiar with, let alone accepting of. This news solidified the fact that I wouldn’t be getting one of those fairy tale reconciliations where a year apart made my parents fall more in love than ever. I began to resent my mom because naturally, everything must have been her fault. I won’t even try to explain the entire situation, but time has afforded me the insight (and the wisdom) to realize the divorce was not a result of my mom’s choice to date a woman.

None of this changes the fact that kids are mean – they are VERY mean. I heard the whispers and I scrubbed the graffiti off of my locker and the road signs. I read the words that my “friends” exchanged behind my back. And then, I went on the offensive; if they were going to judge me for something out of my control – I would give them a reason to judge me that was within my control. I often question how things would have panned out for me had I grown up in the social media era; would it have been better or worse? Would the internet have connected me with kids going through the same struggle or would it have simply been another vehicle for people to alienate me.

To sum up where these four people are today in one short post would be impossible – but to be literal we are all currently in Fort Myer’s Beach, FL celebrating the holidays; we are just a bigger family than pictured in 1993. My mom went on to marry that woman (Eileen, or Grandma Awesome if you ask my oldest daughter), they have a beautiful daughter of their own, Jesse Kay (13), my dad (recently divorced from his second wife) made the drive down with the three of them, and my brother and his fiancé flew in from Oregon. I guess the point of this post is to simply force myself to let go of that “picture perfect” photo. To include the messiness of our family, not crop it out. Sometimes we are so busy capturing that one moment that we miss the entire day! I debated recreating the throwback photo while the four of us are together for the first time in nearly two years, but that just seemed silly when we could just expand the frame!