{"id":22739,"date":"2025-08-06T06:11:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T11:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=22739"},"modified":"2025-08-08T17:04:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T22:04:16","slug":"conversations-with-my-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=22739","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with my son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here’s what no one told me, having a child was going to turn me inside out, expose the soft parts, the scars, the missing connectors, the entrenched and mystifying behaviors, and force me into the most uncomfortable growth of my life. No one said this. I thought I was raising a child, instead I was learning to parent myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, I had a conversation with my son where I had to tell him why I act the way I do. I fly to Arizona once a month and visit him. Because sometimes we misfire on how the visit is supposed to go, we have been making this deal – you have a day, and I have a day, to do what we want, and the other person has to go along with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens on my day is I bend to his will. I make sure he wants to go to the restaurant I have chosen for my day and change it to the restaurant he wants to go to. I don’t see the movie that was on my list because he is not in the mood for that movie. I don’t take the hike that I wanted because he is too tired to walk. On and on it goes this way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told him this time I am going to pick a restaurant on my day where I want to eat and if he doesn’t like the food, he doesn’t have to eat, but I will. I said I am going to pick a movie I want to see. I explained to him that I am a people pleaser, and I learned this because when I was very young and my mother was drinking and my father was raging, I just wanted everyone to calm down. I just wanted to feel safe. And to feel safe I tried to make sure everyone was getting what they needed. Only, other people’s needs become a giant maw that never really gets filled. While my needs get subsumed under my effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I explained to him about my work that I have been doing in therapy, in ACA, and in life, which is to speak to the small, scared child who lives in me, is me<\/em>, and wants to feel safe: I say to her, I’ve got your back. I can ask for what I need and want, and deserve to get it. So that when it’s my day – my day to choose what I want to do – if I start bending towards what you want to do and away from what I want to do – to be aware of what I am doing. To understand where this came from in my history, and how I’m working to overcome it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My son and I have had so much therapy! He is trying to overcome his childhood trauma, the deep, dark well of adoption, his own need to feel safe and deserving. I’m trying to overcome my childhood trauma, my grand desire to feel safe and deserving. We are out here wilding, growing, stretching and it is so much sometimes, I wonder how and why people choose to parent, which makes them have to parent themselves, which makes life uncomfortable and far from the Norman Rockwell depiction of what it means to be a family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like any mom, I’m hoping all of our discomfort leads to my child not having to wait till he is 66 years old to feel safe and deserving. As for me, I reckon better now than never. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Tiffany Gallego with Tin at the ranch. Tiffany’s family started the ranch over two decades ago with her father, Patrick Barrasso. Patrick was a substance abuse counselor and saw how no matter how much time spent helping teens, they would go back where it all began and relapse – he saw that taking the teen out of his toxic environment and giving him a chance to learn self-worth and resilience, how to care for horses, how to be self-aware gave him a better chance to overcome addiction and enter adulthood with better odds. After all, substance abuse is only a bandaid trying to cover up real issues.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

[Thank you for reading my blog; I love hearing from you; I’d appreciate your responding
here rather than on social media because then I can revisit your comments.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s what no one told me, having a child was going to turn me inside out, expose the soft parts, the scars, the missing connectors, the entrenched and mystifying behaviors, and force me into the most uncomfortable growth of my life. No one said this. I thought I was raising a child, instead I was learning to parent myself. Yesterday, I had a conversation with my son where I had to tell him why I… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-5UL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/TinTiffanyAug2025-1-scaled.jpeg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22766,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22739\/revisions\/22766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}