Julie Clarenbach

When I was in college, I babysat for a family with two young girls, and their mom, K, did more to reconfigure and reset my world view than probably any other single person in the world.

You see, I grew up in a military family with parents who were, for different reasons, very attached to How Things Should Be Done. There was the right way, and there were all the other ways, and, despite the fact that I yearned for the other ways, I was an eldest rule-follower down to my bones.

K, on the other hand, had one rule for her kids: they had to wear underwear to the table. When E was obsessed with a grapefruit and carried it everywhere and wanted to take it to bed with her, K shrugged and said so long as it wasn’t leaking, who cared. When M wanted to wear to bed the clothes she’d worn all day, K’s only caveat was that they not be, you know, actively grimy or likely to choke her.

K was the kind of mom who absentmindedly assented to the 7yo’s desire for a Halloween party, and then, when she realized what she’d done, groaned but followed through.

One time, when I’d graduated and was back visiting, we were sitting on the porch swing and K told E it was time to get ready for her violin lesson. E didn’t want to go. K told her they were going. E, with all the high dudgeon of a 6yo, stomped her foot and said it was the worst day! of her whole! life! K just swung placidly and said, “I hope so, baby.”

Talking with K, being in her orbit, blew my mind. She had a habit of getting to the heart of things, the piece that really mattered, and focusing on that rather than on the trappings around it. She read books about liberal politics and ran for the school board. She enjoyed paying taxes because of all the things taxes pay for. She campaigned for Clinton, and her eldest daughter, maybe five at the time, watched the returns with me and told me seriously that Clinton was good because he was pro-choice. She honored her daughters’ feelings and preferences without necessarily doing everything they wanted when they wanted it.

My politics changed overnight. (There’s nothing like growing up military to really screw up a worldview.) I thought differently about feminism, about my own prospects and challenges in the world.

And she gave me a magic sentence: “It’s not my fault, it’s not my problem, and I don’t care.”

You see, I did care. My role in the family system was to be simultaneously the golden child and the caretaker. If someone in the family was upset, it was on me to fix it, usually through self-abnegation of some kind.

So the idea that I could, in fact, declare something not my fault or my problem? Completely radical. It wasn’t enough, of course, to undo two decades of growing up responsible for everything, but it helped. It set the stage.

I’m thinking about all of that again because in the past week, two different podcasts have brought up codependency — and not in the trite way I’d previously encountered it, but defining it as preventing people from experiencing the consequences of their actions.

Well, ouch.

There’s nothing like marriage to show you your patterns, and Catharine and I have long joked that we each married the perfect keys for our locks. Our issues and patterns just fit together so perfectly.

So now I’m working on deepening my learnings here. Seeing what’s coming up for me when I have the impulse to protect someone from themselves. Figuring out how this plays out in my work life. Seeing what happens when I don’t do it.

I’m appreciating the new opportunity and also wanting to flip it off. It’s like that sometimes.