When I choose to become a mother, I had to decide what kind of mother I wanted to be. At the tender age of 20, the best I could articulate was “I’m not going to be like my own mother”. Years of abuse showed me exactly who I didn’t want to be, but it didn’t give me any kind of skill at being the type of parent I wanted to be. But I had very good intentions of not being awful. I think we all do.

The problem with having good intentions but no skills is that it doesn’t change anything. Only rigorous self examination and replacement of bad habits with good ones does that. It was not enough to say that I wasn’t going to be the kind of parent who threw screaming tantrums at a small child when I was stressed out. I had to consciously remove the parts of me that had been trained to deal with stress through anger. I had to be mindful of my moods, my actions, my words and behaviors, to be sure that I never let my child suffer because I had been taught all my life that children are their parents’ punching bags. Even though the kid is now 15 and taller than me, I still have things to learn. But the best thing, the first thing, I learned in this little bout of breaking the cycle was how to apologize and mean it and not ever do it again.

This self examination works for other forms of abuse as well. I am talking about racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. etc. etc. These are forms of abuse inflicted on the weaker members of society by the more powerful ones. That they parallel child abuse is not coincidental.

Whatever our intentions are, we have all been raised in an abusive society. In order to fulfill the promise of our good intentions and of statements like “I’m not a racist” requires more than just the desire to be good. We cannot break the cycle unless we have new skills and are willing to examine ourselves critically.

I’ll give you a wee example. Several years ago, a girl friend walked over to my house from hers. It was about half a mile, not far. On her way over she got harassed by a bunch of guys doing the “hey baby, show us your tits” shit. She was freaked out, obviously. But not just because she’d just been terrified by a bunch of dudes. They were black, and she was white. And she was worried that her fear of them was because of their skin color, and not their behavior. She didn’t want to be harassed, but she didn’t want to be racist either.

We sat and talked. If the men scaring her had been white, would she have been more or less afraid (neither). Did this event make her less trustful of strange black men on the street, or of all strange men on the street (all). You have to go through this self questioning every time something makes you squeamish, or uncomfortable, or scared. You have to rip out the social programming and look at every side of it with a critical eye. Is this here for a reason, is it useful? Does it keep me safe or does it cause me harm? Does it cause others harm? Do they deserve that harm? That is the only way to conquer abuse. It’s not easy. it’s not pleasant. I’ve had to admit some less than pleasant things about myself in the process. But I can honestly say that i have done the hard work (and continue doing the hard work) to rid myself of the abuse I was taught at the hands of my mother and at the hands of society. Good intentions are never enough, they are just the beginning.